Biopics are a Hollywood staple, though poets don't usually get a lot of play, with the Beats (Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and company) among the prominent exceptions. The same is true in Japan: Notorious criminals are more likely to be the subjects of biopics here than famous wordsmiths.

So Kiyoshi Sasabe's "Konomichi," a decades-spanning celebration of early 20th century poet Hakushu Kitahara, is something of an outlier. But as lyricist to composer Kosaku Yamada, Kitahara is responsible for some of the best-known Japanese children's songs of the past century, including the title tune. Rare is the Japanese who has neither heard nor sung it.

Also, the film itself is squarely in the genre's local mainstream in being more of an earnest hagiography than an expose, though it is faithful to the outlines of its subject's life, from the scandalous extramarital affair that landed him in jail to the alcoholism that finally killed him.