The Approach of Autumn

A single mother from the country moves to Tokyo with her son, who is in the sixth grade. She leaves the boy with his uncle’s family and takes on a grocery shop that barely turns over, working at a local inn as well. In the new place the boy makes a friend of the innkeeper’s daughter. The film gives the city through the child’s eyes and keeps the world of adults in the background. The account does not announce poverty; it shows it through the empty shelves of the shop and the tiredness of the mother. The friendship between the two children is where the story opens out. It comes from the vein of Japanese cinema of 1960 that gave ordinary life in detail. Nobuko Otowa and Yōsuke Natsuki appear in Mikio Naruse’s seventy nine minute Japanese film, completed in 1960.