Manzan benigaki : Kaminoyama kaki to hito to no yukikai = Red persimmons : a record of people living with persimmons
(DVD)

Originally released as a motion picture in 2001. Production began in 1984 and finished in 1998.

Production credits from subtitles.

Bonus features: documentary film "A visit to Ogawa Productions" (62 min. ; 2001); biographies of Shisuke Ogawa and Peng Xiaolian.

Photography, Tamura Masaki, Jong Lin ; editor, Peng Xiaolian ; music, Jomon Daiko Drum Group.

No further credits provided.

Using film footage and composition notes left by the late Ogawa Shinsuke, Chinese director Peng Xiaolian shot additional film and completed the work, which colorfully yet elegantly depicts the manufacturing process of the Kaminoyama red persimmon. The inhabitants of the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama explain that it is the perfect combination of earth, wind and rain that makes their village's persimmons superior to those grown anywhere else, including the village just a few miles away. Ogawa's larger subject, however, is to memorialize a very special part of Japanese culture and to share its beauty with us. It is a record of the ineluctable forces of modernization that are slowly bringing to an end Japan's traditional culture, the end of a centuries-old way of life.

DVD format, region 1, NTSC, fullscreen presentation.

In Japanese with English subtitles.