This is a light goss over of the book!
This film is a nice try at filming a huge book, but in trying to cover it all it is forced to leave too much out. They would have done better to only cover part of the book and do that well. You need a background in Japanese culture to understand why things happen and what it means-- which feeds the plot and sub-plots in the book. The book does a much better job of giving you the background. Also the romance angle of the TV version is far too western, to the point of almost being a romance novel, and yes I know it was made for TV and that romance sells. Too bad, it is a great book, and could have been a great set of movies.