Experienced shipyard worker Shimazaki gets an offer of free lodging from his employer in the company seaside rest house if he agrees to see to its running. After moving in, Shimazaki finds out that this will also mean taking care of a flock of youngsters, and he soon becomes their none-too-successful warden. At work the boys are disciplined, as soon as they return to their dormitory however they turn into an unmanageable mob.
Direction
Yoshida's stark compositions frame chaos like angry poetry.
Acting
Hayakawa's exasperated everyman anchors the teenage storm.
Director
Yoshishige Yoshida
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released during the 1960 Anpo protests, the film channels real student radicalism against post-war Japanese conformity. The 'roughs' literalize a generation's scream.
Yoshida left Shochiku immediately after this, his final studio film — the institutional tension onscreen mirrored his own creative suffocation. The beach house becomes a prison of compromised art.
JP
