A movie set in Nagasaki that depicts the grief and guilt that can linger long after a disaster hit cinemas across Japan on July 13.
A movie set in Nagasaki that depicts the grief and guilt that can linger long after a disaster hit cinemas across Japan on July 13.
The film, “Bakushin: Nagasaki no Sora” (Ground zero: Under the Nagasaki sky), follows two modern women struggling to come to grips with the death of family members.
The movie is based on “Bakushin” (Ground zero), a collection of six short stories written by Akutagawa Prize-winning writer Yuichi Seirai, who serves as director of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. Seirai also received the Tanizaki Junichiro literary award and the Ito Sei literary prize for that collection.
The U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945 left more than 70,000 people dead and reduced the city to rubble.
“In addition to the atomic bombing, the martyrdom and other memories endemic to Nagasaki, the movie has a universal theme: mental recovery of humans,” Seirai said. “I hope people will watch the film remembering their friends and neighbors.”
A preview of the film was shown on June 24 at the Fukagawa Dairoku junior high school in Tokyo’s Koto Ward, one of the areas devastated in the March 1945 firebombing raids by the United States.
“We have attempted to uncover memories of the air raids and the atomic bombings (through our work),” Taro Hyugaji, the 47-year-old director of the film, told the audience. “I hope you will feel there is continuity between what you are now and what you were in the past.”
The protagonists of the movie, set in today’s Nagasaki, are a female university student played by Kii Kitano and a second-generation “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivor played by Izumi Inamori.
The two women feel “survivor guilt” and blame themselves for the deaths of loved ones. But the affections of their remaining family members help the two women gradually regain a zest for life.
Characteristics of Nagasaki, including long sloping roads and labyrinthine lanes, appear in the film. Also visible is the Urakami Cathedral, which was destroyed by the atomic bombing and later rebuilt.
“(When I read Seirai’s work) I felt memories endemic to Nagasaki, including those of the atomic bombing and the oppression of Christianity, are alive even today in people who live in the city,” Hyugaji said.
Hyugaji asked Seirai for permission to adapt his stories to the big screen after he visited Nagasaki in 2009.
The director has spent two and a half years making the movie on the theme of recovering from grief following the death of a family member.
During production, the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan, killing thousands and sparking the nuclear crisis that upended the lives of people in Fukushima Prefecture.
Hyugaji’s hometown of Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, was also hit hard by the disaster. Hyugaji said that when he saw parts of the prefectural capital inundated by the tsunami, he was reminded of images of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster prompted Hyugaji to think deeply about nuclear power.
Although the purpose of nuclear bombs is mass destruction while the purpose of nuclear power plants is to create energy for civilian use, both use the same technology.
Hyugaji said he wondered how to simultaneously depict the issues of nuclear weapons and nuclear plants.
“I think it is worthwhile for Japanese to consider the issue of Fukushima from the viewpoint of Nagasaki as well as to consider the problem of Nagasaki from the viewpoint of Fukushima after the March 11 disaster,” Hyugaji told the junior high school students who visited the preview.
Daisuke Saito, 15, the student council president of the Fukagawa Dairoku junior high school, said his grandfather experienced the Great Tokyo Air Raid.
“To pass down the experiences of the atomic bombings and air raids to posterity, I want to listen to related speeches and watch relevant movies,” the student said.