Akira Emoto

Why does one need a ferryman? One needs a ferryman where there is a body of water and a bridge does not exist. The village high in the hills has a ferryman, but a bridge is in the works. The poor peasant is about to become even more poor. The people, livestock and goods won't need his services much longer. His life also takes an abrupt turn another way. He meets a girl on a day when everything was supposed to go like any other day.

In a tense war-torn climate, on the eve of the Japanese surrender in 1945, Doctor Akagi, the local doctor of a seaside village on one of Japan's islands, takes a stand to save his professional integrity. He is concerned by the growing number of people coming down with hepatitis the main cause of death in an undernourished country. He bands together with his old buddies, a dissolute monk and a nihilistic morphine-addicted surgeon. They're all on the...