ひかりのおと 「Hikari no Oto」
Release Date: February 09th, 2013
Duration: 89 mins.
Director: Junichiro Yamasaki
Writer: Junichiro Yamasaki (Script),
Starring: Yoshitomo Fujihisa, Eri Mori, Takeshi Masago, Yoshiko Nakamoto, Junko Sato,
The Sound of Light is the story of a young farmer trying to reconcile his desires for freedom with the weight of family obligations. Through this archetypal story, it shows how the lives of people are enmeshed together by tradition and the land they live on.
The debut feature of writer and director Juichiro Yamasaki, he utilised his own experiences in farming to create a gentle but unsentimental view of a life dedicated to agriculture that feels genuine and humanistic as it never slips into didacticism even as it highlights various economic and social pressures present in rural areas of Japan.
Shot in Yamasaki’s home of Maniwa in Okayama Prefecture, the film takes place over a new year’s period as a group of people face a crossroads in life. For the Kariya family, rising costs mean that their dairy farm is in an economically precarious position. Eldest son Yusuke (Yoshitomo Fujihisa) has returned from a music career in Tokyo to take care of business in his injured father’s stead. Silently he gets on with his work but beneath his taciturn exterior bristles an increasingly sour man as he wrestles with the decision of whether to resume his dreams or inherit his responsibilities.
Which road he takes forms the direction of the story while also anchoring more stories based on the lives of others around him, many of which are also defined by family obligations. Amongst these lives is that of Yoko (Eri Mori), a widow that Yusuke is in love with. She must decide whether to remain single and stay in her deceased husband’s family so they can have a male heir or give up her son to her mother-in-law to carry on the relationship. The new year period brings back memories of the death of her husband, also a farmer, three year’s prior and she isn’t the only one mourning his passing.
At a lean 82 minutes, Yamasaki ventures into these subjects of farming and family with writerly grace through realistic dialogue, backstories that are cleverly interwoven into the present-tense narrative, and character parallels that show how well-realised characters are pulled around between their duty and their emotional and financial needs.
The presence of Yusuke’s sister Haruko, who has also returned from Tokyo but with a fiancé in tow, organically allows a contrast to form as their freedom shows Yusuke’s heavy responsibilities in stark relief. Just as natural is talk about tough summers and selling off cows, the price of feed going up and competition from cheap store-bought food which helps create the effective build-up of background for another farmer, Yoshiyuki, who hovers around the characters seemingly in a death spiral as debts and mismanagement have resulted in his farm going to wrack and ruin and we discover why he has let himself go.
Everyone is haunted by a phantom of someone missing or a dream unrealised, but the story convincingly locates the easing of bad feelings through family support and communitarianism. It is in forming connections with the people who remain behind and seeking their support that Yusuke and the other characters feel as if they can carry on find meaning and this is achingly shown through a moving finale as Yusuke manages to synthesise music and farming together.
It is a testament to how genuine it feels that a lot is brought up but everything wraps together smoothly and this is down to naturalistic acting and, again, the scripting which adroitly melds together issues and character arcs. The film even rises to the level of poetic beauty as symbolism bubbles up from backstories and the environment. The image of Yusuke’s guitar sitting forlornly propped up against dead speakers in a barn is a powerful reminder of what he has lost. Then there is the sublime sight of the mountains of Okayama as they go from green to a stunning snow-covered white as the frost sets in. Probably the most poignant sight comes surrounding the New Year’s sunrise as the sound of traffic from the nearby highway, which has impacted the Kariya family as far as prompting Yusuke to pursue music. The silence and the sight of the family together, after overcoming their differences is heartening as they listen to the sound of a New Year’s light together.
This film is part of the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022‘s Online Theater. Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022 takes place from March 10 to 22 in cinemas across the city.