A full-length novel set in the world of private tutoring schools from the Showa era into Heisei. It follows Goro Oshima, a school custodian who becomes a tutor, and Chiaki Akasaka, a woman fiercely committed to education, tracing their family across three generations while examining ideals, commercialization, and the strains of family life.

From the small classroom of a tutoring school, the novel illuminates half a century of education and family life in postwar Japan.