[KineJapan] Fw: 'Eternnal Zero' wins audience prize at Udine

Fri May 16 05:57:01 EDT 2014

Hello,

I'm only just picking up on this thread. I haven't watched the movie yet
but have heard much about it from my Japanese friends. Based on Mark's
summary it does sound more nuanced than I initially assumed, and resonates
with research conducted by Prof Emily Tierney-Ohnuki on war diaries of the
Tokkotai pilots. Based on her research, yes, these young men did not want
to die, yet were drawn (or co-erced) to their missions out of some greater,
intangible notion of duty to their country.

If anyone's interested, I wrote a review of her book, many years ago:
http://www.economist.com/node/7138833

Wei Ting

On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 11:34 AM, Pete Larson <pslarson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm typing this on a phone so this will be short but I'm also quite
> fascinated that the film has gotten so much attention.
>
> Discussing the film with folks on the street has exposed two distinct
> camps. One seems to find film objectionable, taking great issue with the
> right wing sanitation of a complicated history, ostensibly to serve current
> political ends.
>
> The other seems to deny that the film is right wing at all, insisting that
> it's merely a good story about people who became enmeshed in a conflict
> which they couldn't do much about. The latter view us much more interesting
> and I even began to wonder if they we're watching a different film
> entirely, given the obvious conservative nature of the film.
>
> iPhoneから送信
>
> 2014/05/06 8:24、Roger Macy <macyroger at yahoo.co.uk> のメッセージ:
>
> Thanks, Mark,
> I should have added that Mark Schilling, besides one page of A4 on the
> film, has a two-page piece in the catalogue, 'More than a Zero: A
> Conversation with Yamazaki Takashi', in which he airs the problems around
> Hyakuta, including his denial of the Nanjing massacre.
> My speculation around an "Italian dimension to the reception" was not
> about possible walk-on Italians but about a similar vicarious appeal to the
> one you suggest of "retroactive pride" of Japanese viewers.  If the
> audience in New York this year could groan at the end of 'The War at Sea in
> Hawaii' (the film shown there, contrary to the billing, ended at Pearl
> Harbor), over 70 years after the event, then a spectrum is possible of
> other vicarious reactions.
> Roger
>
> ------------------------------
>  *From:* Mark Roberts <mroberts37 at mail-central.com>
> *To:* Roger Macy <macyroger at yahoo.co.uk>; Japanese Cinema Discussion
> Forum <kinejapan at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
> *Sent:* Monday, 5 May 2014, 22:34
> *Subject:* Re: [KineJapan] 'Eternnal Zero' wins audience prize at Udine
>
> Roger,
>
> I saw the non-porridge-smeared theatrical version of *Eien no zero*, and
> didn't notice any overt Italian angle (that would be the meeting with
> Caproni in *Kaze tachinu*, I suppose). Having yet to attend Udine, I
> can't speak to the festival audience there and why they might have given
> the prize to this film, but it has been somewhat puzzling to me how *Eien
> no zero* managed to become the largest-grossing Japanese film in a
> decade, remaining at the top of the domestic box office for two months.
>
> It is a competent production, yes, but at some level there's nothing
> terribly remarkable about the film. Cinematically, it's nothing special:
> polished, but like a TV dorama with a very big budget. A balance is struck
> between the depiction of human relationships and the spectacle of the war
> sequences. Yes, it's got some young heart-throb talent (e.g., Okada
> Jun'ichi) and is very sentimental in tone, but I suspect it must resonate
> at other levels too.
>
> Without saying too much about the plot, *Eien no zero* is very
> self-consciously a kind of "alternate history" of the tokkotai. It sets out
> a puzzle, at face value about the characters' family history — the "real"
> grandfather that nobody talks about was a kamikaze pilot — but of course
> this is also a puzzle about Japanese history. The mystery around the pilot
> Miyabe is that he wanted to survive the war, and nobody quite grasps this
> seeming contradiction. How could a kamikaze pilot be so attached to life
> and yet ultimately willing to die? This question drives the story forward.
> The perspective of the tokkotai is shown, and clearly distinguished from
> that of the military command. The capabilities of the Zero aircraft are
> explained (this for the audience to have "historical context" but evidently
> also to feel retroactively proud of the technological achievement). Pearl
> Harbor and the invasion of Rabaul are shown, as are the pilots on the
> aircraft carrier Akagi.
>
> Through both these sequences and the contemporary parts of the film, the
> objections to the kamikaze in the popular memory are offered as story
> points, which the alternative history then "explains". The pilots are shown
> to be young men who are unwittingly trained for suicide missions, but then
> asked to "volunteer" for the actual duty. They are explicitly distinguished
> from "terrorists" (because they target warships, not civilians), and with
> this, they are likewise distinguished from "brainwashed nationalists". I
> haven't read any reviews of the film or attempts to decode the
> crypto-nationalism of *Eien no zero*, though at moments it's pretty
> transparent. The film itself even acknowledges an obvious reading: when the
> young Kentaro — a NEET who has failed repeatedly at the bar exam — becomes
> interested in the family history and pontificates for a "correct"
> understanding of the tokkotai, one of the minor characters snarks that he
> has turned to Japanese history to get through a personal identity crisis.
> In this fashion, the film recuperates a critique of neo-nationalism, even
> putting it directly into the film's dialog.
>
> The explanation that is given for Miyabe's will to survive the war — and
> one of the big claims of the film — is bound up with the idea that love of
> family is ultimately more important than loyalty to the kokutai. This is
> the deeper significance of "eien", which is thus an idea about love, a love
> that continues beyond death. I suspect this also in part explains the
> domestic success of the film, because it directly addresses women and
> mothers in the audience (in addition to NEETs, of course). It might sound a
> bit flip to say this is an anti-war war film for oba-sans, but perhaps not
> entirely wrong.
>
> In February of this year, Hyakuta Naoki, the author of the gensaku,
> provoked some outrage by publicly denying the Nanjing Massacre, even saying
> that it was a fabrication to avert attention from American war crimes.
> This, after he had been hand-picked by PM Abe Shinzo for the board of
> governors at NHK. Speaking to journalists, he claimed: “I have the freedom
> of ideology and beliefs,” to explain that his personal opinions about the
> history of the war do not pose a conflict of interest with his
> responsibilities to the Broadcast law while serving at NHK, which I suppose
> is kind of like Abe himself saying that his personal choice to pay tribute
> at Yasukuni does not pose any conflict with his responsibilities as PM.
>
> Upshot: I am still somewhat puzzled by the success of this film.
>
> M.
>
> On May 6, 2014, at 2:30 AM, Roger Macy wrote:
>
> Dear KineJapaners,
> I see that 'The Eternal Zero' won the audience prize at Udine this year.
>
> http://www.fareastfilm.com/EasyNe2/LYT.aspx?Code=FEFJ&IDLYT=13308&ST=SQL&SQL=ID_Documento=4397
> I can't add more as it was the only Japanese film there I didn't see.
> That wasn't my deliberate choice - it clashed against a round table for
> 'Cinema Impact' and then, went I went to view it in the media room, the
> digital screener from Toho looked as if it was smeared with porridge (it
> was only Toho's that were like that).  I couldn't see the point in seeing
> an action spectacular under such conditions.  But, in retrospect, I would
> have liked to understand if there was an Italian dimension to this
> war-film's reception.
> Roger
>
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