AllMovie

Masanobu Deme directs this star vehicle featuring two of Japan's most popular and enduring actresses: Shima Iwashita and Sayuri Yoshinaga. The two play old college friends who bonded while participating in student protests. Many years later, Kiyoko (Iwashita) works as a reporter in the northern town of Hakodate and lives with her high school student son, Mitsuo (Koji Yamamoto). With great discretion, she is also having an affair with a co-worker, the rumpled shirted Takao (Koji Tamaoki). Meanwhile Yae (Yoshinaga) teaches art and suffers from a mysterious disease that is wasting her away. She ventures to Hakodate to teach, and soon the two college chums are reminiscing about the past. They also broach the dark secret that both harbor -- they shared a lover, a student protest leader named Awaji. Because of his radical activities, he was forced to flee the country, leaving behind both women and one child -- Mitsuo. As her son grows older, he becomes increasingly insistent over knowing who his father is. Does she tell him the dark truth?