Oriental elegy: The first among the "Japanese" videos by Alexander Sokurov, where real people are represented in their normal conditions and surroundings. They are simple people, but not ordinary. Their originality lies in the special nature of their souls, where poetry and mythology mean more than the symbols of contemporary reality. A humble life: An unhurried and detailed report from an old solitary house, lost in the mountains, in the village of Aska (Nara Prefecture), Japan, where an old woman, Umeno Matsuyoshi, lives alone. Dolce: A form of documentary about a well-known Japanese writer, Toshio Shimao, who died in 1986, his widow and their daughter. It serves as a framework to underline the film's deep insight into the biographical narration. There is but one way to touch that world, to feel its exquisite flavour and its perverse pain - to do it as in a lyrical music piece, tenderly, dolce.