A beautiful girl, Yōko, gets lost one night during an air raid and is taken in by an orphanage. Eventually, she is reunited with her own family and goes home to live with them. But there, an unexpected fate awaits her as she is subjected to horrific brutality from these people who are tortured by a past mistake.
Kitamori Yuki was particular about her promise to her mother-in-law Hana. The promise is that, as the daughter-in-law of Koichi, the eldest son of the Kitamori family, Hana entrusts everything to Yuki, but wants her entire family to come see her on her birthday. At that time, her second son Keisuke's daughter Megumi, who is her private taxi driver, made a mistake, and she was overwhelmed and approached Yuki for advice. Eventually, her mother Kayo of Megumi learned about this, but a period was quietly struck by her women coming to a conclusion that should be the food for Megumi's growth.
The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a revelrous march on the Tokyo Imperial Palace, which turns into a massacre. Characteristically, Imamura focuses not on the leaders of the country, but on characters in the lower classes and on the fringes of society.
Rainbow Over the Pacific is a tale of romance that moves from the streets of Tokyo to the islands of Hawaii as it weaves the story of two star-crossed lovers--Hideo (Yukio Hashi), an aspiring photographer from Japan, and Reiko (Jun Mayuzumi), a beautiful Sansei Cherry Blossom contestant from Hawaii--who are drawn together by destiny, yet appear to be fated to be apart. Will the sun set on their young love, or will it be the dawn of a new relationship?