An award-winning Japanese film about a child's experiences during the Second World War.

Hell manifests itself through the sins, shame and desires of an upper class rural family and a mother's grief from beyond the grave.

After World War II, when Okinawa was under control of the United States, the local yakuza prospered. But when Okinawa is returned to Japan, the mainland yakuza tries to take over; the local yakuza tries to compete. Now sides are drawn among the local yakuza guys who used to be best friends since their childhood, and brother fights brother. It results in the biggest yakuza war in Okinawa.

The film is set in Karafuto after the radio broadcast of the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War. On August 15, 1945, Soviet forces invaded Karafuto. On August 20, the postal telegraph office in Maoka suspended operations and nine of the twelve telephone operators committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide while the city was being invaded.

Chiyomatsu under the hill, also known as Choromatsu. He is a young man whose occupation is an approach shop, that is, a phony business of sex brokerage. Choromatsu is partnered with Umekichi, whom he calls "big brother," in this business. They live on the second floor of the aka-chochin (red lantern) owned by Takeko, where boys and girls who were abandoned at the abandoned children's temple on Mukojima also live together, making up a family of people who are not related to each other.

The world of adults seen by a high school girl in the valley between school and home after school, and the sparkling poison that only a daughter of this age has, gradually spreads ripples in the world of adults.

Sunaoko come to Okinawa to find his brother Tsuruo. Her searching is not very painless because it tears up old wounds in complicated relationships, some of which date back to the horrors of war.