Summary

In the city of Tokyo, a man named Komura lives a normal, quiet life with his wife, who slowly begins sinking into a depression. She spends entire days staring at the earthquake reports on television and stops speaking to Komura. One day, Komura comes home from work to find that his wife has disappeared.

Komura works as a successful salesman of hi-fi-equipment and earns good money. When he was younger, he was a rather promiscuous bachelor, but he has settled down completely in his marriage to his wife, to the confusion of his friends; his wife has always been sullen and standoffish. While Komura loves Tokyo, his wife longs for her home in Yamagata, which lies to the north; she has been in the habit of taking periodic trips to Yamagata to spend time with her parents, sometimes without much warning.

This...