The End of Summer
for Megan – who is also growing up
Chapter One – Two Lovers
Opening theme music. Gentle and melancholic violins accompany an airborne view of a modern Japanese city which gradually travels out to some affluent suburbs set on a leafy hillside. The camera slowly zooms in on one particular building, a russet-brown painted wooden home in the Dutch barn style. Perched on the edge of the hill the side facing away from the street is of three stories, the lower two each having a balustraded balcony that commands stunning views towards the city. It is high summer, mid-July, the city dozes in the heat of a late afternoon, about 4:00pm. On the lower balcony of the house as we zoom in to the windows, a large and rather fat brownish-grey cat can be glimpsed dozing in a shady corner. The view zooms right in to…
The downstairs workshop of the house:
Mr. Nishi, the owner, a frail old gentleman with white hair and a bushy white moustache is teaching a violin making class of young people. Even in summer Mr. Nishi wears an old knitted woollen cap for warmth. Four or five students are present around a large table each with parts of a violin before them. Various reference books are scattered about. Most are boys but one girl is present.
Mr. Nishi: "It's important that the stringing is tensioned gradually. You cannot apply full tension to one string at first as that can apply stresses at one side of the bridge and damage the instrument. You must attach all strings loosely at first and then tension them to full taughtness initially over a period of several hours… " (his voice drones on).
Cut to:
A close up of one of the students, a good looking lean young man with a shock of unruly black hair and perceptive eyes. This is Seiji Amasawa. Mr. Nishi is his grandfather on his mothers side and this workshop is his second home, he seems to spend more time here than in his parents house.
Seiji seems to be concentrating on the lecture but as we see a close up of his face it seems his gaze is somewhat day-dreamy and his eyes are full of lazy pleasure. What or who can he be thinking about?
Cut to:
An exterior view of the library, an ugly 1960s concrete and brick building with steel window frames. Two women with babies in prams stand on the pavement at the foot of the library steps in conversation. We can't catch any words but we hear one of them laugh. It's a cheerful, summery sound. A blue delivery van drives by.
Cut to:
A view looking downward from near the ceiling of the main reading room of the library. Long tables and plastic chairs fill the room, with shelf upon shelf of books around the walls under the windows. There are not many people in the room. A young man has even gone to sleep at one table, his book open and forgotten in front of him. He's probably a high school student who needs to study but stayed up too late last night with his friends. The sunlight filters through high windows, the beams making a striped pattern on the tables and floor. Dust mites drift lazily in the sun beams. All is still and quiet. We see a thin scholarly looking man with glasses and a shiny bald head sitting at one of the tables. He is reading the paper but keeps looking over the top of it irritably because a scratching sound is disturbing him. Our view pans around to the source of his irritation. A girl is sat opposite him. She is about 15, slender and has brown hair cut quite short. Her dark eyes and pretty face are fixed in concentration and her pencil moves rapidly across the page, a steady flow of thoughts being transferred from her bright young mind onto the paper in a relentless but obviously pleasing rush. Around her are several books and various pieces of paper all filled with her neat writing. Her pencil scratches away and even the slight cough of irritated bald man trying to get her attention has no effect. In disgust bald man gets up, folds the paper under his arm and leaves. The girl is Shizuku Tsukishima, she's both passionately in love with her writing and with the boy in the workshop who is thinking about her at exactly this moment.
Something disturbs her and Shizuku looks up. Seiji is sat opposite her, not facing her but sat sideways in his chair, legs crossed, relaxed with a book in his hands. He often sits this way in a laid back manner. He is slightly transparent, not there, a dream. He looks up from his book at Shizuku and smiles. Shizuku smiles at the apparition which slowly fades… she returns to her writing, the slight smile still on her lips.
Cut to:
The outside of the library, a little later. Shizuku is sat to one side, half way up the steps, several books and a bundle of papers clasped on her knees. Seiji appears on his bicycle, and dismounts at the bottom of the steps.
Seiji: "Yo! And if it isn't Shizuku Tsukishima!"
Shizuku: "Hi, Seiji." (Shizuku gets up and comes down the steps, Seiji watches her, grinning.)
Seiji: "How was your day? D'ya get much done?"
Shizuku (enthusiastically): "Tons. It's going really well. I have to get a proper story plan in place though, it's just going off in all sorts of mad directions. It's got a life of its own. I think if I could put reins on all this there's enough here for about three books!" (she pats a part finished manuscript).
Shizuku reaches Seiji and they hug briefly.
Shizuku: "Mmm…. Missed you."
Seiji: "So, can I read it yet?"
Shizuku (affecting annoyance): "No way! You can't disturb a true artist part way through her work, this is serious stuff!" (Seiji sticks his tongue out at her and Shizuku makes a rude noise in return).
Shizuku: "And you? How did class go?"
Seiji (disenchanted): "Ah, you know, same old stuff. Sometimes all this theory work gets pretty dull."
They begin walking side by side down the hill, Seiji wheeling his bike beside him. Sunlight dapples through the trees making bright spots on their clothes. Ahead of them, down the hill between trees on one side and houses on the other, we see a small slice of cityscape. A train passes across this vista, made tiny by the distance.
Shizuku (supportive): "But you need to keep up with it, you need to know all the history and background as well as having a craftsman's skills….." (her voice fades).
The camera pans up through the trees to a summer sky almost painfully blue and apart from some haze on the horizon, totally cloudless. We can hear the low sonorous noise a distant city always makes. Two birds fly past low down in the shot and way up in the atmosphere we hear the distant buzz of a jet plane, just a faint hum it is so far up. A white contrail is drawn across the sky behind it.
