Pattenrai!! Minami no Shima no Mizu Monogatari

After suffering severe floods in 1753, the people of Senbon Matsubara in Shizuoka cooperate on flood prevention around the Kiso, Nagara, and Yuhi rivers. The people of Satsuma (Kumamoto Prefecture) endure great hardships after being forced to undertake the work by the central government, a subtle indication of the bad feeling that would foment into open rebellion the following century.

The earth shook. The sea roared. A far greater disaster followed. And then... There is a small house solitary standing by the seaside. A pigtail-braided girl is living there alone since that day. Mail is no longer delivered, but even this morning she's hanging out the laundry as usual. She's unaware that all around her, the clothes-pegs are quarreling, the pillow argues with the umbrella about the outside world, and the new toothbrush is unsuccessfully trying to be polite with the silent, old ones. Do things exist to be used until they are consumed or broken? Are they afraid of being thrown away once their life cycle is complete?

A worker is fired from a factory for demanding a wage increase. His mother, worn thin by poverty, is caught in her own spinning wheel. Then a strange storm buries the town in snow, freezing rich and poor alike. Another short film by Kihachiro Kawamoto

The story is set in 1955 in Kokuga, Hofu City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. One thousand years ago it was the site of the ancient capital, Suo no Kuni, and traces of the Heian Period (year 794-1185) are passed down to us in the form of ruins and historical place names. The protagonist is Shinko, a third grade elementary school student, who was born and raised in one of the town's venerable families. She is a little girl whose characteristic is a strange curl on her forehead (she calls it her "Mai Mai"), and her love for playing in the fields. On the other hand, her secret joy is to imagine and to daydream about the world of one thousand years ago. Her fantasies travel far into the days of the Heian Period… One day, a girl called Kiiko transfers from Tokyo and enters Shinko's class. This girl from the big city has difficulty feeling at home in this small town, but gradually her friendship with Shinko deepens. Before long, the two of them become engulfed in a strange incident of one thousand years earlier...?!