Where Chimneys Are Seen

The film tells the lives of two couples bound to each other in a poor industrial district of Tokyo. Their earnings are not enough, the houses are small, and daily matters are settled by everyone getting involved in everyone else’s business. One day a baby left at a door upsets the order of all four, and the question of who will take responsibility comes up. The factory chimneys standing over the district, whose number changes according to where you look from, are the image at the centre of the film: the same thing looking different depending on where one stands. The account gives poverty without asking pity and without letting go of its humour. Kinuyo Tanaka and Hideko Takamine appear in Heinosuke Gosho’s hundred and eight minute Japanese film, completed in 1953.