| Director | Shūji Terayama |
|---|---|
| Budget | ¥10 million |
In a rural village in Aomori Prefecture at the foot of Mount Osore, a fifteen-year-old boy lives with his overbearing widowed mother. He becomes infatuated with the married woman living next door and witnesses an unwed woman giving birth to an illegitimate child, drawing the village's condemnation. Following an argument with his mother, the boy visits his father's grave on the mountain. Speaking through a local oracle, he expresses his frustrations and declares his intention to leave home the following spring. When a traveling circus arrives, he becomes fascinated by a performer in an inflatable costume and covets her wristwatch. After he asks his mother to buy him one, she refuses, insisting that time belongs in the household, with their large, broken clock being all they need. Prompted by the boy mentioning having never been on a train, the married woman admits being unhappy with her marriage and asks him to help her elope to Tokyo by train. He agrees and sneaks out of the house at night while his mother sleeps.
Abruptly, the film ends, and the previous events are revealed to have been part of an autobiographical film. The adult director leaves the Shinjuku screening room with a film critic colleague to go to a bar. The director discusses a creative block he's facing and expresses concern that he has exploited and romanticized his own childhood. The colleague argues that fictionalizing memory is a means of liberation, and questions whether a person's present self would still exist if they were to travel back in time and kill their own great-grandmother. The director concludes that he has already done so, rendering his existence a paradox. Returning to the cutting room, the director finds his younger self waiting and confronts the fact that he has embellished and distorted his childhood memories.
After the locals notice a birthmark on the unwed mother's infant, they threaten her and drive her away. The elopement is presented as it happened. When the boy tries to sneak out of his house, his mother wakes up and tries to stop him from leaving. He manages to fend her off and flees, setting off to find the married woman before the train leaves. He discovers her with her lover in a hut on Mount Osore, where she denies having ever made a promise to him. As her lover invites the boy to sit down, she recounts her history of wartime trauma, family death, poverty, and forced prostitution. The director, unable to continue editing, physically re-enters his childhood and intercepts his younger self after the lover sends the boy out to buy sake. As they return to the hut together, they discover that the married woman and her lover have committed suicide by strangulation. Meanwhile, the locals blame the unwed woman's infant for a local dog's death and continue to drive her away. Later, she and the infant vanish. The director observes the traveling circus, where the performer in the inflatable costume has been abandoned by her husband, although she insists that he will return.
Playing chess in a field, the director and the boy discuss the unrelenting nature of time. When the boy speaks about his desire to leave home, the director tells him to kill his mother instead, arguing that the boy's love for her is exactly why she has to die. On his way to get a weapon from the house, the boy encounters a modern version of the unwed mother; she rapes him and offers to take him to Tokyo, prompting the boy to abandon his task. When his younger self fails to return, the director enters the house to commit the murder himself, only for his mother to casually greet him as if he were still a teenager. As they sit down to eat, the director states to the boy that the two of them are merely characters he invented, acknowledging that his cinematic attempt to recreate his past and kill his mother has failed. Reciting his birthdate, he questions his identity and reality, claiming to be simultaneously in both Shinjuku and on Mount Osore at once. Suddenly, the set walls collapse, revealing that the pair are eating at a busy pedestrian crossing in modern Shinjuku. As they continue their meal, characters from the film walk through the frame and disappear into the busy city crowd.