Less than a tenth of Japan’s population live in the countryside, but the furusato (hometown) exerts a powerful draw. There’s a whole subgenre of Japanese cinema devoted to the rural areas that many urban residents have left behind: tales of honest folk and time-honored traditions, often aimed at an older audience and teeming with picturesque shots that could have been plucked from a tourism video.

Director Yoshinari Nishikori is an expert at this kind of thing. His films, many of them set in his native Shimane Prefecture, are odes to the old ways — and while they may be dewy-eyed, they’re not without merit. Like comfort food, sometimes stodgy fare can be satisfying too.

Originally set for release in April 2020, “The Takatsu River” has been stuck in limbo since the start of the pandemic, but this solidly wrought drama could have come out at any point during the past 30 years. It’s a well-worn story of a rural community in decline, though Nishikori offers a relatively upbeat spin on a narrative that usually gets framed only in negative terms.