男たちの大和/ Men of Yamato

(Movie Review)

Yet another movie which I watched because of Shoko. This movie was on Japanese TV last week. Shoko wanted to see it but mistook the day and missed it, so, being the good boyfriend that I am, I went out and rented it for her.

This movie generated a lot of controversy when it first came out a couple years ago. I remember following the story in the Japan Times. I’m not sure if it made the newspapers back home or not.

Yamato was a big Japanese battleship that was pride of the Japanese fleet. It was sunk by the American planes, but its past glory has since become a symbol for the militaristic Japanese right wing. It occasionally pops up in Japanese songs and cartoons. (In the late 70s, there was a popular Japanese anime series about the Yamato being resurrected and turned into a spaceship, for further adventures out in outer space.)

Naturally, when this film about the battleship Yamato came out, it received the usual condemnations from China, Korea, and the rest of Japan’s neighbors. The director replied that this movie was actually an anti-war film, but many people accused him of making a pro-war film disguised as an anti-war film.

In recent years, this is a charge that has been made against Japan more and more, both against its movies and against its war monuments. Certainly the US is also guilty of making a lot of pro-war films disguised as anti-war films (“Saving Private Ryan” comes to mind as a recent example), but it’s hard for a country like Japan, which got absolutely creamed in their last war, to truly make a pro-war film. For example, in a movie like “Saving Private Ryan” the message is: “War is Hell, but in the end it’s worth the sacrifice.” In a Japanese film the message is “War is hell, and then we still lost anyway.”

The best a Japanese film pro-war film can do is show their military as upstanding young men going out in a blaze of glory and making a heroic sacrifice for their country. Which is more or less what this film does.

There are parts of this film which definitely seem to be anti-war. There are other parts which struck me as glorifying the Japanese military. As this has been, and will continue to be a subject of debate, I don’t intend to put in the last word on whether this film is pro-war or anti-war. It seems to me to be a bit of a confused film, much like the current Japanese attitudes towards the actual history itself. Shoko and I kept a running debate during the film about whether this movie had a good message or not.

There are some very poignant moments in the film, such as when the 16 and 17 year old boys who sail on the Yamato are back home one last time to say good-bye to their families before they go off to die for their country. Shoko explained that everyone at the time had been educated that it was good to die for their country. This is a sad scene, although from an American perspective it never seems to get taken to its emotional conclusion. One is almost waiting for the soldier from “All Quiet on the Western Front” to emerge and make the speech that, “You still think it's beautiful and sweet to die for your country, don't you? We used to think you knew. The first bombardment taught us better. It's dirty and painful to die for your country. When it comes to dying for your country, it's better not to die at all. There are millions out there dying for their country, and what good is it?” But it never happens.

In a way though, this makes it all the more tragic. In “All Quiet on the Western Front” the viewer may get the emotional satisfaction of seeing the old patriotic teacher told off at the end, but the reality is that nobody actually came to warn these Japanese kids.

The closest the film gets is a scene in which a mother runs after her departing son and yells, “Don’t you dare die!” At this point Shoko was able to expand upon the significance of this part by saying that Japanese parents usually told their children, “Go out and die a good death for your country.” No one ever told their children, “Don’t die” before departing, and in fact during the war a parent could be arrested for saying such a thing. In that context, perhaps that one little sentence “Don’t die” does assume for the Japanese viewer something of the emotional significance of the speech made by the German soldier in “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

However at the same time the movie does seem to glorify the heroic way these clean cut upstanding young soldiers faced their death, went bravely off to battle even though they knew it was a suicide mission, and kept trying to shoot down American planes with their last dying breath. This is where the conflicted message of the movie seems to come in.

“Do you think Germany would ever make a film like this,” I asked Shoko, “glorifying the sacrifices the Nazis made for Germany.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to compare the Nazis with Japan,” Shoko said. “The Nazis did a lot of horrible things. The men on the Yamato were just trying to defend their homeland.”

“What about all the terrible things the Japanese army did in China and the Philippines?” I asked.

“Yes but the men on the Yamato weren't responsible for what other parts of the Japanese army did. No country is perfect. Everybody has some wartime atrocity if you dig deep enough. For example you are always talking about the bad things the American army did, and yet America makes a lot of films that glorify their army.”

“Yes,” I said, “but America also makes a lot of films that don’t glorify our army. Remember when we watched “Platoon” together? Even though that was an American movie, it still showed the American troops terrorizing the Vietnamese village people. And there are many other movies like this.”

[Probably not as many as there should be. And we Americans certainly have our memory holes as well. But still I always feel a bit proud when I watch movies like “Platoon”, “Casualties of War”, “Born on the 4th of July”, to a certain extent “Apocalypse Now”, and then compare it to the Japanese cinema.]

“I see a lot of Japanese movies that are anti-war because it shows the suffering of the Japanese people,” I continued. “I never see any Japanese films that say, ‘Our army did horrible things’. Or have I just been watching the wrong movies?”

“No,” Shoko said, “You’re right, we don’t make those kind of movies in Japan.”

“Well, why not?”

“How can I explain this to you?” Shoko said. “In America many people still believe war is a good and necessary thing, so you feel the need to make these strong anti-war movies as part of your dialogue with each other. In Japan we've learned from our mistakes, and we are now a pacifist country. 99.9 percent of the population is against war in all forms, so a lot of the messages in your American anti-war films are just assumed by the Japanese public. The Japanese government may be a bit stubborn about the textbooks or the Comfort Women issue, but the Japanese public knows that our army did horrible things in China and the Philippines, and for years we've looked down on our grandfathers and wondered how they could be so stupid and brainwashed. Recently films like this have reminded us that our grandfathers' generation did make a sacrifice for us, even if it was misguided, and we shouldn't think so poorly of them.”

So, that is the Japanese perspective for you I guess. Personally I am still waiting for the day when the Japanese film industry makes a film about what happened in China. And, while I’m dreaming, wouldn't it be wonderful if Hollywood made a film about the My Lai massacre instead of the next version of “Saving Private Ryan”?

Useless Wikipedia Fact
Cutie Honey (キューティーハニー, Kyūtī Hanī?) is a Japanese media franchise created by Go Nagai. Cutie Honey first appears on volume 41 of the 1973 edition of Shōnen Champion. The titular character of Honey is considered the prototype for the transforming magical girl.

Link of the Day
I've never seen the HBO TV series "Rome", but I thought this Washington Post article on it was pretty interesting.
Small correction--It was the second Triumvirate, not the 1st, which fought after Caesar's death. How does that get by the copy-editors of a major newspaper? Does no one know their history?

Yamoto: Movie Review (Scripted)