A drunk monk guards a cherry tree like it's the last sacred thing on earth, and somehow that absurd commitment becomes the entire moral weight of the film. The samurai and his servant aren't villains, they're just hungry, just thirsty, just human, which makes the acolyte's choice between duty and desire genuinely painful instead of preachy. Kawamoto's puppets move with the restraint of Zen painting, turning a one-sentence premise into a perfect fable about what we protect and why we break.

A young acolyte is given one task by the head monk: guard the cherry tree blooming in the monastery garden while his superior is away. The older monk has not reckoned with how much his pupil loves sake. A samurai and his servant arrive planning a picnic feast beneath the flowering branches. The acolyte turns them away at first, but once he catches the smell of their sake, his resolve faces a real test. Made in 1968, Kawamoto's first puppet film is a comic moral tale in which a disciple pays fairly for a brief lapse.