The Demon

Sokichi runs a small printing shop and is deep in debt. When he stops sending money to the woman he has kept a relationship with for years, she leaves their three children at his door and disappears. His wife Oume accepts neither the children nor the situation. The household cannot be fed, the children become a burden, and under the pressure Sokichi begins, step by step, to make terrible decisions. Adapted from a story by Seicho Matsumoto, it is counted among the heaviest family dramas in Japanese cinema. Yoshitaro Nomura builds it not as a crime picture but as a cold record of where economic desperation takes a person. The man Ken Ogata plays is not presented as a monster; what is frightening is how ordinary the reasoning behind the decisions is. The scenes with the child actors are the hardest part of the film. The ending offers the viewer nothing to be comforted by.