Nakai Kiichi plays Daikichi, who in 1945 paints designs on wooden sandals to support his pregnant wife Kimie (Ishida Yuriko) and their four children in Hiroshima. He grows wheat to keep his family fed during the lean war years. He is also resolutely against the war and is arrested by the public security police for being "unpatriotic." Consequently, his son Gen is bullied at school.
