Under the Flag of the Rising Sun

"Under the Flag of the Rising Sun" or "Gunki hatameku motoni" is a film by Kinji Fukasaku, a Japanese director renown for his work in the crime and 'chambara' film genres. This film was made by the director amid a streak of Yakuza-oriented films and shares some of the same filming style characteristic of his other films, detailed and somber character portraits, sudden outbursts of intentionally ugly and clumsy violence, intimate romantic relationships which end tragically or abruptly, and protagonists who have trouble compromising their own moral integrity to fit in with changing social hierarchies.

The main protagonist of this film is a Japanese war widow attempting to find out the actual events behind her husband's disappearance from his military station in New Guinea. After the war, Sakie Togashi never received a pension for her husband's military service because Sergeant Togashi was apparently court-martialed, but no official details are disclosed to her by social services or government offices for twenty years after his disappearance. Feeling sorry for her, several social workers give her the names of four men from her husband's platoon who returned to Japan after the war.

The film mixes the present-day (1970s) settings and quest of Sakie Togashi with various flashbacks involving her husband and the company members on New Guinea. This is interspersed with old war footage and photographs from the Pacific Theater. The more chaotic or violent scenes are often filmed in the manner of many action films from the early 1970s, with chopped, slow-motion effects and caustic drawn-out sounds.

Under the Flag of the Rising Sun is reminiscent of other important films (Rashomon, Jacob's Ladder, The Deer Hunter, The Human Condition) about the aftereffects of 20th century war on the human psyche, family and social networks, and the common people who end up fighting for their country. There are some good quotes from some of the retired soldiers, such as "people from the bottom of the heap never rest in peace," implying that individuals who occupy the less influential rungs of society are constantly manipulated by those in positions of power. It is a unique film for a Japanese filmmaker, in a country rarely known to recant its actions during World War II.

There are three great war movies. This film is at the top of the list. You will not be able to get these images out of your thoughts. I would not categorize this film as anti-war; rather, I'd say it takes a realistic look at the battle/conflict it portrays and does not flinch at failing to romanticize any part of the story. You might see the narrator's story somewhat romantic, but the loss suffered here justifies the actions of the character. All in all a brilliant story of war like you have never seen it before. The story also examines bureaucratic Japan after the war – that's where the story really packs a punch.

There is beautiful scene involving a last meal that puts this writer/screen writer and this director at the top of my list. Great movie.

By the way, the other two great war movies are, "Battle of Algiers" and "Queimada."

I'm a fan of Fukasaku's gritty doomed gangster movies, and have come to expect a harrowing exposition of human frailty and self destruction, usually at a very personal level. However, this movie plays out on a much grander scale as it sets about exploring the nature of nationalism, militarism, obedience, subjective reality, repressed memory, and guilt. I'm hard pressed to think of a western movie that digs so deeply into the despair of war widows, or examines their feelings in such minute detail. Technically it's almost a documentary, but personalised by the heroine's relentless quest for the truth.

Far from being a glorious affair full of grand heroism and precision munitions, war is a filthy business conducted at the sharp end by people who have little or nothing to gain by it. At the blunt end, the politicians and generals eat well and live a life of whimsical luxury while their forces starve and die brutally in foul conditions. Odd that so few filmmakers choose to explore the madness that sends millions to their death for overweening greed, imperial insanity, or even a bare faced lie. The Blue Max, Dr. Strangelove, and Oh What a Lovely War, amongst others, have examined the glib lunacy inherent in the equation, but Fukasaku's movie is all the more poignant for its protagonist's middle aged ordinariness.

If someone tells you that Battle Royale is Fukasaku's finest hour, just ask them if they've seen this movie. It's not "easy" to watch, but it's educational and moving. Try it with rice instead of popcorn.

If Japanese war films are snubbed in the West, that's not done on any political grounds. The Japanese are not only the first to condemn the rigid militarism that brought them to the brink of complete destruction following WWII but the only ones to offer that condemnation against Emperor and Generals in such a scathing manner. If you won't find films like this or THE BATTLE OF OKINAWA mentioned in the same lists as their Vietnam-war American counterparts like APOCALYPSE NOW, it has to do with the same cultural reasons that keep Japanese (or French and Italian) crime films in the shadow while Scorsese, Tarantino and their cohorts reap all the glory.

And even when the spotlight falls on the individual, the lowly Japanese soldier haphazardly trained in a few weeks time and sent with meager provisions to conquer New Guinea, the Philippines, or Indonesia in the name of the 'Motherland', the focus is not on a heroic celebration of courage and valor because these men where not heroes and what courage they showed in the face of death was instilled in them by the fear of worse things like malaria and malnutrition or even worse, the fear of their superiors executing them for cowardice, but on grim endurance beyond all hope and glory with nothing else to look forward to but returning home to a wartorn devastated country. The chaos squalor and misery of postwar Japan Kinji Fukasaku knows firsthand. It's the place and time he grew up in and the memory of that misery would resurface regularly in his films as a bleak backdrop to the yakuza films through which he became known and for which he never received the acclaim he deserved.

This is the greatest success of UNDER THE FLAG OF THE RISING SUN. Not the narrative maze of the script carrying echoes of RASHOMON and even CITIZEN KANE that has the wife of an executed soldier trying to piece together the life and death of her husband in New Guinea through the memories of his surviving comrades and superiors. It's the hopelessness and savagery of men trying to survive like beasts in the jungle, this relived in a booming 1960's modern Japan by the survivors in the form of flashbacks, that sets apart films like this and Kon Ichikawa's FIRES IN THE PLAIN from their American counterparts. Major battle scenes and historic events are in the background, presented in Fukasaku's trademark quick montages using stock photos. It's the day-to-day tragic struggle for survival for which there is no glory to be had that pucks the real punch and it's enough of a punch to make you ignore the problematic script or poor handling of exposition. In the end, one of the survivors living in a garbage-strewn shantytown outside of Tokyo, bemoans not the misery and destruction of postwar Japan but its rapid economic growth that has no room for scarred veterans like him. Vietnam veterans of 30 years later would relate.

First of all I have to say that this film is really tough.

It's a bit like Rashômon. A widow wants to find out the truth about her husband being apparent executed in the Second World War by Japanese soldiers.

But the administration isn't ready to hand out the documents about his dead. So the woman (Hidari Sachiko) tries alone to find out what really happened, by questioning four survivors who knew her husband. And everybody tells a different story (that's why I compare it with Rashômon, although they are set in different sceneries) and they have different opinions about the dead husband. The end turns out to be more horrible than any of you hard-boiled-audition-viewers might expect. Sorry, just kidding. Kinji Fukasaku does its best to disturb the audience. Compared with Battle Royale, Gunki hatameku motoni is much more real and in its way not entertaining at all, what Battle Royale certainly was.

Now here its different. You see real WW2-documental shots mixed with directed scenes. So you never forget what the film is about: Reality. He uses the story of the woman to bring the horror of war to the audience in a rather psychological way. With wanting Hidari Sachiko to know what really happened to her husband, the audience learns a lot more about the terror which reigned the battlefields of New-Guinea. Burned-out, hungry troops, sadistic generals blinded by ultra-nationalism, massacre, torture and finally cannibalism, there's nothing better to expect. There isn't for the audience either.

The movie has no happy end. Its one of the most disturbing and pessimistic films ever made. Mixed with the documentary and the sad fate of the woman, this film is also a fable for the consequences of a war not so long ago. Which is not common in Japan, where it still remains a taboo. So the audience has learned something when the film ends. However, this is how I consider this film. It might be different for other people. My brother watching it with me, was stunned. But some people left the theater as well. I only recommend it to anybody who liked both "Paths of Glory" and "Bullet in the Head" or who is interested in Japanese History and its problems anyway.