Okiku lives in a shabby tenement in Edo with her father, Genbei, a penniless ronin. Okiku supports her father by teaching children in a temple school. Two manure men, Yasuke and Chuji, regularly visit Okiku’s tenement to collect the human manure. Okiku seems to take a particular interest in Chuji.

Okiku and the World is a period movie filled with humor and satire, set in the Edo era. The main characters are two manure men, Chuji and Yasuke, who buy human manure in cities and sell it in the countryside. It might be acknowledged as an environmentally friendly business in the present day, but it was a lowly job in those hypocritical days. Although it was necessary work for both the city dwellers who needed to dispose of it and the farmers who used it as manure, manure people were belittled simply because they dealt with smelly waste. However, a daughter of a samurai, Okiku, lives in a tenement in a city and is fond of Chuji. The film portrays Japanese society in the late 19th century, when a gradual transformation was underway, and a love story beyond class differences. The underlying message is that feces produced after eating something is all the same, whether people are rich, poor, the nobility, or farmers. This film shows human excrement frequently and in great detail , making viewers realize the virtue of black-and-white footage. (MOON Seok)