It is based on the 1933 Takigawa incident,[1] and is considered a quintessential "democratization film", taking up many themes associated with social policy under the early Occupation of Japan.

Fujita's character was inspired by the real-life Hotsumi Ozaki, who assisted the famous Soviet spy Richard Sorge and became the only Japanese citizen to suffer the death penalty for treason during World War II.

The professor's daughter Yukie (Setsuko Hara) is courted by two of her father's students: Ryukichi Noge (Susumu Fujita) and Itokawa (Akitake Kôno).

Her parents take the train to Tokyo where Yukie's father meets up with Itokawa, thanks him for what he has done and informs him that he intends to represent Noge in court.

Noge's father rejects her, believing that she has come to mock them because their son was convicted of being a spy but Yukie stays and works the rice fields with them.

The night that Yukie and her mother-in-law finally finish planting all of the fields, the neighbors sneak in and destroy their work.

Yukie's mother invites her to stay since it seems her daughter has achieved her goal: Noge's parents are no longer ashamed of their son.

Matsuzaki worked on the storyline with Eijiro Hisaita and Akira Kurosawa, then travelled to Kyoto in December 1945 to interview the people involved in the incident.

[6] The opening titles of the film, giving the background of the incident, originally mentioned the responsibility of Ichirō Hatoyama, former Minister of Education.

In addition, Richie argues that the depiction of both the military and peasants as antagonists is evidence for Kurosawa's "political uninvolvement" with both the right-wing and left-wing.

[12] Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto rejects Richie's characterization of the film as apolitical in light of the involvement of the Civil Information and Education Section in film production, Hisaita and Matsuzaki's prewar involvement in the proletarian art movement, and Matsuzaki's personal interest in the Takigawa incident.

[1] Nagisa Ōshima was profoundly affected by No Regrets for Our Youth as a teenager, but later criticized the film for transforming the historical figures of Ozaki, a communist, and Takigawa, who opposed post-war student movements, into staunch defenders of liberalism, and for its false depiction of united resistance during the Kyoto University incident, which in reality was "a history of schisms, submissions, and conversions after conversions".