Although Jirou Horikoshi's nearsightedness prevents him from ever becoming a pilot, he leaves his hometown to study aeronautical engineering at Tokyo Imperial University for one simple purpose: to design and build planes just like his hero, Italian aircraft pioneer Giovanni Battista Caproni. His arrival in the capital coincides with the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, during which he saves a maid serving the family of a young girl named Naoko Satomi; this disastrous event marks the beginning of over two decades of social unrest and malaise leading up to Japan's eventual surrender in World War II.


[Official Website ](http://www.otake-shinobu.com/)

Shinobu Otake is a Japanese actress. She has won three Japanese Academy Awards: the 2000 Best Actress award for Railroad Man, and the 1979 awards for both Best Actress (The Incident) and Best Supporting Actress (Seishoku no ishibumi). She also won the award for best actress at the 12th Hochi Film Award for Eien no 1/2. At the 25th Moscow International Film Festival she won the award for Best Actress for her role in Owl. She has received a total of 12 nominations.

She was the favoured lead actress of director Kaneto Shindo after his previous lead actress, Nobuko Otowa, died in 1994, and featured in several of his films from A Last Note in 1995 to Postcard in 2011.

Kurokawa-fujin