Based on a bestseller by Mari Ueza, Ryuichi Hiroki’s The Lightening Tree is Romeo and Juliet transposed to feudal-era Japan, with a Juliet (Yu Aoi) who is a free-spirited child of nature and a Romeo who is a mentally ill young lord (Masaki Okada) living in a gilded cage.
As he did in his previous film April Bride (Yome Ikkagetsu no Hanayome, 2009), Hiroki does wonders with a story that cries out for clichés, though this is his first attempt at period drama. He doesn’t subvert genre formula so much as insist on the humanity of his two principals in every scene, even when the story is trying to turn them into types.
And once again he gets a career-peak performance from his female lead, this time Yu Aoi. A popular actress/model with a “natural girl” image, Aoi throws herself into the role totally, with no trace of vanity.
The story: Narimichi (Okada), a young lord of the ruling Tokugawa clan, suffers from horrific nightmares, a symptom of spiritual malaise. Suffocated by his circumscribed life, he jumps at the suggestion of an earnest young retainer, Seta Sukejiro (Keisuke Koide), to see the tengu (long-nosed demon) guarding the mountains overlooking his native village of Seta.
The “tengu,” however is Rai (Aoi), a proud bold girl who lives with her father (Saburo Tokito) in a forest hut and protects the mountains from intruders. She wears a mask to scare them and shoots arrows to chase them. When Narimichi rides alone into her sights one fine day and she challenges him, he suddenly faints. She revives him and he later finds out that she is Sukejiro’s sister, Yu, kidnapped as a baby 20 years ago.
Rai returns to the village as Yu and takes a liking to Narimichi, whom she sees as an outsider like herself. They explore her mountains together — and fall in love. Marriage, however, is an impossibility because of their difference in rank. Can he give up everything to have her?
Japanese feudal society was like an elaborate dance, in which a wrong foot was possibly fatal. Unlike nearly every period drama heroine, Yu barely knows the dance exists; The only steps she knows or accepts are her own.
Her lord, however, can’t easily follow where she leads. His entire class, including his kindly old karo (chief retainer) (Akira Emoto), rises up to prevent him. What chance does love have?
This may make The Lightening Tree sound old-fashionedly dark, which it is not really. Aoi’s performance, with its energy and grit, keeps lighting up the screen.