Slice of life film centered on a couple of years in the life of a rural high school girl.

Based on Kakuko Mori's autobiography, about her life and retirement from acting due to her increasing blindness.

An ageing fishing boat, Dai-go Fukuryu Maru ("Lucky Dragon No. 5") sets out from the port of Yaizu in Shizuoka Prefecture. It travels around the Pacific line fishing. While the ship is near Bikini Atoll, the ship's navigator sees a flash. All the crew come up to watch. They realize it is an atomic explosion, but take time to clear their fishing gear. A short time later, grey ash starts to fall on the ship. When the ship returns to port the sailors have been burned brown. They unload the fish, which are then transported away. They visit the local doctor and then go to Tokyo for an examination. It turns out they are all highly radioactive. Their symptoms become worse, and the contaminated fish causes a panic.

As a bid to win contacts, ship building companies wine and dine political leaders, inviting the geisha Hidekoma and Hidechiyo to entertain the politicians.

Keiko and Toshiko are sisters who leave their mountain home, where their parents live in a hydroelectric plant company house to study in the city. They stay with their kind-hearted aunt and her jovial but heavy-drinking carpenter husband. Keiko, the 17-year-old eldest of five siblings, is gentle and responsible, while 14-year-old Toshiko is lively and childlike, affectionately called "Konchi."