Storytellers

The third part of the Tohoku trilogy, following Sound of the Waves and Voices from the Waves. In their two previous films, the duo sought inspiration from the folk tales of the Tohoku region to convey the experience of the disaster. Here, three storytellers (Masako Ito, Ken Sasaki, Reiko Sato) and folklore researcher Kazuko Ono recount folk tales. Each storyteller in turn tells a folk tale full of rich dialectal tones: a story about a girl who marries a monkey who helps a farmer, but which finishes with a cruel ending, and a story about a girl who returns home wealthy by accidentally entering a mouse burrow. Meanwhile, Kazuko Ono, who is an active listener, explores the folk tales.