Sonjo Sokora Shotengai (2014)

In 2000, Aoyama Makoto returns to the deserted shopping street in his hometown of Bungo Takada City in Oita Prefecture for the first time in 15 years. The death of his mother spurred him to resign from the event company he had worked at after graduating from a Tokyo university, and find another job at Bungo Takada City’s chamber of commerce. Although the city prospered due to its strategic position in Kunisaki Peninsula with the Rokugomanzan culture that fused Shinto and Buddhist philosophies still much in evidence, it had like many other provincial towns been forced into decline with the flow of people to Tokyo during the years of high economic growth. Pedestrian traffic vanished from the shopping street and it even became called an area “which only dogs and cats go past”. Makoto comes up with the ‘Showa no Machi’ plan to try to revitalise the shopping street. It is not to build any fancy public facilities in the hopes of attracting big factories but to make it into a place that recreates the Showa era. Makoto’s father Kozo, the third-generation owner of the small-time candy store ‘Aoyama Shoten’, is contemptuous but Makoto gets his first love and childhood friend Sakamoto Mina who is the daughter of the butcher ‘Niku no Sakamoto’, and the fellows of the shopping street involved. They gather items to remember that bygone era by, mobilise many people and begin activities to attract tourists. At that moment, an unexpected comment by Bungo Takada’s mayor Oda Sayuri causes ripples. Edit Translation

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