The Balloon

Haruki Murakami heads a camera company. He lives comfortably with his family. In postwar Japan he is well placed. His son, though, thinks a good deal of himself. He moves between two women. One he has been with for some time. The other sings at a nightclub. The father knows nothing of it. Then Murakami’s daughter comes into it. She becomes friends with the first woman. That acquaintance brings the affair into the house and the household is shaken. The father meanwhile meets again a woman from his own past. The story comes from a novel by Jirō Osaragi. Yūzō Kawashima wrote the adaptation with Shōhei Imamura, and Toshirō Mayuzumi wrote the music. Masayuki Mori, Tatsuya Mihashi, Mie Kitahara and Sachiko Hidari appear in the hundred and nine minute film, a Japanese production Yūzō Kawashima finished in 1956.