Maya Iwamoto

A controversial documentary made for the 1995's edition of the "Rencontres d'Arles", focusing on the japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki.

Customers relying on a single line advertisement “Search for food with memories”, finally arrive at Kamogawa Shokudo, which has no signboard or fabric curtain. Those who come to this inconspicuous eatery near Higashi Honganji in Kyoto are people of today who have troubles. Work, family, life, love, interpersonal relationships… Although their troubles are wide-ranging, the eatery’s poster girl Kamogawa Koishi accepts customers’ troubles with sincerity while her father, Nagare uses the instincts and powers of observation honed as a detective, to identify what meals customers truly desire and demonstrates his skills by recreating them. Customers who eat the “food with memories”, which are the fruits of the efforts of Koishi and Nagare, will leave Kamogawa Shokudo, finding the courage to live and pleasures of life.

Nakane Kyoko (Ono Machiko) grew up in a wealthy family and was raised by her strict father Shigekazu (Tachi Hiroshi) who did not see learning as a necessity. At 19, Kyoko was introduced to Natsume Soseki (Hasegawa Hiroki) as a prospective marriage partner. The two of them were drawn to each other and got married. Soseki took up a post in Kumamoto as a high school teacher and this was the beginning of their new married life. Although Soseki was an extraordinary intellectual, he did not know the warmth of family because he was given up for adoption as a child. In an attempt to understand her husband, Kyoko tried to read what he read, interacted with his friends and joined difficult conversations. But she was not exactly successful. Then she miscarried their first child and her attempted suicide because of loneliness caused a commotion. How would husband and wife overcome this crisis?