Translation Results Requested Through Conyac Made Public

After his first night back in his familiar world, he goes to a clock shop where Shinko (Chisako Hara), his young lover, lives and works. She clings to him abjectly, and they have sex without ceremony. He betrays no affection. He advises her to find a husband and start a family. He returns to the customary life of the gang without ceremony, as if dwelling on the prison term would be unseemly.
He likes to gamble. The movie began with a gambling sequence, there are several more of them, and visually they're as elegantly composed as a scene by Ozu. The director of "Pale Flower" is Masahiro Shinoda, whose visual choice is widescreen black and white and whose characters move with the grace of Antonioni's at about the same time. That Shinoda worked a an assistant to Ozu may explain some of his precise framing.

The gamblers play the Flower Card game involving thick cardboard chips that click when they touch; listen carefully to the sound track by Toru Takemitsu, the masterful composer who, Shinoda says, told him "record all the sounds and I will use them." He segues from the clicking of the cards to recorded tap-dancing and then to discordant chords, as if the rhythm of the game gives way to angular interior emotions.