Yutaka Osawa

Japanese film.

1979 Japanese film.

Deep in the mountains of Japan a dam is scheduled to be built, thus forcing a relocation of the farmers. One of them is 78-year-old Denzo, whose son and his wife consider him senile. Left alone, he befriends a young boy, Sentaro, who has heard that the old man was once a great angler. The unlikely pair spend lots of happy time together, until Denzo has a heart attack and dies far upstream. The dam is completed and the entire area is inundated. Everyone will move away, except Denzo.

As the Japanese military has established the puppet state of Manchukuo and is advancing its invasion of Asia, fighting intensifying battles against anti-Japanese partisans, the Godai zaibatsu becomes involved in large-scale opium smuggling. Shunsuke, second son of the Godai family, falls in love with a married woman. Meanwhile, Kohei, the love of the second daughter, Junko, throws himself into the anti-war movement.

Izumi aims to be the first deaf creator of artificial limbs. One day, her senior co-worker, Kubo, goes to Afghanistan to help give aid to children as a member of an NGO. Izumi decides to go along. In Kabul, the wounds of war are still fresh and Izumi meets a girl named Parizatt who has lost a leg to a mine.

An auto repairman's daughter questions him about what happened to her aunt during the war, but the father remains reticent. Finally the man opens up, and the girl is able to piece together her aunt's tragic story.

Based on the non-fiction books by Takushi Ono (the NHK announcer, not the gymnast) and Yoshinari Tobe.