In 1971, author and film scholar Donald Richie published a poetic travelogue about his explorations of the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea, recording his search for traces of a traditional way of life as well as his own journey of self-discovery. Twenty years later, filmmaker Lucille Carra undertook a parallel trip inspired by Richie’s by-then-classic book, capturing images of hushed beauty and meeting people who still carried on the fading customs that Richie had observed. Interspersed with surprising detours—a visit to a Frank Sinatra-loving monk, a leper colony, an ersatz temple of plywood and plaster—and woven together by Richie’s narration as well as a score by celebrated composer Toru Takemitsu, The Inland Sea is an eye-opening voyage and a profound meditation on what it means to be a foreigner.
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"I just wanted to see them. All of them. Those faces that I pass day by day on the bustling street. The ones I see in the alleys with a cigarette lined in their fingers. The ones with deep creases in their face like a landscape eroded over thousands of years encapsulated all in one being. It made me jealous. That they've seen infinitely more than I had, yet they kept it to themselves. Every time I greeted them, I hoped they would just give in and tell me everything I wanted to know. I suppose I could have just asked them, but that would be rude, wouldn't it? What if they were on their way to work or they were waiting for someone and this mere question could upset them for days upon end? Even though I saw them in those same chairs and on the same sidewalks they walked every morning, I thought it too difficult to ask them any simple question at all. I even thought a simple 'good morning'…