Tadasuke Kotani

Yoko Sano, picture-book author and essayist, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her most famous work "The Cat Who Lived One Million Times" is still read widely.

Hinako comes across the novel “Tamaran Hill” and immediately starts reading it with delight, as “tamaran” (intolerable) happens to be her father’s favorite swear word. She soon imagines herself inside the book’s story, which also deals with someone intrigued with that particular word, and even meets the real-life author Senji Kuroi there.

Mika is a single woman in her 40s living in a corner of Tokyo. While sorting through her mother's belongings after she died of cancer, she finds a skirt that her mother loved as a child. One day, a divorced man with a child, Akio, comes to the beauty salon where Mika works. He is Mika's elementary school classmate, and the two exchange contact information when they meet again for the first time in 30 years. That night, Mika gets into trouble on her way home and asks Akio for help, but for some reason, he comes running to her wearing the skirt.

Famous photographer Miyako Ishiuchi encounter with Frida Khalo's personal belongings 58 years after her death.

Atsushi Suwa, a realist painter, undertakes the work of drawing a portrait of a medical college student who victim of sudden death.