The stairs...

There are just stairs that lead to her place of work, separating her life in the bar from her private life.

Naruse is so realistically subtle, it sounds a crude to speak of 'symbolism'.
Yet the inferences are present, and it's no accident.

In every civilisation I can think of--from the pyramids of Egypt and meso-America to modern cinema of 'An American in Paris', 'A Matter of Time' etc..-- stairs are strongly symbolic.

The transition stairs make possible can be more than from one place in space to another: of concentration, society, feeling...the context tells.

It's Naruse's subtlety that a woman 'ascends' stairs to gain a milieu she really loathes; but her doing so with outward resignation, grace and perseverence means this is a genuine ascent in her acquiring greater dimensions of understanding and being.

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She has to literally ascend the stairs to enter her workplace which she loathes but in her mind she is descending into more of a hellish or depraved kind of experience which is separate from the one which she prefers on the outside.

When a woman ascends to gender parity... she sacrifices her integrity.

~.~
I WANT THE TRUTH! http://www.imdb.com/list/ze4EduNaQ-s/