Etsuko still grieves for her former husband Shunsaku, who left the family for ex-geisha Oyuki fifteen years ago, although Kimiko remembers their marriage not as a happy one.

Contrary to her expectations, Shunsaku is happy with his new wife and their two children, and Oyuki turns out to be a warm-hearted person instead of the calculating woman Kimiko was sure to meet.

received the 1936 Kinema Junpo Award as Best Film of the Year and opened in New York in 1937 under the title Kimiko.

Kimiko, though her Americanized behavior deviates in multiple ways from her expected role, compensates for this when she tells herself that she will be a “good wife,” namely a wife who “acts childish and cajoling, or jealous sometimes, or motherly and protective.” By neutralizing the challenge that her modernity poses, she becomes the film’s “dialectical synthesis.”[6] Film historians have since emphasised the film's "sprightly, modern feel"[3] and "innovative visual style" and "progressive social attitudes".

[7] It was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1985[8] and at the Harvard Film Archive in 2005[9] as part of their retrospectives on Mikio Naruse, and at the Cinémathèque Française in 2018.