Kûhaku (2021)

Mitsuru Soeda, a fisherman in Gamagori, is disliked by those around him for his self-righteous nature and rough way of speaking. He is divorced and lives alone with his daughter, Kanon, but he resents the fact that she seems to be seeing her mother, Shoko. One day, on her way home from school, Kanon is in the cosmetics section of a supermarket. Just as she reaches for some nail polish, the store manager, Aoyagi, mistakes her for a shoplifter, grabs her by the hand, and tries to take her to the office. Kanon runs away, and Aoyagi chases after her. She darts into the road, is hit by a car, and is then dragged by a truck. At the morgue, Soeda breaks down in tears when he sees Kanon’s badly damaged body. After that, he begins relentlessly attacking Aoyagi. Aoyagi is deeply shaken by the accident and keeps apologizing, but Soeda’s anger only grows. He insists that his daughter would never shoplift and suggests that Aoyagi may have had ulterior, predatory motives. The conflict is picked up by television, and reporters begin hounding them. Soeda’s abusive language makes him seem crude, while Aoyagi is branded as though he were a pervert, and the coverage fuels their conflict. Online, people begin vilifying both men, and the supermarket is forced to close temporarily. Soeda also storms into Kanon’s school and refuses to back down, demanding an investigation because, even if she had shoplifted, there must have been bullying behind it. Meanwhile, Kaede, the woman who hit Kanon and became the driver in what could be called a tragic accident, keeps apologizing to Soeda, but he continues to ignore her. As a result, she takes her own life. The supermarket is eventually forced to shut down, and Aoyagi, driven to despair, attempts suicide. A staff member happens to find him and saves him, so the attempt is unsuccessful. In time, Soeda begins painting with Kanon’s art supplies and reading the manga she used to read, wanting to learn more about his daughter. Just then, he finds several bottles of nail polish in her room and quietly throws them away in a park. He visits Aoyagi, who has become a road-construction traffic guard, and indirectly conveys his apology. A drawing Kanon made is eventually returned to Soeda by the school. It shows a cloud shaped like a dolphin, much like the clumsy picture Soeda himself had drawn. With thoughts of his daughter, who will never return, he tears up.