Shuhei Horikawa (
Chishū Ryū) works as a
mathematics school-teacher in a
middle school. A widower, he has a ten-year-old son named Ryohei (Haruhiko Tsuda), who studies in the same school. While taking his class out for an excursion one day, one of his pupils drowns after running off with a classmate on a secret boat trip. Shuhei blames himself for the accident, and quits his teaching job out of remorse. Shuhei enrolls his son to a junior high school in
Ueda, where Ryohei studies as a boarder, and goes to work in
Tokyo to finance his son's education. Years pass. The twenty-five-year-old Ryohei (
Shūji Sano) has finished college and has himself become a school-teacher in
Akita. Shuhei now works as a clerk in a Tokyo textile factory and the two meet occasionally. Ryohei has thoughts of quitting his teaching job to join his father at Tokyo, but Shuhei rebukes him for not doing what his duty decrees. Ryohei takes a ten-day vacation to join his father in Tokyo. Together with retired headmaster Makoto Hirata (
Takeshi Sakamoto), Shuhei attends a get-together with his former pupils and the group reminisce about their school days. When Shuhei returns home, he suffers a heart attack and is admitted to the hospital. Asking Hirata's daughter Fumiko (
Mitsuko Mito) to take care of his son, he dies soon after. The final scene shows Ryohei and his new wife Fumiko returning to Akita, with the urn containing his father's ashes resting on the luggage rack; the two have agreed to live together with Hirata and Fumiko's younger brother. ==Cast==