Sandakan hachiban shôkan: Bôkyô

I originally saw this film in 1975 when it was released and later on VHS...and for many years it was my favorite, bar none. Why? It combines the best that movies have to offer....visual grammar, incredibly moving, skillful performances, good directing and a powerful story of the relationship between a young modern Japanese woman and an older more traditional one, who tells of her experiences, being sold into prostitution at age 13, relating it (through flashbacks) to the younger woman. Those are the bare bones of the film...It doesn't begin to evoke the emotion and beauty of what human relationship can mean, as well as the heartless practices that society can inflict on its helpless inhabitants.

"Sandakan 8" is a very important film about a (mostly forgotten) shared history between Japan and Malaysia which is based on Tomoko Yamazaki's novel. Kei Kumai will remain an immortal filmmaker through the work he put into this film to portray the patriarchal exploitation. It makes you feel ashamed to be a human. From the beginning it is such a powerful and moving film, yet it is still a compulsive, involving, and utterly heart-wrenching. The screenplay is one of the best ever written: it captures the stories of the Sandakan brothels, the plight of the girls with so much amount of detail, and thus ensures that we don't easily forget what they were put through without distracting from the main story at hand. The film is graceful, breath-taking, and powerful and the parallels are enhanced by details.

One of the most powerful stories ever put on celluloid, mainly because it's based on fact. Needless to say, the end is bittersweet and rather perfect. And the whole troubling two hours getting there will leave you moved in the graveyard scene, for sure, but also enlightened. All in all, I applaud Kei Kumai for not exploiting the script for emotional reasons and cash in on the festival audience.

This is my first movie which made me weeping. The first time I watched it in cinema was in eighties last century, as a very young man, I maybe could not understand everything in the story,or the history, but I wept,could not help, when I had seen old Osaki crying with Keiko's towel in her hand. This scene has been stayed in my mind forever since that moment.From this film, I have understood that a movie could make you cry! More than twenty years after I watched it,now, as a forty-four years old man, when I had watched the DVD again, it still makes me cry! That is pain in your heart when you see the old woman, now I understand everything in the story, I understand that's the pain of life, pain of the fate. This is not only a movie,but a lesson which teaches us something about humanity, so emotionally. In my heart,Kinuyo Tanaka was the one of greatest actress in the world,I love her,because of "Sandakan No. 8 ",because of her skillful performance,because she has impressed me so much,so long time,because she also made me call her: mum!

Never overacted, yet powerfully moving. I've watched it many times, and it never loses its impact. No one I've watched it with have left unshaken. It's impact is in the same class as "Sophie's Choice"; can there be higher praise? If this movie can leave you unmoved, you have a heart of stone.

This was the movie I saw on my first adult date. I was so encompassed by the story and cinematography that I soon forgot I was reading subtitles.

While the story may seem slow at first once the depiction of another society so far removed in time and place from our own gives the viewer a new look on the what shaped the lifestyle of the Japanese culture

You cannot help but be swept up in the crisis of the time depicted.

We tend to forget the world was not always as it is today, especially for us jaded Americans.

Elwin