Kabe no naka no himegoto (1965)

Nobuko, a housewife who lives in a housing complex and has no children, secretly meets with Nagai, a man who survived the atomic bombing. Nagai has keloid scars and injects himself with medication for radiation sickness. When Nagai was a student, he was involved in the peace movement, and he and Nobuko made love in a room with a portrait of Stalin. Nobuko had given up on having a child with Nagai because he had been exposed to radiation, and had even undergone sterilization. Makoto, a young man who has failed his university entrance exams and lives across the hall from Nobuko, cannot concentrate on studying and grows increasingly frustrated with his older sister, who is obsessed with beauty exercises. He is also fed up with his parents, who have sex in the next room every night. Makoto’s main pleasure is spying on the other residents of the housing complex through a telescope. Nobuko’s husband is unaware of her affair and pays no attention when she complains of feeling anxious, as if she were “shut inside a wall that might collapse at any moment.” Her husband is involved in the peace movement, but when she asks him to let her take part too, he dismisses her, telling her to behave like a housewife. One day, Nobuko notices someone else’s underwear on her balcony. She realizes it belongs to a woman who lives on the floor above and goes to return it. The woman invites Nobuko into her apartment, but Nobuko declines. The woman then drops the underwear again and goes to Nobuko’s apartment to boast about her French lingerie. Still carrying on her affair, Nobuko is dissatisfied that Nagai, once involved in the peace movement, now does business by using the Vietnam War as a factor in stock prices. Meanwhile, to escape his bleak daily life, Makoto masturbates and ejaculates onto newspapers, smearing the pictures of politicians printed on them with his semen. One day, the woman upstairs who had been dropping her underwear commits suicide. Meanwhile, an unfamiliar man comes to Makoto’s home to return his sister’s handbag. After learning that his sister had been sleeping with the man, Makoto attacks her when she gets out of the bath, wraps a towel around her face, and beats her viciously. Later, Makoto goes to Nobuko’s apartment and tells her he has been watching her affair with Nagai. Sensing danger, Nobuko tries to call the police, but he stops her. In a panic, she slashes Makoto with a kitchen knife, but he overpowers her and knocks her down. Makoto initially tries to leave, but after Nobuko treats his wound, he opens up to her about the suffering he faces every day. Then anger wells up in him, and he attacks her, finally stabbing her in the abdomen with the knife. And so, the incident ends up as a small item in the newspaper.