The film is based on the life of Japanese academic and author Hyakken Uchida (1889–1971). While playfully teaching a German-language class in the years just before World War II, Uchida tearfully announces his retirement to his crestfallen students. In 1943, Uchida moves into a spacious house, and Kyôko Kagawa as the Professor's Wife is concerned about the safety of the neighborhood. Two students arrive to pretend to burglarize the home, but instead discover a series of instructions Uchida has written on how to break in to the house.
He hosts a dinner for several of his students, but wartime shortages force him and his wife to serve venison and horse meat, which embarrasses him. Their house is later destroyed by U.S. bombing raids, and Uchida and his wife must live in a small shack with no indoor toilet and only a few possessions left.
After the war ends, his former students organize a banquet to honor him. Asked several times whether he is ready to die, he replies, “Not yet.” The banquet is therefore nicknamed the Not Yet Banquet. At the end of the raucous celebration, two American military policemen arrive but smile when they see the jovial gathering.
With the help of his students, he builds a new house for himself and his wife, featuring a pond with a small island. A stray alley cat appears, and he eventually adopts it, naming it Nora. The plot thickens when the empty lot across from their home is bought by a developer who wants to build over it. Uchida refuses to sell, but his students pool resources to buy the lot back and return it to the seller, who agrees not to disturb Uchida’s view.
Nora disappears during a storm, sending Uchida into a deep depression. He conducts searches with the help of his students, local schools, and townspeople, but Nora is never found. Later, another cat arrives, which Uchida names Kurz, and his spirits lift again.
The seventeenth Not Yet Banquet is held by his former students. It is no longer an all-male affair: the children and grandchildren of his pupils bring flowers and a large cake. After delivering his remarks, Uchida collapses from arrhythmia. He is taken home, where he falls asleep, dreaming of childhood hide-and-seek. In the dream, the other children ask if he is ready, and he answers again, “Not yet,” before finally finding a hiding place and gazing toward a golden sun.
Many vignettes—like the search for a missing cat and Uchida’s time in a one-room hut after his home was bombed—draw from Uchida’s own writings, and the film also lets Kurosawa reflect on modern Japanese history, including the American occupation of Japan, a topic he had only explored indirectly in his earlier work.
