Akiko Yosano Sayuri Yoshinaga leaves her parents to move to Tokyo and be with the writer Hiroshi Yosano, and soon the two marry. Yet the marriage invites intense gossip: some people accuse Akiko of driving Hiroshi’s wife away, and the scandal shadows their new life. Akiko’s own poetry becomes a point of contention, and many Japanese citizens begin to see her as a traitor, even going so far as to set fire to her house. Amid these pressures, Hiroshi Yosano struggles financially, trying to keep the literary magazine Bright Star in circulation as best as he can.
After a night at the opera, Akiko is knocked over by a motorcycle steered by the author Takeo Arishima Yûsaku Matsuda. He offers her a Western outfit as an apology, but she returns it to him at his home. The editor Akiko Hatano [Kimiko Ikegami] pressures Arishima to contribute an essay about suicide for her publication, though he is reluctant to do so.
Hiroshi runs for election to the House of Representatives, funded by the uncle of Tomiko Yamakawa [Yoshiko Nakada], Akiko’s former romantic rival. Akiko makes sharp, negative comments about the campaign, and Hiroshi eventually loses, yet she decides to stay by Tomiko’s side as she recovers from tuberculosis. The world around them grows darker: the actress Sumiko hangs herself after her lover Hogetsu Shimamura takes his own life. At the memorial, Arishima asks Akiko to accompany him to his father’s farm at the foot of Mount Yōtei in Hokkaido. Akiko tells her children she will return by Sunday, but the trip lengthens.
In Hokkaido, Arishima is briefly arrested for holding a socialist meeting with farmers. Tomiko dies, and Hiroshi returns home. Akiko comes back from the north days later, only to discover her children have begun to resent her for what they perceive as selfish behavior. Arishima and Akiko Hatano ultimately decide to end their lives together, but they hesitate at the last moment, until Akiko’s husband intervenes, threatening to sue for adultery. The two lovers are finally found embracing at Arishima’s home, alive but in danger of consequences.
The Great Kantō earthquake soon devastates the Yasano home, and Akiko learns that friends Sakae Osugi and Noe Itou—two anarchists she had come to know—have been executed by the police. Seeing their jailed comrades dragged behind mounted police, she rushes to offer them rice balls and urges them to keep living. With renewed resolve, Akiko and Hiroshi commit to rebuilding their life together, choosing to press on despite the losses and the cost of the years they have shared. In the face of tragedy and upheaval, they persist, hoping to preserve what remains of their home and their ideals.
