A silk factory worker is persuaded to support her son's education up to a college level despite their poverty. Many years later, she travels to Tokyo to visit her son.
An unemployed Japanese man and his two sons wander the industrial flatlands of Depression-era Tokyo, until he chances upon an old friend and befriends a woman and her daughter, who are in a similar predicament.
Students Watanabe and Yamamoto unknowingly compete for the same girl.
