Kahei, who dresses as a Buddhist pilgrim, quickly assumes the role of a mediator and grandfatherly figure, though there is an air of mystery about him, and some of the tenants suspect his past is not unblemished.

Sutekichi, thief and self-appointed tenement leader, is having an affair with Osugi the landlady, though he is gradually shifting his attention to her sweet-tempered sister.

Sutekichi is enraged to learn how Okayo was treated and, in the ensuing chaos, accidentally kills Rokubei, and is then blamed by Osugi for her husband's death.

Other subplots, some of a comic nature, involve the occupants of the tenement: a nihilistic gambler who rejects the pilgrim's hopeful entreaties to the other denizens; an aging actor who has lost his ability to memorize lines; a craftsman who appears indifferent to the impending death of his ailing wife, yet becomes a broken man when she finally dies; a destitute who claims to be descended from a samurai family, only to have this claim refuted; and a group of partying drunks who seem to rejoice in the face of misfortune.

Kurosawa assembled his cast from among the top performers in Japanese cinema, dress-rehearsing them on-set for 60 days and shooting extended takes with multiple cameras to create a theatrical effect.

Although the set was purposefully filthy, Kurosawa walked on it only in his indoor shoes, to the surprise of cast and crew; he explained that dirty though it was, it was still "home" to his characters.

In addition, such overt representation of downtrodden, hopeless characters (albeit from a different era) was rare in early post-occupation Japan's popular media, which attempted to downplay allusions to an underclass struggling with societal changes wrought by the war and its aftermath.