professor shukichi somiya (chishu ryu), a widower, has only one child, a twenty-seven-year-old unmarried daughter, noriko (setsuko hara), who takes care of the household and the everyday needs—cooking, cleaning, mending, etc.—of her father. on a shopping trip to tokyo, noriko encounters one of her father's friends, professor jo onodera (masao mishima), who lives in kyoto. noriko knows that onodera, who had been a widower like her father, has recently remarried, and she tells him that she finds the very idea of his remarriage distasteful, even "filthy." onodera, and later her father, tease her for having such thoughts.