Two boys from two very different cultures; Tim Glade, an American high school boy living on a U.S. military base in Japan, and Satoru Watanabe, a Japanese boy of the same age, living just outside the perimeter fence. The time is the early 1970s, at the height of the Vietnam War, when anti-U.S. demonstrations were rife throughout Japan. As the boys' forbidden friendship blossoms and develops into something more passionate, their cultural and racial differences only add a headier spice to their relationship. But can their dangerous intimacy survive the disapproval of the world they live in?