Tears for You

Yota and Kaoru are stepsiblings. Yota's mother married Kaoru's jazz-playing father and the two families joined. Then the man walked out and the woman died; before she died she asked her son to look after Kaoru. Years later the two of them come together again in Okinawa. Yota is working, Kaoru is studying, and what is between them is no longer being siblings. Nobuhiro Doi's film takes its title from a well known song of Okinawan origin; the title means roughly "the tears keep falling". Both the song and the film were very popular in Japan. Satoshi Tsumabuki and Masami Nagasawa take the leads. The telling does not build the relationship as a scandal; it goes through the sense each of them has of owing the other.