A fictionalised documentary about the great Japanese poet Bashô (1644–1694), the spiritual father of haiku poetry. A monk, portraying the poet, journeys through Japan, following Bashô's journal and writing many of his haikus. A ruminant, poetic, Zen Buddhist observation of nature – a return to the lost paradise of unspoilt nature.
A former professor of German philosophy has lost his family due to a tragic accident and has since renounced the world. As a homeless man, he has been living in Osaka's notorious "Kamagasaki" district for four years and only speaks in quotes from famous German philosophers, which earned him the nickname "The German." One day he witnesses a blindfolded and bound young woman being pushed out of the car of a Yakuza boss in the middle of the homeless neighborhood. He saves her from imminent rape and takes her under his wing.
In his exploration of the cultural dynamic between East and West, Adolf Muschg, the most significant Swiss writer since Frisch and Dürrenmatt, searched for the other in himself in order to understand otherness.
