Cast
Hideko Takamine Chishū Ryū Toshiko Kobayashi
Credits
Written by: 
Keisuke Kinoshita
Plot
In 1928, a young teacher, Miss Oishi, arrives at a school on the small island of Shodoshima and meets her first class of twelve children, their twenty-four eyes looking up at her. Over the next twenty years, through poverty, militarism and the Second World War, she watches them grow up, and her pupils face the cost of war. Keisuke Kinoshita's 1954 film, with Hideko Takamine, is a gentle and deeply moving pacifist melodrama, much loved in Japan.
Sinekatalog’s take
Keisuke Kinoshita's beloved drama follows a young teacher and her pupils on a small island through twenty years of war and poverty. Hideko Takamine is radiant in a gentle, heartbreaking and deeply humane classic.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.
Ratings
IMDb: 7.9 / 10 (3,260 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.
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