Early Summer

Noriko (Setsuko Hara) lives in postwar Tokyo with her extended family. Although she enjoys her career and her friends, her more traditionally minded family worries about the fact that she's still single at the advanced age of 28. When 40-year-old business associate Takako (Kuniko Igawa) proposes marriage, Noriko's family press her into accepting. But when her widowed childhood friend Kenkichi (Hiroshi Nihon'yanagi) returns to the neighborhood, she finds her heart leading in another direction.