Thus Another Day

Teiji Takahashi's boss is looking for summer home, so Takahashi and his wife, Yoshiko Kuga, agree to rent him their house. It will pay for the mortgage. He will stay with a friend, and she will take their son to visit her family. They live in a mountain resort town. It's no real vacation. Hoods from the city are causing problems, and the police won't deal with them. Her sister's ice cream cart business is thwarted by cool and rainy weather. Miss Kuga makes friends with an ex-army officer who hates himself for sending his soldiers to die in the War. He lives by taking money from his separated wife to look after their daughter.

Everyone is living from day to day, treading in accustomed paths, waiting for something to happen, like the poem quoted in the movie; a line of it is the movie's title. They feel as if society has broken down, and there is nothing left to do but wearily return to what they have done yesterday.

It's the flip side to writer-director Keisuke Kinoshita's bitter comedies. It's a study in anomie and despair and very telling, a story of people at a loss how to fix anything, but they still continue out of habit.