Luca lost her family in the Great East Japan Earthquake causing her not to be able to speak. However, her singing voice shakes the hearts of those who listen to her. It is a hymn of compassion played by Luca and the people.
The background to and depiction of a watershed battle in Japanese history, at Sekigahara in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu's Army of the East defeated the Army of the West of Ishida Mitsunari. The story includes the intrigues and shifting loyalties of the various retainers, family members, and samurai.
After a symphonic music career in Europe cut short by hearing loss, Ao (Oizumi Yo) returns home to run his family's farm in Hokkaido alongside younger brother Roku (Sometani Shota). Roku carries on the family legacy of wheat farming, but Ao becomes obsessed with starting a winery specializing in Pinot Noir. The brothers' troubled relationship is upset further when one day mysterious yet charming Erika (Ando Yuko) pitches camp in a neighboring field. A Drop of the Grapevine is the second of director Mishima Yukiko's Hokkaido Trilogy, an intended triptych that features the natural bounty and scenic landscapes of Japan's northern island.
Three apparently unrelated suicides occur on the same day in Tokyo. One involves a young athlete, one a groom at his wedding reception, and the third an elderly man celebrating his wife's birthday. A middle aged detective investigating one of the cases begins to suspect a connection between the three when he discovers that each person mentioned a "green monkey" before they died. With the help of a young psychiatrist he formulates the theory that hypnosis is somehow involved. In the mean time other bizarre "suicides" are reported and the mystery intensifies. Who will be next? What is the truth? Can more deaths be prevented?
