The film begins with a close-up of the inscription above the stage in the ballroom of the Blackpool Tower: "Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear", from the poem Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare.

Successful salaryman Shohei Sugiyama (Kōji Yakusho) has a house in the suburbs, a devoted wife, Masako (Hideko Hara), and a teenage daughter, Chikage (Ayano Nakamura).

Despite these external signs of success, however, Sugiyama begins to feel as if his life has lost direction and meaning and falls into depression.

One night, while coming home on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, he spots an slender woman with a melancholic expression looking out from the window of a dance studio.

Tomio, who is balding and mocked at work for his rigid ways, is revealed to be secretly a long-haired (via a wig) ballroom dancer.

Meanwhile, along with his classmates, Sugiyama enters an amateur competition, only to find out that his wife, having finally learned the truth from the detective (who has now become a devoted fan of ballroom dancing), is in the audience.

When Aoki is ridiculed at work after his colleagues read of his failure in the newspaper, Sugiyama stands up and tells them not to mock something they don't understand.

They hand him a letter from Mai in which she explains her own past failure at Blackpool, attributing it to her dancing alone and not truly trusting her partner and how working with Sugiyama and Toyoko reinspired her to try again.

[2] It earned a distribution income (rentals) of ¥1.6 billion in 1996, making it the second top-grossing Japanese film of the year, after Godzilla vs.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Elegantly told by director Masayuki Suo and warmly performed, Shall We Dance?

"[10] Despite claiming unprecedented success in box office and critical acclaim, the movie did not represent Japan in the Academy Awards - it went to Gakko II, which ended up failing to secure nomination.

was remade in English by Miramax in 2004 as Shall We Dance?,[1] starring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez in the Yakusho and Kusakari roles respectively.