Thanks a lot for that, Arsaib. Wife, be like a Rose is the 30's Naruse film i most fancy seeing- it was picked as one of the BFI's 360 classics and voted #1 film of the year by Kinema Jumpo in Japan. Judging from YouTube Naruse clips from 1936 and 1941 (Hideko the Conductress) Naruse liked hitting the road at the time, and your Capra comparison may be suited to those films too. His later films seem a bit more restricted in their vistas- Naruse was known as preferring to limit exterior viewpoints, with quite narrow alley/lane/corridor-type shots. Chiba apparently later regretted their split. He was also thought of as a miserable pessimist, + not the easiest director to act for, but Hideko the Conductress, starring a young Takamine, seems remarkably cheerful for a wartime film; he managed to avoid the worst overt militaristic progandising