The story follows Kenji Miyazawa through different periods of his life, centering primarily on his relationships with his sister, his father, his students, and the farmers in his area.

The film opens with a sequence of Kenji carrying snow in his hands and chasing after a moving train containing his sister Toshi.

Kenji enters through the window and proceeds to tell the students to shut their books and close their eyes, explaining principles of heat and temperature to them.

Upon returning home with an armful of rocks he has collected, he witnesses his father at work at the family pawnshop business, in the middle of insisting that he cannot give a poor farmer any more money for his goods.

His creative process is depicted in an abstract sequence showing birds, bears, a winged Kenji, and numerous other images in varying art styles.

Kenji observes the farmers toiling slavishly in the fields and becomes overcome with emotion, hit with a sudden hallucination of being trapped and surrounded by water filled with skeletal corpses and fearful spirits.

As a sung version of Miyazawa's famous poem Ame ni mo Makezu plays in the background, Kenji works in the field in the day and teaches the farmers about art and literature as well as new fertilizing techniques during the evening.

As Kenji lies desolately in the field, all of a sudden a pair of trains burst up from the ground and towards the sky, referencing Miyazawa's novel Night on the Galactic Railroad, the basis for which was said to be his sister's death.