Dodes'ka-den was Kurosawa's first film in five years, his first without actor Toshiro Mifune since Red Beard in 1965, and his first without composer Masaru Sato since Seven Samurai in 1954.

[1] In order to finance the film, Kurosawa mortgaged his house, but it failed at the box office, grossing less than its budget,[4] leaving him with large debts and, at sixty-one years old, dim employment prospects.

[a]) Ryotaro, a hairbrush maker by trade, is saddled with supporting many children whom his unfaithful wife Misao[b] has conceived in different adulterous affairs, but he is wholeheartedly devoted to them.

[6][15] A stoic, bleak man named Hei is frequently visited by Ocho, who appears to be his ex-wife, and he watches emotionless as she does his domestic chores.

[19][20] Katsuko, a mute girl, is raped by her alcoholic uncle and becomes pregnant, and in a fit of irrationality stabs Okabe, a boy who works at the liquor shop who has tender feelings for her, not having any other way to vent her emotional turmoil.

Tanba the chasework silversmith is a sage figure who shows kindness to the people of the town, disarming a youth swinging a katana sword with understanding words and helping a burglar who broke into his house, first by giving him money and later denying to police that a robbery occurred.

The Japanese film industry was collapsing as the major studios were slashing their production schedules or shutting down entirely due to television stealing the movie audience.

Teruyo Nogami, Kurosawa's frequent script supervisor, believes the director needed to make a good film to put that rumor to rest.

[11] Dodes'ka-den was made possible by Kurosawa forming the Club of the Four Knights production company with three other Japanese directors; Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi, and Kon Ichikawa.

[11] Nogami said that she gets choked up whenever she watches the scene where Rokuchan is called "trolley crazy" by children, because she imagines Kurosawa as the boy, with people yelling "Movie-crazy" at him.

[24] David A. Conrad wrote that an influence of the surging Japanese New Wave can be felt in this impulse and in the decision to focus on outcasts in contemporary society.

[25] In contrast to Red Beard, which was in production for two years, filming for Dodes'ka-den began on April 23, 1970, and was finished in only 27 days, two months ahead of schedule.

[2] Prince also states that Dodes'ka-den marks the first time the director used zoom lenses; a sign of the "speed and economy" with which he made the film.

[11] The film's title "Dodeska-den" are the playacting "words" uttered by the boy character to mimic the sound of his imaginary trolley car in motion.

It is not a commonly used onomatopoeic word in the Japanese vocabulary, but was invented by author Shūgorō Yamamoto in Kisetsu no Nai Machi [ja] (A City Without Seasons), the original novel on which the film was based.