Ken Tsumura

In pre-war Shanghai, a man falls in love with a mysterious woman, but she eventually disappears. Back in Japan, he is obsessed by her memory and tries to recreate the world he knew then.

A short musical comedy centered on seven star singers performing their hit songs. A tape recorder has been stolen, and it contains the star singers’ hit songs needed for the broadcast. What desperate measure will they take to make it in time for the broadcast?

In 1945, in a Shanghai filled with a palpable sense of unease as the war was still raging, Atsuko Kijima and Ryuji Kudo fell in love and exchanged promises of marriage. Ryuji was deployed shortly thereafter, and after the war ended, he was taken to Siberia as a prisoner of war. Atsuko, who had returned to Tokyo, clung to the promise she had made with Ryuji—that if he were safe, he would “come to the garden of St. Nicholas Cathedral at noon on Christmas Day.” Relying on that promise, she went to St. Nicholas Cathedral at noon on Christmas Day in both 1946 and 1947, but Ryuji never appeared.

1948 Japanese movie