The Route 20 National Road

Hisashi was once a member of a motorcycle gang. Now he plays pachinko everyday with his live-in girlfriend, Junko. He has a habit of “huffing” paint thinner. His debts accumulate every day. Hisashi’s old friend from the gang, Ozawa is a loan shark. He persuades Hisashi to join his easy-money-making scheme, “Quit inhaling paint thinner and score big with me!” Hisashi’s dead-end life is made up of the same things that symbolize contemporary rural Japan: Karaoke clubs, pachinko parlors, ATM loan machines and discount outlets along a highway. In this ordinary place that is just like hundreds of other small towns in Japan, Hisashi sees the darkness. Darkness that is out of the reach of neon lights along the highway. In the vacuum of this darkness, life repeats itself endlessly. Hisashi has a flashback of a paint-thinner trip he once had. The hallucination tempts him to the other side. Tantalized, he asks himself, “Can I really go?