[Dear Summer Sister] seems far from distanciation, seems to rely on identification, seems to aspire to a straightforward continuity (conventional—'academic'—editing), seems to have a simple narrative thread, and so on. Yet the film is also, and this is part of its interest, against these things insofar as it takes them as the point of the demonstration politically of the contradictions of a particular social reality. (p. 43)

Dear Summer Sister itself turns on history lessons—the reality of Japan in its development as 'world power'—and a history lesson, that of Sunaoko, the little sister who arrives in Okinawa to find her brother and who ends on the beach ('Miss Prosecutor') by demanding ('for my education, tell me') to know the truth. Lesson and truth, however, are not simple at every step there are contradictions and the film 'blocks together' in a multiple heterogeneity…. The political comment...