An old woman has died and her widower with dementia confesses to killing her. After this, the story goes back in time to show the events leading up to her death.

Just after WW2, a romance between an innkeeper and a man with tuberculosis unravels near a thermal spring.

Yoshida's first feature follows the lives of young students against a background of jazz, emptiness and boredom. The plot is fairly simple: a "good-for-nothing" from a poor background falls in love with the young secretary of his rich friend's father. The woman senses good in him and tries to lead him on the right path.

An opportunistic department store clerk gets involved with three women and attempts to manipulate them so he can move up the social ladder.

Young Kinu Yamabe is drawn to low-born Onimaru, who is vital and charismatic, but viewed by his father as a demon. After her first period, Kinu suffers the fate of any women born near the Sacred Mountain: she must leave the Mountain and serve as a priestess.

A mother and son have a strong, almost sexual, bond through moments present and past. The father of the past (who has died of Tuberculosis, revealed shockingly), the mother's current liaison, and the son's wife all re-enforce roles of sexual inadequacy with the two main characters (Mother, Shizuko, and son, Shizuo). Time is blended together, and the film ends up being an incredibly interesting melodrama with much of the (Japanese new wave staple) political put on backburner. A subplot involving the son's lack of sexual interest in his wife, and his mother's lack of sexual fulfillment in her lover (husband to be, I'm not sure) adds to the development of the incest tone.