Unable to find a sense of belonging in the city, the heroine Baryon returned to her hometown Komori and lived a self-sufficient life of growing vegetables, chopping wood and cooking. In the film, Komori is located in the northeast of Japan, which accounts for almost a quarter of Japan's territory, mainly in Yichuan and Qianze areas of Iwate Prefecture. The film faithfully records a local scene and a painting.
Iwate Prefecture has 10 counties, 14 cities, 15 towns and 4 villages. It is said that in ancient Iwate Prefecture, there lived a group of evil spirits who specialized in evil and evil. The residents were very upset and had to turn to the gods for help. The gods who heard the residents' prayers finally put the evil spirits back after some fighting. In order to survive, the surrendered evil spirits swore to the gods that they would never set foot on the land of Iwate Prefecture again and left fingerprints on the rocks as evidence.
The economy of this area has always been dominated by agriculture, and there is a big river flowing northward through Sichuan in the rich northern basin. Through the construction of reservoirs, a large number of paddy fields have been developed and become one of the main rice producing areas in Japan. Legend is probably the evidence that the residents here rely on the gods and pray for a bumper harvest.
Among them, Aoyushan has a snowy climate in the sea of Japan in winter, with low temperature in mountainous areas, snowy winter and very sultry summer. As described in the movie, it is very humid in summer, so clothes can squeeze out water, but in winter, because of the heavy snow, you can only walk.
In reality, remote mountain villages in Yichuan District have no Wi-Fi or even 3G. This is a "place where cars, horses and mail are slow". Like most mountain villages in China, the brain drain of young people is very serious. The scenery here is beautiful, but it can't hide the disadvantages such as remoteness and poor information.
Children in cities read books in summer and snow in winter, and occasionally find cats and read letters. There are only a handful of people in the village who have direct communication with her, not more than ten people in total, such as grandma who came to see her, Mrs. You and her girlfriend who are all young people, uncle who cooks grilled fish, messenger, and workers who check power facilities.
Those homemade foods: radish, kimchi, radish noodle soup, salmon and cauliflower pasta, are called "Huahua", but most of them are light and tasteless. The Christmas cake made of Redmi and spinach is unique and looks a bit like the dark dishes in unknown so.
But it may be this closed and scarce environment that people are more willing to pursue the meaning and aesthetic realm of life in frugality and concentration. Compared with China people's pursuit of "how many lifetimes to live in one lifetime", locals may advocate "doing only one thing well in one lifetime". Farming, cooking and chopping wood, although daily, hard and boring, have become the focus of their lives. City residents need courage to adapt to this monotonous and repetitive life. Therefore, the city has been hesitant and entangled in settling in Komori.
"Little Forest" is adapted from Daisuke Igarashi's comic book "Komori Times". The original cartoon is a portrayal of his three-year life in Yichuan District, and the house of the heroine Shizi's hometown is the residence of Fifty Lan who lived in seclusion for three years. Speaking of why he lived in seclusion in a mountain village, he said:
Many brilliant life ideas were planted as early as the student days. The days of manual labor, drinking and creation gave birth to Youtai in the film. Mrs. You worked with the prince, who asked why Mrs. You returned to the countryside from the city. Didn't you study hard before you left? Mrs. You drove a minivan and casually replied, "I don't want to live the life of being killed by others and then spitting out the way to kill people." Perhaps what he wants to express is that the kind of life that can only rely on others to live without personal experience but likes to judge is not what he wants. This is probably the author's own projection. When studying at Tama University of Fine Arts, cartoonists did not often attend classes, but they were keen on walking. The university is in the suburbs, surrounded by forests. I recall my school days. At that time, cartoonists didn't like contact with people and tried to avoid contact with anyone, but they liked to "often walk in the forest, often get off at the tram stop on the way to school and wander there." More time is spent talking with nature aimlessly.
Shizi once lived such a life. A small plot is that children in the city have been trying to make vegetables that taste like their mothers. After repeated experiments, he found that his mother's trick was to carefully remove the roots. When he was a child, he missed this detail and complained that his mother was too lazy to cook vegetables.
When the mother ran away from home, the children in this city realized how much energy the complained person spent on a meal and a vegetable. "Nothing is difficult until it is finished." It was not until he began to prepare three meals a day that the city began to understand his mother. Those heavy manual labors not only connect workers with land and objects, but also convey people's feelings through the connection between people and objects.
Looking at "Little Forest", perhaps we are not only envious of the city's self-sufficiency and rural life, because we understand that the noise and pollution of the city cannot hide the fact that it is a highland of human civilization, and the country's self-satisfaction hides the risk of hardship and backwardness. But whether in the city or in the countryside, we are always eager to know ourselves and to establish a real and effective relationship with the people around us and the environment, and the city has been trying to do so. This is why Xiao Lin moved me.