On a train bound for the snowy mountains of northwestern Japan, a writer named Shimamura notices two fellow-passengers: an ill man named Yukio and the young woman who attends him, Yoko. Gazing at their otherworldly reflection in the train window, Shimamura wonders if they might be husband and wife. Arriving at an inn, Shimamura spends the night with a geisha named Komako. The next day, he visits the room where Komako lives and finds Yoko there. It seems that Komako and Yoko live in the same house as the ill man Yukio. Komako explains that she has known Yukio since they were children, and Shimamura also comes to understand that Komako became a geisha in order to help pay Yukio's medical bills. But if so, why is Yoko the one who nurses Yukio? The complex relations among Komako, Yukio and Yoko gradually become clear to him, though he views them and his own involvement as "wasted effort."