One Japanese industrialist, under the influence of American fashion, decided to start building individual atomic shelters, but they could not establish mass production, and the only shelter built was abandoned. Five years later, the construction company, using the bunker as the foundation, erected a three-story building, the back of which was adjacent to the slope. In this house a man settled who voluntarily left society. In the recent past, he was the personal secretary of a famous politician, married his daughter and advertised atomic shelters in a construction company that his father-in-law controlled.

But one fine day, he took from his wife a five-year-old son, whom the doctors considered to be mentally retarded, and began to live with the child as a recluse in a shelter. He himself appointed himself the attorney of those whom he loved most in this world - trees and whales. He changed his name to emphasize his new essence, and began to call himself Ooki ("mighty tree") Isana ("brave fish"). He is engaged in looking at photos of whales, watching through binoculars for trees growing outside. To be closer to nature, he made a hole in the floor of the bunker 30 × 30 centimeters and plunges into thought, putting his bare feet on real earth. Isana taped the voices of various birds, and his son Dzin learned to accurately recognize them: it turned out that the boy has an unusually keen hearing.

Once an incident occurs in a swampy lowland that is visible from the windows of a shelter. A young girl seduces a police agent, and her friends attack him and take the gun away. To save himself, the agent selects the most feeble of the attackers and, having contrived, puts a handcuff on his hand, while he clicks the second handcuff on his hand. Teenagers beat the agent, and the boy tries to cut off his hand to escape. A police agent unfastens the handcuff and runs away, and the teenagers scream after him for a long time.

Seeing that the trees were covered with young foliage and gained a feeling of their complete safety, Isana, spiritually connected with them, also feels protected and leaves the shelter. He, like plants, wakes up from hibernation and seeks a way out for the energy that has accumulated in him. Together with Jin, he gets on the bus and goes to the park, but they arrive too late: the park is already closed and the rides are not working. The watchman nevertheless misses them, and in a deserted park they meet a group of aggressive teenagers, one of whom has a bandaged hand. Isana feels an unaccountable fear and is in a hurry to return to the shelter. Going to the store and leaving Jin at home alone, Isana also experiences fear. He has nightmares at night. He has a feeling that their shelter is being watched all the time. Once he discovers a drawing on the wall of a house - a circle and a cross. Isana paints next to this eye pattern. He meets a girl near his house, who offers him to sleep in the dressing room of the famous actress in an abandoned film studio, standing a little further from the swampy lowlands. Isana answers nothing and leaves, and at night hears the tramping of teenagers on the roof and worries about Jin, whose fragile mental balance is so easily upset.

The next day, Isana looks through binoculars at the ruins of a film studio and sees a naked girl in the window of the pavilion. Suddenly he notices a group of teenagers who accuse him of spying on them. They ask why Isana and Jin live here without talking to anyone. Isana explains to them that he is an attorney for trees and whales. Having threatened with reprisal, the teenagers forced Isan to let Boy in his house, a teenager whose wound began to fester, and Inago, the very girl who suggested Isan to sleep with her. Isana goes to the pharmacy for medicines for the patient, while Inago looks after Jin. To Isan's surprise, the girl treats the baby carefully and attentively.

One of the teens, Takaki, tells Isana about the Whale Tree. As a child, Takaki heard about him, dreamed about him, but never saw him. The name "Whale Tree" gives Isan a warm feeling, it also begins to seem to him that such a tree exists. Returning from the pharmacy, Isana falls off the bicycle. Teenagers laugh, not thinking at all that he can be hurt. Isana marvels at their cruelty. Takaki arrives for Isana in a stolen car and continues the story of the Whale Tree. A few days later, Takaki shows Isana a cache of teenagers: they settled in an abandoned film studio. They dismantled the schooner, which one of them was supposed to guard, dragged it in parts to one of the pavilions, and there they gathered it and began to study the maritime business, so that later it could set sail. The teenagers are united in the Union of Free Mariners and live right here, equipping the cubicles in the basement.

Seeing that Takaki brought Isan, the Boy, who had almost recovered and returned to the schooner, wants to shoot "this crazy man": no one else should know about their cache. Isana is not afraid of death: Inago cares so well for the boy that he can do without a father. But Isana must fulfill her mission - to tell newcomers from other worlds that it was not man who reigned on earth, but whales and trees. The fight is afraid that Isana will report them to the police, but all the other teenagers are imbued with confidence in Isan and offer him to join them.

A man nicknamed Korotky, who is already forty years old, so that he is even older than Isan, says that at thirty-five years old he suddenly began to shrink and is still shrinking. Indeed, his limbs seem too long compared with an excessively short body. He was sent to a psychiatric hospital, but he escaped from there. He has no place in the world of ordinary people, and he feels normal in a society of adolescents. Listening to Isan’s reasoning about trees and whales, teenagers come to the conclusion that he has what they lack: the ability to put their thoughts into words. They believe that his excellent command of the word may be useful to them.

Isana confesses to her teenagers her sins: when he was his secretary to his father-in-law, he brought boys to him, indulging his perversions. Once they accidentally killed a boy, and since then, Isana has not known peace. As a "specialist in words," Isan begins to study English with teenagers, choosing for this "Moby Dick" and Dostoevsky in an English translation. At first, he fears that the conversations of the old man Zosima seem too moral for the teenagers, but they listen with great interest, and the word “prayer” literally captures them. To Isan's surprise, adolescents became very fond of Jin and enjoyed listening to serious music. Isana lives in anticipation of the end of the world, and teenagers are waiting for the Great Earthquake - they have a lot in common.

Teenagers are attracted to the Union of Free Mariners by a soldier of the self-defense forces - beloved Inago. They want him to teach them how to handle weapons. Isana asks his wife Naobi to find a place on the coast where he and his friends could live two to three weeks. Naobi finds such a place for them in Izu, but there Korotky commits a betrayal - he photographs the military exercises of the Union of Free Mariners and sells photographs to the weekly. He wants to force teenagers to kill him, believing that the crime will unite them and turn the Union of Free Mariners into a military organization. The teenagers arrange a trial of Korotky, during which one of them - Tamakichi - accidentally injures Korotky. Realizing that the Short wound is fatal, adolescents decide to execute him. Each of them throws a stone at him. Isana and the soldier stand apart. A soldier, grabbing a loaded machine gun and throwing Inago, sits on a motorcycle and runs away, the teenagers set off in pursuit. One of them - Tamakichi - throws a grenade at a fishing schooner. The schooner lights up, and suspicion falls on the soldier. A soldier commits suicide. Inago becomes the mistress of Isan, Isan, Dzini, Inago return to Tokyo, in refuge. There they are met by teenagers: they are destroying a film studio, they had nowhere to go, and after breaking a window they climbed into Isan’s shelter.

In the pavilion at the film studio there was only one battle: he never agreed to leave the schooner. So that she does not fall into the wrong hands, he blows it up. Workers destroying a film studio beat Boy. Tamakichi takes the dying comrade to a clinic at Tokyo University and leaves him in the arcade. Teenagers are pondering what to do next. Isana asks Naobi to help get the money for the ship to go sailing with the teenagers. Naobi nominated herself for the election, and Isana hopes that it is more profitable for her to have her husband and son swim in the sea, protecting the whales, rather than sitting in an atomic refuge. Naobi promises to offer the construction company to buy shelter and land from Isan - the proceeds will be enough for the planned enterprise. Just in case, adolescents make food supplies - if they are to be besieged, they will need them in a shelter, but if they are expected to sail, they will take them with them. In order not to endanger the child, the teenagers offer Isan and Jin to leave the shelter, but Isana wants to inform his wife that they and Jin are taken hostage - then she will surely put a ship at their disposal. Police cars are visible from the shelter window. A motorized squad surrounded the building. Teenagers shoot, police fired tear gas. They urge the besieged to surrender.

Teens are waiting for the arrival of Isan's wife. Naobi arrives, but claims that even in the name of the life of her child, she will not enter into a deal with criminals. Teenagers fight bravely, but power is not on their side, and they die one after another. It becomes clear that they no longer need the ship: they still could not go sailing, because the navigator and radio operator were killed. Tamakichi intends to fight to the end, but he does not want the Union of Free Mariners to disappear without a trace. He invites Takaki to leave and revive him. Isana resigns as a specialist according to the Union of Free Mariners, now he is fully committed to the duties of a whale and tree attorney. Takaki admits that his story about the Whale Tree is a fiction, but Isana objects that, as soon as he can’t go to Takaki’s home and be convinced of this, nothing prevents him from believing that the Whale tree exists. Takaki with a white flag leaves the shelter, followed by Inago with Jin in his arms and a doctor (a former student at a medical institute). While they go to the car, the police beat them.

When the car takes away those who surrendered, a fire truck with a crane approaches the shelter and begins to ruin the building. Only Isana and Tamakiti remained in the shelter. Isana goes down to the bunker. Putting his feet on the ground, he listens to the film with screams of whales. Water spurts from the ground as a fountain: emitted by a fire engine, it leaked under the foundation and clogged in the place where the hole was in the floor. The manhole cover rises, shots are heard. Isana shoots back. Water rises higher and higher. Turning to the souls of trees and whales, Isana sends them the last forgiveness and dies.