Akitsu onsen - Yoshishige (Kijû) Yoshida (1962)

The setting is postwar Japan in this standard melodrama from director Yoshishige Yoshida. Shinko is a young teen living in Akitsu when she meets Shusaku. He is a student who comes to Akitsu just before the end of the war to try to regain his health, and Shinko helps take care of him. The couple fall in love, but when they both hear that Japan has surrendered, they attempt suicide together and fail. The two lovers separate as Shusaku leaves town in the aftermath of their failed attempt, then fate tragically intervenes nearly two decades later.
Featuring one of Japan's finest actresses, Mariko Okada, "Akitsu Onsen" is one of the most essential Japanese films of the 1960's. Joining post-war background, devotion, loneliness and passion, Yoshishige Yoshida creates a remarkably beautiful and lyric film - relying only on the two main characters relations.