Tôyô and Yoshiko Mahiru, two Japanese scientists, move into a village in a heavily wooded part of the Jura Mountains. Tôyô, a musicologist, is looking for a singing dog ; his wife is conducting a study into ancient religious settlements in France and Japan. They have brought everything with them - tatamis, dried seaweed and portraits of ancestors - so they inevitably spark the curiosity of the locals. Tôyô quickly becomes obsessed with an unseemly, pressing and almost insane idea : noticing a young villager's interest in his wife, he sees a way of giving his childless marriage a descendant. He secretly arranges his own disappearance to allow the young man to be with his wife.