fratelli e sorelle della famiglia toda (1941)

after a family reunion to celebrate her mother's sixty-first birthday, her father's sudden death throws the toda family into a sea of ??problems. first of all, it is necessary to sell the home and paternal property to meet the debts that the father's industry had accumulated. then a new arrangement must be found for his mother and younger daughter, setsuko. while shojiro, the last child, decides to go to work in tientsin, china, the two women are housed in the home of their first son shinichiro and his wife kazuko. thus began a sad wandering of the two women with the different families of the brothers and sisters of toda, made up of humiliations and misunderstandings. eventually they decide to go and live in a dilapidated seaside villa, along with the faithful servant, kiyo. during a commemoration in honor of his father, shojiro returns for a few days from tientsin. upon learning of the fate of the two women, he bitterly criticizes his brothers and decides to leave for occupied china, taking his mother, sister and kiyo with him.