The novel is divided into five chapters, titled “Thousand Cranes,” “The Grove in the Evening Sun,” “Figured Shino,” “Her Mother's Lipstick,” and “Double Star.”
The story centers on the 28-year-old Tokyo office worker, Kikuji Mitani, who attends a tea ceremony lesson led by Chikako Kurimoto, a woman who once shared a fleeting affair with his late father. He still vividly recalls a large naevus on her chest from childhood, a detail that lingers in his memory as the lesson unfolds. At the gathering, he is drawn to one of the pupil’s, Yukiko Inamura, a striking young woman who carries a furoshiki bearing the pattern of a thousand cranes—the symbol that echoes the title of the book. The tea ceremony is also attended by Mrs. Ota, a 45-year-old widow and long-time mistress of his father, along with her daughter, Fumiko. While [Chikako Kurimoto] speaks disparagingly of Mrs. Ota, she simultaneously attempts to spark Kikuji’s interest in Yukiko, sewing a web of mixed motives and old loyalties.
Kikuji and Mrs. Ota share a passionate night, and he wonders whether his mother’s or his father’s presence lingers in her. When she visits again after a long pause, he learns that her daughter, Fumiko, had tried to keep her away from him. Despite Mrs. Ota’s deep shame, she sleeps with Kikuji once more. That same night, Fumiko phones him with the shocking news that her mother has committed suicide. He agrees to help Fumiko conceal her mother’s death in order to protect her reputation, stepping into a gray area that tugs at his own sense of honor and duty.
Chikako Kurimoto continues to show up at Kikuji’s house, speaking ill of Mrs. Ota while nudging him to remember Yukiko Inamura. Kikuji, growing increasingly exasperated by her intrusiveness, insists that he is not interested in the young woman, even as the memory of Yukiko’s beauty lingers. In the meantime, Fumiko leaves him a shino ware jar from her mother, and later a shino tea bowl that allegedly bears an indelible trace of her mother’s lipstick. As time passes, Kikuji finds himself drawn to Fumiko, and he wonders whether he can see a reflection of her mother in her, a possibility that mingles fascination with unease.
When Kikuji returns from a trip to Lake Nojiri, Chikako Kurimoto brings news that Yukiko and Fumiko have supposedly married other men in his absence. He discovers that the tale she told was not true when Fumiko phones to explain that she will be starting a job and moving into a flat farther away. Later that evening, Fumiko visits again and insists that her mother’s tea bowl is of little value and should be destroyed. In a quiet act of juxtaposition, Kikuji places his father’s tea bowl next to Mrs. Ota’s, acknowledging that they are the very vessels from which the adults drank during the affair. Fumiko then shatters her mother’s bowl on a stone plate, a symbolic breaking of the past that neither has fully let go of. The two of them spend the night together, a fragile union built on layered memories and unspoken regrets.
The following day, Kikuji attempts to call Fumiko at her workplace, but there is no answer. He travels to her new flat, where he is told that she has left for a holiday with a friend. In the quiet wake of that absence, he cannot help but wonder whether Fumiko has chosen a path that mirrors her mother’s tragic fate, leaving him with questions that refuse to settle and a sense that the past remains stubbornly present in the present.
