I can see someone being into this movie if they wanted to sense the group ethic of Japan in the early post-war era. It's basically an explicit message to the people of that time to come together and keep their chin up. It even includes an audience participation moment that had my jaw on the floor and my eyes rolling into the back of my head! I couldn't handle how socially deliberate this was, along with containing that Japanese sense of "honor" which I rather typify as "debilitating pride."
It's sappy, it's male character is brutally down-trodden through his own social machinations.. his wife is an honor bound paragon of sex-deprivation. This movie blows! haha.. really though, the Kurosawa brand name cannot change my mind on this.