The film depicts a small family, a husband and wife and two sons, struggling to get by on the Seto Inland Sea's Sukune Island [ja] in Mihara, Hiroshima, over the course of a year.

After the boy's funeral, which is attended by his classmates from his school on the neighboring island, the family resumes their hard life, with very limited opportunity for grief.

[1] Shindo deliberately made the actors carry heavily-loaded buckets of water so that the yokes they were using would be seen to bend, symbolizing the harshness of their lives.

Due to the success of the film in France, the main theme was the basis of the song L'Île Nue, written by Eddy Marnay and first interpreted by Jacqueline Danno.

[7] The Naked Island was screened at a 2012 retrospective on Shindō and Kōzaburō Yoshimura in London, organised by the British Film Institute and the Japan Foundation.