A Wifes Heart

Plot

The story is about the interactions between Kiyoko (Hideko Takamine) and her bank clerk bachelor confidant Kenkichi (Toshiro Mifune). Kiyoko, along with her husband Shinji (Keiju Kobayashi), wants to open a coffee shop and so goes to Kenkichi to ask for a loan. Family financial and emotion troubles mount within her household, and Kiyoko falls for the handsome Kenkichi. Their entire relationship is a series of beginnings and endings with the middles cut out. It is at first purely a business association, though after Shinji (at the manipulative behest of his matchmaker mother) gives a majority of the loan to his deadbeat brother Zenichi, Kiyoko starts to think that her feelings for Kenkichi may be more than platonic.

Neither nakedly confess their heart's desire, as the closest they come is during a sequence, set against the backdrop of a torrential downpour, where Kenkichi utters the first few words of a thought that he will never finish. It allows the rainstorm to act as an expressive emotional outlet—nature thus concludes what Kenkichi cannot.

Cast