Manami Tanaka

One of the best parts about being in a group of friends is that you usually have a couple of guardian angels watching over you. So, when Shinobu has to both write a script as well as make costumes for a play for the school festival, it doesn't take long for her classmates to realize that someone might have bitten off more than she can chew. Or write and sew, in this case. Fortunately for Shinobu's theatrical future, Alice, Yoko, and Aya are glad to pitch in, and that allows for a chance to reflect on their experiences in the days before Alice arrived. Will everything be finished in time, or will the audience be in stitches because of the ones coming apart onstage? There's no way to be sure until the last curtain call!

Japan, 1943, during World War II. Young Suzu leaves her village near Hiroshima to marry and live with her in-laws in Kure, a military harbor. Her creativity to overcome deprivation quickly makes her indispensable at home. Inhabited by an ancestral wisdom, Suzu impregnates the simple gestures of everyday life with poetry and beauty. The many hardships, the loss of loved ones, the frequent air raids of the enemy, nothing alters her enthusiasm…