1956 - The Balloon

Titre original: 風船

Haruki Murakami (Masayuki Mori), once lionized as a master painter, is now the president of a thriving camera company where his son Keikichi (Tatsuya Mihashi) is also employed as one of the department heads. His daughter Tamako (Izumi Ashikawa) has suffered from a fragile constitution ever since she contracted polio as a little girl, and spends much of the time secluded in her room where she immerses herself in her drawings. At the funeral of Haruki's former teacher, he and his wife are reunited with the teacher's son, Masataka Tsuzuki (Hiroshi Nihon'yanagi), who had been wandering between Shanghai, Singapore and Paris, but now manages a nightclub. When Keikichi pays a visit to the nightclub with his lover, earnest widow Kumiko Yamana (Michiyo Aratama), Masataka introduces them to the club's chanteuse Mikiko Mikihara (Mie Kitahara), with whom Keikichi begins a relationship that will affect the lives of everyone around him.