A World War II memorial to the unknown soldier located
in the grounds of Kyoto's Ryozen Kannon Temple
Nagasaki: Memories of My Son (Japan, 2015)
- Yoji Yamada, director
- Starring: Sayuri Yoshinaga, Kazunari Ninomiya, Haru Kuroki, Kenichi Kato
In 1982, I visited Japan for the very first time. Among the places I
went to on that trip are ones that I've re-visited, such as Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Fukuoka and the Aso Caldera. But I've yet to return to the Japanese city which may well have left the deepest impression of the trip on me: Nagasaki, one of the two cities in the country which will forever be associated with the atom bomb.
A
decade after my maiden visit to Japan, I viewed a film whose female
protagonist was an elderly resident of Nagasaki who had been in the area
when the atom bomb nicknamed 'Fat Man' was dropped over the city.
Akira Kurosawa's Rhapsody in August
is considered to be a minor work of the late Japanese cinema giant but I
was very moved by it all the same. And I expected to be similarly
affected when viewing another drama centering on a Nagasaki woman who
managed to survive the Second World War; this one made by an
octogenarian filmmaker -- many of whose other works (including What a Wonderful Family!, The Yellow Handkerchief (1977) and installments of the Tora-san series) I love -- and released in its native Japan 70 years after World War II came to a close.
Set closer to the end of the Second World War then Akira Kurosawa's 1991 film, Yoji Yamada's Nagasaki: Memories of My Son takes
place in a Japan now at peace but still struggling to rebuild shattered
lives (along with physically devastated cities), and facing hard
economic times. Living in a house in the hilly outskirts of the city,
Nobuko Fukuhara (Sayuri Yoshinaga) works as a midwife and is able to
come by hard-to-get items courtesy of a friendly black marketer (Kenichi
Kato). But she remains badly hurt psychologically by having lost close
family members, particularly her younger son Koji (Kazunari Ninomiya)
-- who effectively vanished into thin air, having been one of the
thousands incinerated by the blast of the atom bomb that was dropped on
Nagasaki.
The
apple of Nobuko's eye, Koji was studying to be a doctor and in love
with Machiko (Haru Kuroki) when tragedy struck. On the third
anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing, Nobuko tells the also still
grieving younger woman -- who treats Nobuko like she's her beloved
mother-in-law, regularly visiting her home and trying to make her life
more pleasant in various ways -- that it's time for them to let go of
Koji. That evening, Koji's ghost returns to visit his mother from "the
other side"; an event which Nobuko reacts to with far more happiness
than shock -- and definitely minus any horror!
From then on, much of Nagasaki: Memories of My Son
plays out like a two-handed theatrical work featuring lots of dialogue
and reminiscing. Koji comes and goes from the house (including once to
go watch a movie in a cinema!), and Nobuko continues responding to
requests for help to deliver babies into this post-atom bomb explosion
world. But the two get to spending a not significant amount of time
catching up as well as looking back; over the course of which strong
emotions get divulged, expressed and need to be wrestled with.
Still,
while much emotion is on show in the film -- and also a number of
scenes that look to be geared at getting viewers to reach for tissues or
handkerchiefs -- I actually ended up feeling more emotionally distanced
from what unfolded on screen than I had expected to be. Perhaps it
didn't help that there was a "stagey" quality to the proceedings.
Actually though, I reckon that the biggest problem I had with the film
was how much it took place in a veritable vacumn which not only
privileged the interactions between mother and son above all others but
also opted to exclude mention of any bloodshed and atrocities wreaked by
Japanese people in the days, months and years leading up to the bombing
of Nagasaki (and Hiroshima three days earlier).
Put
another way: Yes, the damage and devastation caused by the atom bombs
was absolutely awful, and it can seem rather ironic that one of the
targeted cities was Nagasaki -- with its significant Japanese Christian population and history,
never mind people (like Koji) who loved Western classical music and
such. But those weapons of mass destruction didn't just drop out of the
sky for no reason! And Yoji Yamada (born in 1931,
and consequently one of the few active filmmakers today who lived
through the Second World War) really would have done more of a service
to the film's audience -- local Japanese or otherwise -- and probably
also made the movie better by acknowledging that.
My rating for this film: 6.0
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