Japanese medical melodramas set in the countryside typically follow an idealistic doctor’s struggles to win the trust of the locals who are suspicious of the newcomer’s newfangled ways. Such was the storyline of “Dr. Koto's Clinic,” a hit 2003 Fuji TV drama that generated two special programs and, 19 years later, a tear-jerking feature film that, for reasons best known to its international sales agents, is called “Dr. Coto’s Clinic 2022” in English.
By a kind of serendipity, the film features the same director, TV drama veteran Isamu Nakae, and much the same cast as the series, including Hidetaka Yoshioka as the title doctor and Kou Shibasaki as his understanding nurse and wife, Ayaka.
In the film, Kensuke Goto (Yoshioka) is getting on in years after two decades on the island of Shikina (a fictional version of Yonaguni, Okinawa Prefecture), while becoming a beloved figure among the islanders, whose numbers have been steadily dwindling. (He became “Dr. Coto” when island children made a flag for his clinic many years ago and misspelled his name.)