Shunta Watanabe

A young reporter is covering the mysterious case of a child found dead with missing internal organs.

Thirteen years afterward, I wonder if those who bombed Hiroshima are looking at me and saying: 'We did it! We were able to kill another person!' They should be," murmurs Minami (played by Kumiko Aso), one of the two leading female characters in Yunagi no Machi, Sakura no Kuni, as she lies dying in 1958, her life brought to a premature end by sickness resulting from her exposure to atomic bomb radiation. This is a story about those who at least initially survived the first U.S. atomic bombing of 1945 and their descendants in contemporary times. The film, based on a comic by Fumiyo Kono, jumps between the two time frames and quietly depicts the sorrow and mortification experienced through the everyday lives of laid-back and soft-spoken Hiroshima people. Only a few scenes of the bombing and the ensuing devastation are featured.

Junichi, a seasoned sound mixer, was trying to look after his dying wife. Shaken by her illness, Junichi goes out to where he and his wife had traveled to 30 years ago. In a different place, Chika and Yukko visit Yukari's home for her birthday. An exciting time for the girls alone in the house. But their friendship begins to crack when an unexpected guest arrives. Two different stories collide in an unexpected way traveling between past and present, imagination and reality.

A 17-year-old country boy named Norio decides his only option is to follow his late parents’ example and commit suicide. After failing even at that, his 34-year-old English teacher Akemi convinces him that he should instead move to Tokyo with her and become a lawyer on her dime. Unfortunately, Akemi doesn’t have quite as much money as she leads Norio to believe, and has to secretly get a job at a karaoke bar under the guise of “going to the salon”. Meanwhile, she continuously prods her somewhat dimwitted student to work harder toward her manufactured goal of him becoming a lawyer. Although Norio is falling in love with Akemi, he’s not all that interested in studying, and matters only get worse when he discovers his benefactor’s secret source of income.