The shoot of an exotic tree appears in a Tokyo street. The popular affection turns into astonishment, then horror as the Jacaranda grows to colossal proportions, burning the capital to ashes in the course of a dantean night. Though, as the sun rises survivors discover that it hasn't been a night of annihilation, but of rebirth.

Inspired by Cervantes' Don Quixote, the author criticizes heartless individualism and indifference in modern Japan, as seen through the eyes of an old man, who, although childish with age, sees the truth of things.