Brief Explanation

A heartwarming and fantastical story of two cats diligently studying through correspondence learning, secretly and out of sight of their owner. An old lady lives alone with her two cats out in the countryside deep in the mountains. One day, correspondence learning materials are delivered to their house. The cats work on their studies whenever the old lady is out of the house, learning behavioral skills therapeutic to people, such as wagging their tails and giving massages, with the guidance of their correspondence learning textbooks. They work diligently to learn and improve their therapeutic skills. Their goal was to heal the pain of her loneliness since her husband passed away. This is a film that portrays the value of correspondence learning that produces results that brings happiness and new surprises to people through the knowledge attained unbeknownst to others.

The Brief

For the shooting location we used an old house in the mountains of Nagano prefecture famous for its beautiful natural landscape. We were able to capture the “beauty of Japan’s four seasons” on film by following the cats in their studies over the course of a year. For the spring, “cherry blossoms”, “nano hana(rape blossoms)”, “rainy season”, and “teru teru bozu(rain warding doll)”. For the summer, “cicadas singing”, “fans blowing”, “water melons”, for the autumn, “autumn leaves”, “dried persimmons”, for the winter, “snowy landscape”, “rain while the sun is out”, etc., motifs distinct to Japan were overlapped with scenes of the actor’s impressions. As a result, this artistic direction was able to bring out their acting to the maximum possible for this emotional story.