Tokyo no eiyu (1935)

Kaichi Nemoto is a widower with a young son, Kanichi, for whom he would like to find a new mother. Just as the business he is in charge of is about to go bankrupt, Kaichi decides to remarry. His second wife is Haruko, also a widow, with a little girl, Kayoko, and a boy, Hideo. Soon after they marry, the business fails and Kaichi disappears, leaving Haruko alone to raise three children. After losing some of her possessions and selling off the rest, she has to find a way to make ends meet. Ten years later, the family is happy and prosperous. Haruko has a lucrative job, Kayoko is about to get married, and Kanichi is close to graduating. Soon after her beautiful wedding, however, Kayoko returns home because her husband has repudiated her after learning what her mother really does for a living. Haruko tells the girl not to mention it to her brothers, but Kayoko finds it hard to stay at home and make up fanciful explanations for her divorce, so she leaves. Hideo is then dumped by his girlfriend because of the gossip that followed his sister's divorce. The boy confronts his mother angrily and, on learning that she runs a brothel, says he is deeply disappointed and leaves home. Kanichi graduates successfully, but by this point his mother feels she must tell him the whole truth. He tells her there is no need to say anything, because to him she is the best mother in the world, and thanks her for everything. After beginning his career as a journalist, Kanichi runs into his sister, who is walking around Ginza, also driven there by circumstances and financial hardship. He then learns that Hideo has joined the yakuza. As he tries to reconcile his siblings with their mother, Kanichi learns that their father is alive and runs a business identical to the one he drove into bankruptcy. When news arrives of Hideo's death, Kanichi discovers that he died in a confrontation in which the yakuza had been called in to protect a company's interests. This is the very company headed by his father, whom Kanichi then decides to confront. Kanichi investigates, and it soon becomes clear that his father turned to the yakuza because this company, too, is destined to go bankrupt after swindling all the people recruited to support it. After exposing his father and telling him that he caused the death of his stepson, Kanichi begs him to kill himself. Kanichi's newspaper exposes the fraud perpetrated by his father's company, but his mother does not approve: although she condemns her former husband, she would have avoided the scandal to protect the family's good name. Kanichi, however, knows he did the right thing and can hold his head high.