Even as a 70-year-old man myself, I found myself drawn to this film of a protagonist who is female. The reason is because it somewhat reminds me of my own Mother who passed away a few years ago at the age of 97. And somewhat similar to the boy in this film, my own Father passed away when I was 6 years old. So I had to be raised by a single Mother the same as Yukiko in this film. But the big difference is that my Mother was a Registered Nurse.
In comparison, Yukiko is a bar hostess yet still retains her virtuousness. The most striking resemblance I see between Yukiko and my own Mother is her admirable self-restraint, that is, not getting angry in situations that would cause others to lose their temper. Even when I did things wrong, my Mother never yelled at me, and yet I still learned the difference between right and wrong. So that character trait of self-restraint is what I learned and adopted to this day.
Yukiko taking responsibility and never blaming anyone else is a trait we see in the Japanese race as a whole. That's why Japan has the lowest murder rate. Compare that with the high murder rate here in the United States. Notice that the Mass-type shootings here in the states are the result of people who blame others for their misfortune. So we can learn from Yukiko whose character trait of forbearance is actually a reflection of the Japanese ethnicity as a whole.
