Spring, 1969, 21-year-old Megumi goes to Wakamatsu Production. The company makes films popular with young people. Pink film director Wakamatsu Koji gathers there with young talented people who are all fascinated with movie making. When they are not making movies, they spend their time smoking, drinking alcohol, scouting for actresses and looking for material for their next film. When filming begins, everybody immerses themselves into the production and will do everything on the filming set from running, shouting to acting.
Hoshino Tomomi (Nagasaku Hiromi) is a 41 year old housewife with a darling son and a handsome husband, but whose life has become sexless. Hayakawa Kaoru (Ishida Yuriko) is a 41 one year old movie producer who is single, but feels uneasy about her life. Mikami Haruko (Sato Hitomi) is a 41 year old housewife happy with her ordinary husband and two children. These three women were all best friends once during high school, but have since drifted apart. Now, after meeting again at a class reunion, they find themselves drawing closer to one another. But as they draw closer, an incident from their past threatens to destroy their relationship once more; particularly between Tomomi and Kaoru. But before that happens, both Tomomi and Kaoru find themselves in a situation that will turn their worlds upside-down..
During the late Heian era, a youth who did not know his birth parents was raised by the Heike (also known as the Taira), a samurai clan of emerging influence. Taira no Kiyomori (Matsuyama Kenichi) was in truth the illegitimate son of Emperor Shirakawa. With his adoptive father, Tadamori (Nakai Kiichi), he got rid of the pirates in the Seto Insland Sea, and was trained to be a samurai. In a period where the samurai were being discriminated by the aristocrats of the upper echelons of society, Kiyomori, who was adept at winning hearts and minds, controlled the pirates. He worked to reform the aristocracy, persisted with the way of life of the samurai and built up the mighty Taira clan (Nakamura Baijaku, Kamikawa Takaya, Fujimoto Takahiro, Daito Shunsuke). Before long, he rose from a senior courtier of the third rank to become the chief minister and the ruler of Japan.