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Oei, later known as Katsushika Oi, was born the third daughter of Edo’s talented painter Katsushika Hokusai and his second wife Koto. Although Oei became the wife of a town painter for a time, her love of the paintbrush more than her husband spelt disaster and she comes back home to Hokusai from the family she had married into. This is how Oei starts to help her father out in his painting of the “insurmountable high wall”. Meanwhile, Oei can only talk to the painter Ikeda Zenjiro, who is her father’s student, about her pain and worries. Zenjiro has taken Edo by storm as Keisai Eisen, the master of ukiyo-e portraying beautiful women. He visits regularly because he admires Hokusai and secretly likes Oei although their relationship is like childhood friends. Oei respects her father whose paintings fascinated her and continues to work as a painter who supports him behind the scenes. When Hokusai’s masterpiece Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji was completed, she was also by his side.
Director
Writer
Status
Released
Original Language
JA
Koto
In June 1945 Yamauchi Fusako goes alone to Manchuria where her husband, Setsuo, a second lieutenant of the Kwantung Army, is based. At that time, 200,000 Japanese had settled in Manchuria, a Japanese occupied territory, as settler communities. Fujita Hideo’s family worked hard to clear the wilderness, but the Soviets are lying in wait for an invasion of Manchuria from the North. Fusako is safely reunited with her husband at the headquarters of the Kwantung Army’s Fifth Training Squadron in Manchuria’s Dahushan. Setsuo also takes good care of his beloved wife, but his position is an instructor to the young soldiers who will eventually carry out suicide attacks. He wonders if he should have summoned her and speaks of these mixed feelings to his commanding officer, Michiba Kazuo, a first lieutenant. Michiba is concerned about Setsuo’s attempts to cherish his wife before the coming showdown on homeland. Fusako learns about life in Manchuria from Michiba’s wife, Etsu.
