Himeyuri no tô

A stark tale, an outstanding historical World War 2 based drama, a dedication inspired by true events. Tadashi Imai's exceptional film closely follows the plight of a large group of young female students the, "Lily Princesses Student Corps". and their teachers. These faithful civilians were recruited onto the front-lines, forming nursing units totally ill-equipped for the gruelling 3 month Battle of Okinawa. The hardships faced by these young women in a fearful and oppressive battle front atmosphere is sensitively portrayed, a truly heartbreaking human tragedy. The folly of war is explicit, the enemy are shown as merciless indiscriminate aggressors, equally the Japanese authority is implicit, challenged & continually brought into question. This is an incredibly powerful anti-war film, raw & gritty, Imai's creative multi layered filmmaking portrays scenes of harrowing, devastating, intense action, tempered occasionally with his masterful images of sublime beauty...

The Himeyuri Monument was built on April 7 1946 at Itoman City Okinawa, Dedicated to the memory of those students and teachers who died, it is a sombre reminder of the stupidity, the recklessness of war......

At the start of the Battle of Okinawa, a girl's school is hastily disbanded. The teachers and students find themselves in the battle as "the Lily Princesses Student Corps", working as nurses to the dying soldiers, under fire from American ships, and fleeing in shrinking groups of the starving, the crippled and the blinded, even as the military authorities boast of their inevitable victory.

It is said that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. How then, are a bunch of untrained girls to deal with the realities of a battle? The adventure and the glory of the Empire and Emperor die under withering fire, as the girls and their teachers struggle from one awful situation to the next; the only respites are the brief regroupings, when they discover their classmates are not all dead. They witness duty, honor, compassion die over the months of the battle, and stagger forward, supporting each other.

It's a grim, shocking movie from a novel by Yôko Mizuki. It's been remade twice. I can't imagine it's been improved on.

In the 1950s (in Japan at least), Tadashi Imai was the most honored Japanese film director, winning the coveted annual Kinema Junpo "Best Film" critics award five times. (As far as I know, only the legendary Yasujiro Ozu won it six times; Kurosawa won it only three times.) A Marxist, Imai made socially-conscious films with a strongly humanistic point-of-view, but in no way were his movies (or at least the ones I've seen) "propaganda." In fact, for me, he most strongly resembles the widely beloved Keisuke Kinoshita, with many of the same strengths and faults as that gentleman. Among his virtues are a very strong feeling for story and character and narrative drive, as well as solid pictorial craftsmanship (though this last admittedly is almost a given among Japanese film artists of the period). Among his shortcomings, like Kinoshita, are a tendency towards unrestrained sentimentality, and a related tendency to hammer moral points home.

Yet, American Japanese film scholars such as Donald Richie and Audie Bock denigrated him (though Richie did admire his 1958 period classic, Night Drum), and even in Japan he is nearly forgotten now. Yet the literary adaptation An Inlet of Muddy Water (1953), the muckraking Darkness at Noon (1956), Night Drum and this film are all first-rate, and highly recommended.

The tragic poignancy of this war film is that the main "warriors" are all schoolgirls and their teachers, requisitioned by the Japanese State to serve as nurses on the front lines with almost no training. Imai spares us no gruesome detail, including wartime operations (with almost no medical equipment or anesthetic), the constant and often futile search for food and water, children killed in bombings or trapped in avalanches, and the futile courage and self-sacrifice of the girls and most of their elders. Most importantly, this movie has the lovely young Kyoko Kagawa (who's still alive and working today at age 85!) as the leader of the girls. She has an outstanding scene near the end in which she performs a traditional dance on the night before a major battle, which the girls know that most of them will not survive. This antiwar classic is essential! (A version with subtitles is on YouTube under "Himeyuri.")

During the war, a school must ready themselves to fight against the US military during the invasion of Okinawa. Very dramatic to see how the students and teachers took on the challenge while knowing their eventual fate. Perhaps viewing this movie once is not enough to fully appreciate the depth.