It’s 1969, and Emiko’s father has gone to Tokyo to support student protests against the Vietnam War—but hasn’t come back. Then suddenly her mother dies. In despair, twenty-year-old Emiko abandons her factory job to go searching for her missing father.

To survive in Tokyo, she stays at a hostel in the seedy Sanya neighborhood and takes a job as hostess in a bar where she’s required to “talk cute,” which goes against her grain. She’s previously refused the offer to become the second wife of the rich Genji, twice her age, who had been in love with her mother, but when she’s fired and out of money, in desperation she goes to Genji’s office, hoping for a loan. Genji gives her money but has something else in mind.

Eventually Emiko lands a job as translator for a man who turns out to be a dangerous far-right activist—just the opposite of what her missing father stood for. And then she meets Juan, an American soldier recovering from a battle injury. Now she’s in love with a soldier in the war she and her father have been denouncing for years.