Summary
On the surface the film is a picaresque jaunt—two footsore Edo drifters, Yaji-san the quixotic tinkerer and Kita-san the sardonic ex-swordsman, reroute their pilgrimage toward the mist-veiled Dzenkoji temple after the road beneath their straw sandals turns to existential quicksand. Yet every bend in the trail mutates into a haiku of peril: a rope bridge dissolving into cedar-smoked abyss, a blind flute-player who trades riddles for moonlit curses, a village where laughter is taxed and sorrow is currency. The pair’s comic bickering—part marital, part metaphysical—echoes against frescoes of frostbitten monks, flea-ridden yakuza, and a fox spirit who shape-shifts into a mirror that reflects only the viewer’s future death. By the time the torii gate of Dzenkoji looms like a half-remembered poem, the journey has transfigured into a floating lantern of impermanence: the temple is never reached, only realized inside the creak of their travel packs, the sake-slick syllables of a shared song, the sudden hush when snow erases the map they never needed.
Synopsis
Yaji-san and Kita-san, tired of traveling, change their plans and go to the Dzenkoji temple, overcoming many obstacles in their path.
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