Clouds at Twilight is a delicate treatment of the transition from childhood to adulthood, of "awakening to reality and leaving illusions behind. The eldest son (of a fish-shop owner) is full of romantic dreams and ambitions. He looks at far-off people through his telescope and constructs stories about them; he longs more than anything else to be a seaman and go away to distant and exotic places. Gradually, however, the responsibilities of the small family business become his.... In a wonderful final scene, what it means to be an adult suddenly comes upon him as he looks over his small childish world and says: 'Goodbye--to everything I loved...' There has seldom been a better pictorialization of the tremendous change required of the Japanese when he leaves a very free childhood for the narrow restrictions of adult society." Anderson and Richie, The Japanese Film