Kazuyo Mita

A group of friends from high school days reunite for once more time before one of them dies from cancer.

Nayoko, a good-hearted geisha, brings luck to the men she sleeps with, even though most are scoundrels who don’t deserve it.

A city boy, Shinji, is sent to live in the countryside to escape the Tokyo bombings, where he experiences the complexities of rural school life, including a power struggle with the local class leader, Takeshi.

Utamaro was an artist who lived in Edo (which was later to become modern-day Tokyo) in the late 18th century. This film, which has a complex and wide-ranging storyline, recreates the world of that time, as it appeared in Utamaro's paintings.