Suzuran (1999)★ 8.5/10

JP · 15 min · April 5, 1999 · 1 seasons

• Drama

Directed by: Natsuko Katsuta, Rintarō Mayuzumi, Yûsuke Noda, Mamoru Ohhashi, Yoshio Watanabe

Written by: Yûki Shimizu

Beginning in 1924, a time when both steam engine trains and early Showa Era's first train stations are just beginning. In the waiting room of Asumoe Station, a small country station, a passenger finds an abandoned baby and rushes to tell the station master, Tokiwa Jiro. The news quickly spreads and soon friends of Tokiwa's along with other townsfolk are saying that this baby must be a gift, it is Tokiwa's recently departed beloved wife reborn as a baby. Tokiwa believes this is as well and takes the infant girl home to raise as one of his own children. One day when the young 10 year-old Moe, who is named for the station where she was "born," happens to be looking at her mother's memorial tablet in the family Buddhist altar and discovers the inscribed date of her mother's death and that of her own birth do not match up-her "mother" died before she was born. This story of the search for identity and happiness, is set against the dynamic backdrop of the development of the Japanese railroad. Which essentially is the story of Japan's own economic and industrial development. Amidst the surge to industrial power are the hopes, dreams and lives that make up this human drama.