Twenty-Four Eyes

In 1928, a young teacher, Ôishi Sensei (Hideko Takamine), arrives at a poor village school on the coast and meets her first class of twelve first-graders. Keisuke Kinoshita follows her and the children from that first year through the next eighteen, as the years carry them toward 1946. The film shows how history and hard luck reach even a village schoolroom and change what becomes of the people in it.