A young nouveau riche housewife and former refugee from Manchuria finds herself increasingly drawn, with fascination and concern, to the spectral figures of poverty and loneliness that pass by her window, from the neighborhood ragpicker to the stray dog limping by – an awareness that reaches desperately for action when a fire destroys the shantytown near her recently constructed suburb. Offering his heroine, played by the comely Sachiko Hidari, as an emblem of slumbering class consciousness, Hani delivers an outspoken critique of the rigid social hierarchy underpinning postwar Japan's economic rebirth.