Shinichi debuted as a novelist at a young age, but his career has been stagnant for many years. He also has broken up with his girlfriend. His day have now become gloomy. At this time, Yuko and her son moves into Shinichi's home. Yuko is the ex-wife of Shinichi's friend. Shinichi lets them stay at his house. Shinichi writes his novel every night, while Yuko goes out at night to date men. She is conflicted with her feelings to act as a strong parent and to deal with her unspeakable loneliness. Yuko's son, feeling the loss of his father's presence, begins to admire Shinichi. With their living arrangement, Shinichi and Yuko try keep their distance from each other. But one night.. Adapted from the short story "Yoru, Toritachi ga Naku"
Civil War veteran Josiah Grey comes to a small town to be a gospel minister. In time, he has a family and many friends but also finds friction with a few of his parishioners.
The follow-up film to “Barstow, California” takes us to the mountains of Miyama, a remote forest and tourist area north of Kyoto. Uwe Walter, a shakuhachi player from Germany, lives there with his wife Mitsuyo for 30 years. Together with the villagers he prepares the annual Gion Festival. On the eve of the festival, the village representatives tell him that his self-built studio is to be demolished. This brings back memories for him of earlier times and his first steps as a Nō actor. In the manner of a fresco, the film interweaves rural depictions of everyday life with the story of its German protagonist. In the village community with its togetherness of generations, Uwe shares life with his neighbours, with farmers, hunters, woodsmen, poultry farmers and anglers, tills his kitchen garden, and like other tradition-conscious villagers, he also grows his rice. The film shows them in a harsh mountain landscape between the rainy season and the first snow.
After May 1968, they experimented with communities, squats or free love, with the hope of real change. Today, at retirement age, they live in new places and promote ways of living better and growing old together. What if they were right, these former protesters whose utopias have been muted by triumphant individualism?