Rikugun

Yes it was a propaganda film but it showed the people as humans and not monsters. The director did a wonderful job and the actors also did well. The propaganda was subtle but still there and allowed the film to pass the censors. What was disconcerting was the disregard for the truth. The headlines of China attacking the Japanese at Shanghai and Japan as the victim. Even though the people were portrayed as human I kept thinking how could they commit Pearl Harbor, Singapore, Philippines, Rape of Nanking, Bataan Death March, the railroad like the movie Bridge over the River Quai, and attacking China in the 1930's. In the movie the soldiers and their families were happy to die for the Emperor and I feel no remorse that we were able to accommodate them. My mother, father, and wife's family were all in WWII and had the acquaintance of the Japanese.

The Japanese film "Rikugun" (The Army) was produced by the Japanese army during the World War II. As a propaganda film, this film must have been pro-army, pro-war. However, a young director Keisuke Kinoshita tried to include an anti-war message in the film despite of censorship. The mother (played by Kinuyo Tanaka) was trying to find his son in army marching in the last scene. It lasts 7, 8 minutes and the film ends with her close-up. The scene is overwhelming. The film was not appreciated by the army and Kinoshita could not direct the next film at the time. He directed the next film after WWII. The films is not great, but very important. Recently, "Dawn of a Filmmaker: The Keisuke Kinoshita Story" was released in Japan. We see how he comes back to direct films. We also see the last scene of "Rikugun" in this biographic film.

I was particularly moved by this film. Although I lived in Japan off and on for much of my adult life, I have had few chances to see anything of the wartime mentality of the Japanese, as this part of recent history has been forgotten or just revised. As one friend of mine once put it, wartime Japan was like North Korea today. People subjugated their own lives as well as the lives of their own children for their country and for the emperor, and found meaning in their lives by doing so. This is shown full face in this film. It is a closed view of the world, amplified by the belief that foreign powers are trying to destroy you and that only your own resilience and the grace of a god-like ruler provide a way forward. To watch these sincere young men being fed into this war machine and knowing the destruction they would wreak, as well as the devastation they would themselves suffer is hard to watch. Many of the generation that followed despised the emperor and everything he stood for, something I often heard expressed by my college host family and by my university professor who refused to stand for the Japan national anthem. There is also a strong strain of nationalism that still views Japan as a victim, and you can see some of the history of this as well.

It is also a rather odd film. Sponsored by the Japanese military at the time, it nevertheless feels like an anti-war film. The patriotism and the fervor expressed throughout the film always appear somewhat foolish, and the fealty to the emperor somewhat rote. The final scene (apparently censored by the military) is simply devastating in the way it shows a mother's emotions and fear trying to come to grips with the pride she is supposed to feel at her son marching off to war.

"Army" is fascinating in its historical context, poignant in its human emotions, and thoughtful in how it threads such a fine line between expressions of patriotism and individuality.

After nearly twenty years, this movie still haunts me. I remember only a few flickering black and white scenes, but wow, to this day, tears well up in my eyes when I think about it.

I saw it as a historical curiosity, having no expectations for it as a cinematic experience. It is a propaganda film with lots of stilted "party line" dialogue the audience laughed over, myself included.

Little did I suspect that the last 5 minutes of this "joke" of a movie would leave me drained and in tears. The actress who played the mother(Sugimura Haruko, I salute you) reached across time and space and pulled me into the private and secret world of her character. And it was a place I had never been before. What more can you expect of a movie?

To put this kind of ending on a movie called "Army" in 1944 took a lot of courage and decency. Thank you, Kinoshita Keisuke.

If the opportunity comes your way to see this movie, I urge you to see it.

Like any military-themed movie made during WWII, it is HEAVY in propaganda and blatant misinformation. And, yes, America made this crap, too (I'm looking at YOU, Howard Hawks, with AIR FORCE).

It is the story of what we might call a dysfunctional father, today, and his fanatical devotion to the Emperor - truly cringy, especially as it rings true and relevant, today. One reviewer called it "subtle and nuanced," but, one is hit with the same lines, over and over again - basically, it's as subtle as Three Stooges' slapstick.

This is a MUST for Students of WWII, Japanese History or film interested in this director or genre, but, other than that, save your 87 minutes...