The storyline of The Milkwoman is a simple one of unrequited love that despite the passing of decades still remains strong. Now 50 years old, Minako Obha lives alone and works two jobs β one as a checkout clerk in a supermarket, the other as a milklady, doing her daily round on the hills of Nagasaki. One of her stops is at the house of Kaita Takanashi, a government official who tends to his terminally ill wife Yoko. Minako and Kaita used to see each other as school children, but after the death of Minako's mother and Kaita's father, who it seems were having an affair together, their own relationship was destroyed. Lying in her sick bed, Yoko knows however that her husband's feelings for the milklady aren't completely gone and, for the sake of Kaita after she has died, she attempts to engineer a means of bringing them back together.