The story begins when the teenager Dong Yi discovers something he has never seen while playing hide and seek with his partner, and is stopped by his grandfather when he is fighting with his friends with it. Dong Yi, who returned home in the evening, found that what he found had been wiped clean by his grandfather. After asking Grandpa, he learned that it was originally a kerosene lamp, and then Grandpa told Dongyi a story about the past.

It was during the Civilized Meiji Era, when 13-year-old Minosuke was an orphan who lived in the stables of the mayor’s house and made a living by helping the villagers do casual work. The teenager is full of curiosity and vitality, and of course has a crush on the object. During a work trip, Minosuke travels to a town near the village and sees for the first time a kerosene lamp that is lit in the evening. The teenager was attracted by the brilliant lights and advanced civilization in front of him, and was determined to let the kerosene lamp illuminate his village. With a vision of the future, he impressed the kerosene lamp merchants in the city and used the money earned from part-time work to buy the first kerosene lamp. Things went well, and soon a kerosene lamp was hung in the village, and Nosuke became a kerosene lamp merchant as he wished, married his crush Koyuki, and had a pair of children, living a happy life.
But when he came to the town again, the dim kerosene lamp had been replaced by a more convenient and safe electric lamp, and the same ten thousand lights, this time made Nosuke feel deeply frightened. Soon, the village where Minosuke lives will also be electrified, and seeing that the light he has brought to the village will be replaced, Minosuke can’t help but be angry at the district chief who agrees to electrify the village, and he wants to ignite the district chief’s house in a hurry. However, in his haste, Minosuke did not find matches and only brought the original flint stones, and when complaining that the ancient and outdated flint stones could not be fired, Minosuke suddenly realized that the same was true of the kerosene lamp he had brought to the village.
Too obsessed with the light in front of him, but forgetting his original intention to bring light and convenience to the villagers, Minosuke realized his mistake. He and his wife took the kerosene lamp from the shop to the river. Minosuke hung up his beloved kerosene lamp and lit it, and the warm light illuminated the riverbank like a star.
“I actually forgot the most important thing, and I really didn’t come out.”
Society has improved, and what everyone likes has changed.
So, I want to… Find out more and more useful things!
That’s how my business ends! ”
Minosuke picked up a stone by the river and threw it at the flashing kerosene lamp on the other side… As the lights dimmed little by little, tears slid down the floor drop by drop, and the dream of letting the kerosene lamp illuminate the whole village was extinguished. However, the dream of finding something meaningful for the happiness of the villagers still shines in the night.
The kerosene lamps were not all smashed, but one was secretly hidden by Minosuke’s wife to commemorate her husband’s dreams and struggles, as well as the memories between her youth and Minosuke who pulled a car to buy kerosene lamps. It wasn’t until many years after his wife’s death that the kerosene lamp was inadvertently discovered by the hide-and-seek grandson…