Flowing

Rika Yamanaka (Kinuyo Tanaka), a widow, takes a job as a maid at the Tsuta, a geisha house in Tokyo whose owner, Otsuta (Isuzu Yamada), is deep in debt and refusing to give it up. Mikio Naruse spends the film in the daytime hours, with the women mending and bickering, while Otsuta's daughter Katsuyo (Hideko Takamine) sees no future in the trade. The cramped house holds them all together, its rooms stacked tight and its debts passed from one to the next.