A short novel centred on the Japanese tea ceremony. Kikuji, a young man, is drawn back into the circle of his late father's acquaintances at a tea gathering. There he meets women linked to his father's past, and old attachments and resentments begin to touch his own life. The tea room, with its treasured bowls and careful rituals, becomes a place where desire, guilt and memory quietly gather. Kawabata uses restrained, elegant prose to show how objects carry the feelings of those who owned them.