nihon box office news

[rgatto@club-internet.fr]

Dear Kinejapaners, 

Though I've lost the scratch of paper containing these few 
notes, I would like to report box office news in Japan. 
Some American films are doing strong right now, but two Japanese films are holding their own with bravura :
HOTARU by Kooki Yasuo, a story of kamikaze war reminiscences with Ken Takakura that probably brought a tear to everyone's eye. When my girlfriend told me the "hotaru scene", I couldn't help feeling very wet in the right eye myself. Basically, 
it's a scene in which Takakura's friend goes to war (a few days before the end of the kamikaze attacks) and says to his friend that should he not come back alive, 
he would come back as a hotaru, meaning a firefly (the film bears the same title as Naomi Kawase's Hotaru, which seems a little bit unfair, because Naomi Kawase's 
hasn't had the same distribution and might be forgotten in favour of Kooki's) 
And a few days later, of course, a hotaru flickers in front of Takakura's gaze. 
You can sob. HOTARU is Takanura's second "war reminiscence" film in recent years after Not Forgotten, which also dealt with a powerful Sokka Gakkai-like cult organization. 

The second Japanese film of the BO is MERDEKA, and I forgot about the director and cast. It's again a war story, with a Japanese soldier that goes to Indonesia 
after WWII and fights in the Independence War of Indonesia. From what I know, MERDEKA means Independence. Should anyone have more info on the two films, please 
chip in. 

Robin Gatto