Naruse’s first partnership with his longtime collaborator Takamine Hideko functions in part as an extended allegory for the director-actor relationship, a point accentuated by the title’s use of Takamine’s given name rather than her character name. Takamine plays Okoma, a charmingly fresh-faced ticket taker for a floundering public transit company operating in impoverished rural Japan. When a more popular bus line threatens the business’s survival, Okoma and her fellow driver, Sonoda (Fujiwara Kamatari), decide to turn their service into a sightseeing tour, enlisting the help of a respected scribe, Ikawa (Natsukawa Daijiro), to write a script to read to their passengers. This triggers a series of scenes in which Ikawa coaches Okoma on her diction when reading his emotive trivia about notable features in the landscape, and it’s easy to see Natsukawa as a surrogate for his director, stressing the nuances of communication and the magic of the everyday. – Carson Lund