A businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After his release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking to almost no one except for an eel he befriended while in prison.
Koji Namiki is a young pitcher who has shown great promise on the diamond by winning the National High School Basketball Championships. Shortly after entering college, however, Namiki's athletic career is called into question after he suffers a severe elbow injury. But despite a disheartening diagnosis, Namiki is determined to make a comeback. With a little help from his teammates it appears that he is getting back on track, too. Recently, he's even developed a new slow ball that he and his teammates have christened "the magic pitch". Fate can be a cruel mistress though, and when World War II breaks out Namiki the entire team join the navy and begin a training regiment specifically designed to prepare them for the ultimate darkness, an submarine attack method also known as "The Human Torpedo".
On her way to Chikura to live with her son, Yasue Amami gets off at the Tateyama train station. She wants to see her old house. The a new owner, Mitsuko Kawahara, intends to demolish the place and replace it with a modern new house. With Mitsuko's permission, Yasue enters her old home. Her family had rented it during World War II to escape air raids over the city, and they stayed on for a few years after the war. As Yasue visits the grounds, memories come flooding back.
29-year-old Satonaka Takashi (Kudo Kankuro) is a freelancer. He falls in love at first sight with Satoru Nobunaga (Shiho Takano), who was a nurse at his previous hospitalization. He half stalks her and ends up working at the "Time Machine" restaurant in Tokyo Patio, an apartment complex for the elderly in Asakusa. On his first day of work, Takashi is approached at the entrance by a strange old man (Kunie Tanaka). However, he is told that the old man, Fujiwara Fujiro, is already dead. Fujiro, unable to give up his feelings for Chidori Kanzaki (Yoko Tsukasa), whom he loved before her death, possesses Takashi and uses his body to fulfill his feelings for her. Possessed by Fujirou, Takashi tries somehow to get rid of the spirit, but without success. However, when Fujirou discovers his feelings for Saiya, Takashi is helped by Fujirou, who has a wealth of knowledge and experience due to his age, and finally decides to allow Saiya to live with him in his body...
In the early days of the Showa era in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture a newborn baby is abandoned with a doll under the eaves of a merchant house along the pilgrimage route in Shikoku. It seems to be a pilgrim struggling to make a living. This baby girl is named Haruko and brought by Tomita Shizuko and Katsuji as the younger sister of their son Ryosuke who is three years apart. When the war begins, 16-year old Ryosuke qualifies for the naval academy and crosses the Seto Inland Sea. After some consideration, Shizuko tells Haruko the truth that they are not real siblings for the first time. Haruko who has had a secret crush on her brother ever since he said that he would protect her, is innocently overjoyed and heads to Hiroshima to convey this to him. The next day, an atomic bomb explodes in the sky…