It mixes grief at the loss of a husband and father with wry observations of the various characters as they interact during the three days of preparation.

It won five Japanese Academy Awards in 1985 including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor for Tsutomu Yamazaki.

[3] Shinkichi Amamiya (Hideji Otaki) is a difficult 69-year-old man, married to Kikue (Kin Sugai).

He dies suddenly of a heart attack, and it falls to his daughter Chizuko (Nobuko Miyamoto) and son-in-law Wabisuke Inoue (Tsutomu Yamazaki) to organize the funeral at their house.

After the service, the long-suffering wife delivers a dignified speech to the family regretting that the hospital would not let her be with her husband as he died.