Kazune Okada

Can we ever be freed from the "curse of love" that dictates "women must be pretty and fall in love"? A humorous and at times affecting chronicle of an artistic girl’s life and loves from elementary school, through university, into young adulthood.

A junior high school teacher named Sachie has been living alone. She is not respected by her students and also has trouble fitting into her workspace. One of her students, Hagiwara, has been winning one writing contest after another due to his eloquence. But, he starts to lose sight of himself after a transfer student from the city joins his class. Sachie, on the other hand has started attending a Japanese Taiko (drum) class offered at a nearby community center to get away from her empty life. Their frustrations collide at the school's festival.

I was heading to junior high school one day when my maternal instincts suddenly kicked in. After being held hostage to those urges for a decade, I started to wonder if this feeling was really about motherliness. Virgin birth, genes, pregnancy... I journey through 10 years in search of the maternal.