Synopsis
The Takahashi family moves from Tokyo to a small village in Iwate Prefecture when the father, Koichi (Yutaka Mizutani), is transferred. The new home he has chosen, thinking it perfect for them, turns out to be a 200 year-old farmhouse.
This sudden move to the countryside leaves his wife Fumiko (Narumi Yasuda), accustomed to life in Tokyo, anxious, unhappy, and unable to warm to her many elderly neighbors. To daughter Azumi (Ai Hashimoto), in her 2nd year of middle school, this traditional Japanese-style farmhouse is just some old building, and she doesn’t feel at home in the school into which she has transferred. While Koichi’s mother Sumiyo (Mitsuko Kusabue) has no objection to life in a small community, she is showing signs of dementia. Only Tomoya (Tatsuomi Hamada), the son in Grade 4, is happy with moving to the old house. He wants to play soccer but his mother, still concerned about the asthma from which he used to suffer, won’t let him. Koichi, aware something has gone wrong with his family and trying his best to pull it back together, cannot make headway against their various discontents. As if that was not enough, his new position involves sales, something he’s not used to doing.
Strange things begin to happen in the Takahashi house. Noises are heard from empty rooms, a cooking pot over the traditional farmhouse hearth begins to move of its own accord, the vacuum-cleaner keeps coming unplugged and, strangest of all, a little child in a kimono appears in mirrors when people look into them. The neighbors tell them this is a ‘house imp’, stories of which are common through this region of northeast Japan.
The Takahashi’s, it appears, have a housemate. Now what?