At a glance, Yukiko Koda is an unremarkably cookie-cutter melodrama heroine. After falling madly in love with a the married Toshioka during an affair in Indochina, she spends the majority of the film desperately trying to win his affections, only to be scorned again and again by her fickle ex-lover. While she originally assaults Toshioka with a barrage of insults during his first visit to her after they return to Tokyo, naming him for the cold monster that he is for only using her for sex, she all too quickly reconciles with him as they leave for a trip to an onsen. Her over-eagerness to forgive Toshioka for his insulting her in this scene becomes a common theme throughout the film, with his transgressions against her gaining in callousness while he appears less and less apologetic after each. Despite his icy attitude toward her growing, Yukiko submits herself to him more and more as the film progresses. While during their first fight she berates him for trying to keep both her and his wife, by the end of the film we see Yukiko give up on life, surrendering to the idea that even while she is on her deathbed, "women are everywhere" and Toshioka will never fully be hers.
While it is easy to sympathize with our main heroine, and she is certainly a tragic character, she is hardly the only woman to suffer from lovesick betrayal during this film. In contrast, I would argue, she becomes the antagonist of the story if we shift our perspective to that of Toshioka's wife. The wife is seen at the start of the film crying due to her husband's shift in attitude; While she does not have proof that he has been unfaithful, she very well suspects that his heart is no longer hers since he has returned for Da Lat. For the rest of the movie, she is essentially out of sight and out of mind for both the audience and Toshioka himself, as the main plot is concerned more with Toshioka throwing Yukiko away for yet another woman, Osei. Yukiko and Toshioka's wife's situations parallel eachother, as both have been tossed aside thanks to the interference of another woman. We see Yukiko heartbroken at Toshioka's infidelity, and though she ultimately appears to forgive him, his affair with Osei haunts her until she dies. If Yukiko is in such tremendous pain due to Toshioka's actions, it can only be imagined how miserable Toshioka's wife must be, having her husband constantly away "on business" while her health takes a turn for the worst. Had Toshioka been more attentive towards her, or spent less money on his failed business and romantic endeavors and more on a life-saving surgery, the wife's life could have been saved. Her fate foreshadows Yukiko's; thrown away by a man who will never truly love her until it is too late as she succumbs to her illness during his absence.
As we can se throughout the film, Yukiko may be a tragic heroine, yet her fate is still less miserable than that of Toshioka's wife. Though she spends the majority of the film chasing after the faithless Toshioka, she is still able to attempt to move hell and high water to be with him, whether it be through tracking him down to Osei's home, marrying a conman and embezzeling hundreds of thousands of yen, or mustering the last of her strength to move to Yakushima with him. Meanwhile, Toshioka's wife remains the true picture of melodramatic purity and goodness, staying faithful, if heartbroken, until death extinguishes her life. Further, while her loyalty to her husband remains unrewarded with love nor a funeral from Toshioka, Yukiko's efforts are repaid in tears as Toshioka weeps bitterly over Yukiko's corpse. The lack of any consideration to the plight of Toshioka's wife paints her, not Yukiko, as the true tragic heroine of Floating Clouds.
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