A girl without a name at 16 goes on a journey without an obvious formulated reason: she does not seek something, but runs away from something, she does not understand what she wants to find - a typical wanderlust. On the way, the girl meets various vagrants: pilgrims - religious wanderers, wandering artists - earning money by theatrical performances. She looks at everyone and everything with her eyes wide open, tries everything, trying to find her own, what she will like. But nothing comes close.
The narration is often wedged by the author’s voiceover, the thoughts of the heroine herself, set out in her mother’s letters. According to the content of these letters, one can trace the evolution of the girl: at first there is a simple description of what is happening and emotions, very chaotic in essence, but in the end the essay gives way to the personal thoughts of the heroine and the conclusions to which she came.
Travel in the European tradition usually means the spiritual growth of the hero, to this is added the Eastern tradition that considers pilgrims, vagabonds, deliberately abandoned the ordinary life for the sake of the way not only revered people, but rather respected, i.e. not lumpenes, not outcasts, as in Western culture. The combination of these two facts sufficiently creates the intention of the film.
The age-old, we can say worn-out theme, acquires freshness from a new angle, in this case from the angle of culture and life of Japan in the 1970s. A modern young girl goes through the world’s old history of growing up, traveling finds herself in the entourage of Japanese villages, in the appearance of not at all from the 20th century.
