In the wake of his wife's death, aging Shuhei Hirayama (Chishu Ryu) struggles to maintain balanced relationships with his three children. He tends to spoil his eldest, the happily married Kazuo (Shinichiro Mikami), who spends more of his father's money than his own. The middle child, 24-year-old Michiko (Shima Iwashita), is looking for love herself, but feels obligated to run Shuhei's household and care for his youngest child, teenaged Koichi (Keiji Sada), who can't connect with his father.