Yuki is a young, single mother supporting herself and her son, Haru, with a job as a bar hostess.

A city boy moves to the countryside and the kids there pick on him.

The story focuses on the widower Nemoto, ostensibly a businessman, who has one son, Kanichi, the hero of the title. Nemoto remarries; his new wife is a widow with a son and daughter of her own. However, Nemoto’s business turns out to be out a shady scam, and he disappears, leaving his wife to raise the three children alone. In order to support the family, she is obliged to become a bar hostess. She conceals this shameful employment from the children, but the truth comes out years later, after her daughter is rejected by her husband’s family when they investigate her background.

During college military training exercises, the bond between two friends and athletic rivals is tested when one of them becomes involved with a woman who may be a prostitute.