Does anyone know what amount of time had elapsed from Karichiro leaving his family until his death? Also, at the end, with the scenes in the street, there appeared to be electric lights? I thought it was supposed to be taking place in the 1870's? I loved the movie.
The past era of the story was the 1860s (end of old shogunate and samurai), and the "present" was 1899, when the doctor is moving away.
shareJapan's cities were lit with electricity by the late 1880s. The end of the movie, with Saito as an old man in the clinic, is set in 1899. The flashbacks are set in the mid-to-late 1860s when the Tokugawa shogunate was in decline.
"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor."
- Voltaire