Kiju Yoshida's second film for Shochiku is a fierce critique of mass media, advertising and capitalist consumerism. When his employers announce massive layoffs, a salaryman takes a gun to his head in a plea for mercy on behalf of his colleagues only to unwittingly become the center of an insurance company's advertising campaign that exploits his desperate gesture for profit and markets him as a hero. Paired with Nagisa Oshima's Night and Fog in Japan (1960) as a double bill, both films were pulled from theaters days after opening due to the politically motivated censorship of Oshima's allegedly inflammatory film.