The film begins at Sannomiya Station on 21 September 1945, shortly after the end of World War II. A boy, Seita (æ¸å¤ª?), is shown dying of starvation. Later that night, having removed Seita's body, a janitor digs through his possessions and finds a candy tin which he throws away into a nearby field. The spirit of Seita's younger sister, Setsuko (ç¯å­?), springs from the tin and is joined by Seita's spirit as well as a cloud of fireflies. Seita's spirit then begins to narrate their story accompanied by an extended flashback of the final months of World War II.




Destroyed buildings in Kobe after a firebombing attack on the city during World War II.
The flashback begins in Kobe on 16â17 March 1945, with a fleet of several hundred American B-29 Superfortress bombers flying overhead. Setsuko and Seita, the two siblings, are left to secure the house and their belongings, allowing their mother, who suffers from a heart condition, to reach a bomb shelter. They are caught off-guard as the bombers begin to drop thousands of incendiary bomblets, which start huge fires that quickly destroy their neighborhood and most of the city. Although they survive unscathed, their mother is horribly burned and dies a short time later. Having nowhere else to go, Setsuko and Seita move in with a distant aunt, who allows them to stay but convinces Seita to sell his mother's kimonos for rice. While living with their relatives, Seita goes out to retrieve supplies he had buried before the bombing. He gives them all to his aunt but hides a small tin of Sakuma fruit drops, which becomes a recurrent icon throughout the film. Their aunt continues to shelter them alongside her daughter and a local worker, but as food rations continue to shrink, she becomes increasingly resentful and openly remarks on how they do nothing to earn the food she cooks.
Seita and Setsuko finally decide to leave and move into an abandoned bomb shelter. They release fireflies into the shelter for light. The next day, Setsuko is horrified to find that the insects have all died. She buries them all in a grave, asking why they had to die, and why her mother had to die. What began as a new lease on life grows grim as they run out of rice, forcing Seita to steal from local farmers and loot homes during air raids. When he is caught, he realizes his desperation and takes an increasingly ill Setsuko to a doctor, who informs him that Setsuko is suffering from malnutrition but offers no help. In a panic, Seita withdraws all the money remaining in their mother's bank account, but as he leaves the bank, he becomes distraught when he learns from a nearby crowd that Japan has surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Powers. He also learns that his father, a captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy aboard a cruiser, is probably dead since nearly all of Japan's navy is now at the bottom of the ocean. He returns to the shelter with a large quantity of food, only to find a dying Setsuko hallucinating. Seita hurries to cook, but she dies soon after. Seita cremates Setsuko's body, and puts her ashes in the fruit tin, which he carries along with his father's photograph, until his death from malnutrition in Sannomiya Station a few weeks later.
In the final scene, the spirits of Seita and Setsuko are seen healthy, well-dressed and happy as they sit together, surrounded by fireflies. The camera then moves overhead, showing the two of them looking down on the modern city of Kobe.
What objects does Seiko's aunt convince him to sell for rice?
mother's kimonos