The story is of an unemployed man in his forties, Yosuke, whose wife has just left him. On the advice of an old tramp, he travels to a faraway village on the Noto Peninsula. There, in a certain house, near a red bridge, close to a river, a vase apparently contains a golden Buddha, stolen from a temple in Kyoto by this old tramp…
The man does not find the vase, but meets a woman, Saeko, who lives in the house ; this strange, kleptomaniac woman has the power to make flowers bloom out of season, to draw fish from the see into the river, by the water she secretes when she experiences physical pleasure ; the man who "bathes" in such water will rediscover his vitality…