Kazuko Shirakawa

A working-class housewife is sexually unsatisfied by her husband. When she seeks extramarital relationships, her affairs are discovered by a brothel-owner who then blackmails the woman into working as a prostitute for her.

Shigematsu Shizuma, who lives with his family in a village near Fukuyama, was in Hiroshima with his wife and niece just after the devastating atomic bombing, a tragedy that cruelly took the lives of thousands of people and forever marked the harsh existence of the survivors.