A middle-class Tokyo family relocate to the countryside after the father loses his job. Inside, a novel about adjustment, a place where clouds gather without thunder.

What unfolds is a sequence of quiet domestic episodes: planting vegetables, neighbours calling by, small irritations, minor triumphs, children wandering in and out of rooms.

Junzō Shōno writes with radical restraint, under the calm surface sits a subtle tension — economic anxiety, marital strain, the soft humiliation of displacement, the negotiation between pride and practicality.

This is postwar Japanese fiction at its most intimate. No spectacle, no melodrama. Just weather, routine, and the slow recalibration of a life.