This film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their circumstances are, each of them—the homeless father and son envisioning their dream house; the young woman abused by her uncle; the boy who imagines himself a trolley conductor—finds reasons to carry on.
An old man talks about a horse and human relations to his grandchild through the growth of the Derby horse. Akira Kurosawa's visual poem for the horse, the creature which he loved.