The Ceremony

Masuo is a conflicted young man trapped in a sprawling family network that demands loyalty over personal freedom. After his mother's death, he gives up his baseball talents and burns all his baseball possessions except his glove. He endures the coercive dictates of his grandfather, including an arranged marriage to an absentee bride. Throughout the film, he navigates competing affections for Setsuko and Ritsuko while seeking a measure of autonomy.

The family patriarch whose authority over marriage and heirs anchors the clan. His insistence on securing an heir shapes Masuo's fate and the clan’s web of relations. His death years later triggers a memorial and renewed pressure for quick marriages to preserve lineage. He embodies the weight of tradition and its unyielding demands.

A cousin who competes with Masuo for affection and status, using family ties to advance his own desires. He is both lover and rival to Setsuko and Ritsuko, shaping the clan’s love dynamics and power plays. His actions propel the telegram-driven crisis that culminates in tragedy. He personifies the entwined nature of romance and family duty.

Masuo's cousin and Terumichi's lover, torn between duty to the family and personal attachment. Her sense of obligation to Terumichi and to Masuo pits competing loyalties, and she faces the pressure around suicide at Terumichi's death. Her choices underscore the coercive nature of the clan's codes around love and lineage.

Masuo's love interest whose presence fuels rivalry and desire within the family. She embodies longing restrained by social rules and the pursuit of affection within a web of relatives. Her role highlights how romance is entangled with power, reputation, and family expectations.

Masuo's father figure within the family, part of the generation that upholds the clan’s codes. His life intersects with the Manchukuo repatriation context and the events shaping Masuo’s early sense of duty. He contributes to the atmosphere of inherited obligations that drive the narrative.

Masuo's mother whose death becomes a catalyst for Masuo's sacrifice of his baseball dreams. Her absence underscores the emotional cost of maintaining family traditions and the expectations placed upon Masuo.

A member of the extended family who participates in the intricate web of kin relations. Her presence exemplifies the broad, entangled network of relatives whose interactions contribute to the film’s atmosphere of claustrophobic family ties.

A relative who appears within the clan’s circle, contributing to the sense of a large, interwoven family struggling with lineage and succession in the shadow of ceremonies and expectations.