The Carefully Edited Song

The lives of an ordinary family in Okinawa are disrupted by belligerent warmongers in 2003's Song of the Canefields (さときび畑の歌). A somewhat formulaic but in the end emotionally effective piece of very late post-World War II propaganda, I watched this movie with an entire Japanese junior high school yesterday.

A well known comedic actor from Nara, Japan called Sanma Akashiya leads the ensemble cast as the family patriarch, Koichi Hirayama. He's a simple-hearted photographer from Osaka whom everyone adores.

He cautiously but, finally, affectionately accepts his eldest daughter's engagement to a handsome young man. But then war comes and the young man is drafted. It's a terrible and frightening disruption for everyone.

Hirayama's young son, Noburo, is played by an actor who would later become more famous, Ryo Katsuji. He's the only member of the family excited to join the war, and he advocates the cause with all the tenacious fervour of reckless youth. Otherwise, anyone in favour of the war is presented as alien, viewed barking slogans through classroom windows or screaming for subordinates to murder wounded American soldiers on the battlefield.

Meanwhile, the film goes out of its way to present Americans as sympathetic as possible for a group of people who are routinely bombing and shooting at the protagonists and their homes. In one crucial scene, Hirayama responds to his wife's impression of the enemy as brutal killers of women and children by wisely observing that the Americans, too, have wives and children and that their lives are probably much like their own. The worst acts in the film are perpetrated by pro-war Japanese soldiers.

Hirayama is presented as the true heart of Japan that never wanted war while strange and violent forces within the military ruined his life and the lives of other good Japanese citizens.

Obviously Japan was the aggressor in World War II and maybe a movie like this isn't a bad way to introduce Japanese junior high school students to the topic. My critical brain can't help dwelling on all the complexities the film ignores, though, and wondering if seeing a movie like this might not drive the hearts of many viewers in the opposite of the intended direction. This crafted narrative can look a lot like manipulative lies in a different light. Maybe that partly explains the existence of films like Ein no Zero (2013), which actually has a similar plot structure to Song of the Canefields but presents a more positive view of the Japanese military in World War II.

Song of the Canefields is available on YouTube.

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