While Shōichi rooms with a friend, Yasuko and their son Kazuo stay with her family in a troubled resort community, where visiting yakuza and their underlings threaten and injure her brothers, a cab driver and an aspiring singer.

[5] Kinoshita filmed much of Thus Another Day on location in both Tokyo and the resort area of Karuizawa, which features prominently in the boating and waterfront talent show scenes.

While the theme of postwar desperation in the Japanese family ethos is familiar in films by directors like Yasujirō Ozu (who also favored plot ellipses),[7][unreliable source?]

[8] The depiction of Shusuke's PTSD is paralleled with Yasuko's depression over her struggle to survive in a consumerist society with a husband driven to succeed within the salaryman culture.

Kinoshita's linkage of the two characters, combined with the threats and physical injury endured by the film's two extended family units, suggests a postwar Japanese middle class facing an uncertain and troubled future.