Ozu's first talkie is an early triumph from Japan's greatest director. This was before his style had become so rigidly defined, allowing for some (not unwelcome) conventional melodrama to creep into his style, but for the most part this is vintage Ozu, expressing heavy emotions through the medium of mild social formality. Both a heartbreaking representation of the struggles of depression-era Japan and a deeply empathetic, human-proportions drama.