The collection opens with the novel The Setting Sun (1947), which holds a central place in the writer's oeuvre. Against the backdrop of the decline of an aristocratic family and the fading traditions of refined Japan, it tells the story of the struggles of a member of the metropolitan bohemia of the postwar period—a decadent and a rebel who, in truth, longs for love and inner peace.

The collection also includes short prose from different periods of the writer’s career, namely: his debut short story The Train (1933), the autobiographical essay One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji (1938), the short story Fireworks (1942), and his final work, Cherries (1948). In these texts, diverse in genre and themes, an incurable romantic and skeptic, a seeker of truth and a disillusioned heretic pieces together episodes of his life into unpretentious «everyday» narratives, desperately trying to align himself with the rhythm of contemporary Japanese society and grasp its values. Focused on the author’s inner world, his prose is rich in (self-)observations and strikingly candid, profound, and at times ironic reflections on empathy, trust, sincerity, loneliness, submission to fate, and acceptance.