
The time was the first year of Keio (1865). Upon hearing the news that the Imperial Army was approaching Hida Takayama, the district head Shimizu Uzen fled to Edo. Local officials like Yoshida Bunsuke and Yoshizumi Hironoshin showed their allegiance by welcoming them. The commander at the time, Umemura Hayami, was a former member of the Tengu Party and had previously been pursued in the town. He took refuge in a restaurant named Kabuya, and owing to a tip-off from a woman named Oraku, he was almost captured for her lover, Yoshizumi. Oraku and Yoshizumi probably feared revenge from that previous encounter, but Umemura had come back to Hida because he couldn't forget Oraku.
Jouka is a Japanese movie of 18,951 characters, with 2,088 unique words and 880 different kanji. Its difficulty rating on Jiten is expert, 4.2 out of 5. The full vocabulary list ranks all 2,088 words by how often they appear, and you can study them on Jiten or download them as an Anki deck.
Here are some of the words that appear most often in this media, as well as a sample of its rarer vocabulary.