In medieval Japan, a woman and her children journey to find the family's patriarch, who was exiled years earlier.
A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.
At the close of the war in Japan, a widowed mother makes every possible sacrifice to bring up her ungrateful son and daughter who are unimpressed with their poor standard of living at home. They gradually reject her in search of the material comforts that working as a maid cannot provide. The mother's despair becomes interminable.
