70 years ago, a man visits a quiet village named Koma. He accidentally saves a boy’s life and by way of thanks the boy’s father gives him a hanging scroll. Time passes, and now that man’s grandchild visits Koma in order to re-enact the passing of the hanging scroll…. Kawase Naomi explores the Korean-Japanese relationship and the inheritance of tradition as a result of the sympathy between the third generation of a Korean-Japanese man and a Japanese woman.

Among the mountains which surround Nara Basin, Mt. Miwa, the beautifully conical shape is its fame, has long been revered as the sacred area since the times of Kojiki and Nihonshoki (the oldest records of the ancient nation of Japan). Never being chopped with an ax because of its sacredness as people believed divine power in every tree and grass, there stands Mt. Miwa holding the rich grove of great trees. This is a short story set in a small village called Koma in which the grove of village shrine and terraced rice fields prevail, being watched by sacred Mt. Miwa. I had been gathering the threads of this story with her faith in Mt. Miwa and by the encounter with a scroll picture she found at Chofukuji Temple in Koma; a picture of a man who resembles the king of Goguryeo in ancient Korea.