Kinta, a young boy, lives at his grandfather's home in Chiba Department. On August 15, 1945, a B-29 crashes into a field near his home. The peasants are preparing to attack the pilot with bits of bamboo, but the grandfather, a wise writer, calms the population by announcing the harsh reality: Japan has just surrendered and now they must respect the Americans. After discussion, the old man agrees to welcome the stranger home. Then begins for Kinta a period of learning and especially, through him, the discovery of the sexuality, the pangs of life and the baseness of human feelings, it is also the Japan of the immediate post-war period which is depicted in its rapid changes and its direct confrontation with the West. How not to see, in the vocation of this child for drawing and his fascination for a sometimes troubled sexuality, a great autobiographical work that traces with a bitter tenderness a life to be invented in a world turned upside down?