Based on the novel by Tokyo-born Scottish writer Oswald Wynd and scripted by Christopher Hampton (A DANGEROUS METHOD), THE GINGER TREE finds Scottish girl Mary MacKenzie (Samantha Bond, ERIK THE VIKING) impulsively braving the trade route to 1903 Manchuria in 1903 to wed dashing military attache Richard Collingsworth (Adrian Rawlins, BREAKING THE WAVES). Mary soon becomes disillusioned with her marriage and Richard's coldness, however, and becomes charmed by Japanese attache Count Kentaro Kurihama (Daisuke Ryû, RAN). When Britain sides with the Russians against the Japanese, Richard travels to Port Arthur, leaving Mary alone in their home with no allowance and warnings that is not proper or safe for a lady to go about on her own, Mary starts secretly meeting Kentaro who has remained behind enemy lines as a spy. When Richard returns to find her pregnant, he intends to ship her back to Scotland but refuses to give her a divorce since he had arranged to receive £300 per year from Mary's mother for as long as the marriage lasts. Kentaro instead arranges for Mary to go to Tokyo where he has set up a house in an area that set aside for foreigners. She learns upon arriving from Kentaro's childhood friend, the suffragette Baroness Aiko Onnodera (Fumi Dan, HAUSU) that Kentaro is married with four children and that Mary is technically considered a concubine, as much an outcast as Aiko who is divorced because she is barren. Mary gives birth to a boy who she names Taro, but her happiness is short-lived when the baby is "reclaimed" by Kentaro to be a Yōshi, the adopted heir of a family without a son who will eventually marry the daughter. With neither the British embassy nor the local police to help her, Mary decides to follow Aiko's example and seek independence (rejecting the house and monthly allowance from Kentaro). She pitches her services as a fashion designer to department store owner Tsushima (Tetsurô Tanba, HARAKIRI) after discovering his western fashions twenty years out of date, and moves up in the company while using her spare time to search for her son. She continues to see Kentaro even though he will not reveal the whereabouts of her son. As the years pass and a second world war draws near, Mary choose to remain in Tokyo to be near in spirit to her son even as she loses hope of ever seeing him again. Joanna McCallum (HOPSCOTCH), Nicholas Farrell (CHARIOTS OF FIRE), Oliver Parker (HELLRAISER), Takashi Sasano (BRIGHT FUTURE), and Jean Badin (GENEALOGIES OF A CRIME) also star.