After WW2 in Tokyo, Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) has spent many years in a city office working in bureaucracy. Along with the others in the office, he has spent a lifetime not doing anything. Then he finds out that he has terminal cancer and hopes to get some kind of meaning out of the time he has left. He cannot communicate with his relatives and goes out for a night with a writer, yet is still not satisfied. Then he goes out with a female co-worker, but thinks he might be able to make a difference in his work. He wants a playground to be built in a poor area. Later, his colleagues talk about how he became aggressive in the construction of the park and they hope to become like him.