Movie “Nanjing! Nanjing!”

This film essentially portrays a Japanese soldier, “Kadokawa,” as the main character. To put it bluntly, the concept of this film is that there were “conscience” soldiers in the Japanese army. The Japanese soldiers other than Kadokawa are not portrayed only as “evil” too. The soldiers who committed atrocities are also portrayed as simple and humane young men. That is probably what they were. A soldier who can skewer a baby without a second thought sheds tears at the “death” of his comrade. That is the strange reality of war.

What is important is that this film was shot by a Chinese director, Lu Chuan. If a Japanese director had made a film about the theme of “there were conscience Japanese soldiers,” it could have become an “exoneration” of his own people. The value of this film lies in the fact that a Chinese director portrays the inner world of the Japanese. Of course, we should not jump to the conclusion that this is a “pardon or exoneration” of the Japanese by the Chinese. I can’t really put it into words, but I think it’s something that could be called “kindness.”

Personally, the scene that made me cry in this movie was the following.

Kadokawa goes to a “comfort station” and has sex with a woman for the first time in his life. The comfort woman is called Yuriko. The following year, Kadokawa visits Yuriko again with a New Year’s comfort bag, but she has already fallen ill. Yuriko is innocently happy with the gift Kadokawa has brought her. Kadokawa and she make a promise to each other again. After that, Kadokawa sees Yuriko at the comfort station again, but her illness has already reached the terminal stage. Despite Kadokawa’s hesitation to touch her, a young soldier rapes Yuriko in front of him. One day, when Kadokawa visits a comfort station, a pimp tells him that Yuriko has died. Kadokawa says, “Yuriko was my wife.” It is a heartbreaking and heartbreaking scene. There is also a scene in which the Japanese military commander “hunts” Chinese women living in the “safety zone” to become comfort women. It depicts how civilian women and girls were forced to become comfort women under the pretext of “cleaning discipline” and “preventing rape.”
https://excelkobo.net/Movies/Nanjing!Nanjing!.mp4
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