AKA: Nippon no ichiban nagai hi
The Emperor and a General
The Longest Day of Japan
Year: 1967
Directed: Kihachi Okamoto
Genre: Drama/history/war
Runtime: 157 minutes
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: English
Cast
ToshirÅ Mifune
Chisu Ryu
Takashi Shimura
Tatsuya Nakadai (narrating)
Sô Yamamura
Jun Tazaki
Nobuo Nakamura
Synopsis / Plot
Director Kihachi Okamoto is best known in the west for his jidai-geki and chanbara, violent swordplay dramas like The Sword of Doom (1966) and Kill! (1968 ). But except for Samurai (aka Samurai Assassin, 1965), Okamoto's period films are actually among his weakest. After Akira Kurosawa left Toho Studios in 1965 for what he thought would be greener pastures in America, the company tried to mold Okamoto as his successor.
But while Okamoto's penchant for black humor would seem like a good match for Yojimbo-like chanbara, his sensibilities were better suited to crime films like The Age of Assassins (1967) and war movies such as Desperado Outpost (1959) and Human Bullet (1968 ), which are among his best works. Japan's Longest Day (Nippon no ichiban nagai hi, 1967), first released abroad under the basically meaningless title The Emperor and a General, was another prestigious project Toho dumped on Okamoto; it was to be the studio's big 35th Anniversary production.
But this time Okamoto fared better than he had with Toho's samurai dramas. Though it generally lacks the director's trademark black humor, Japan's Longest Day, about the 24 hours leading up to the Emperor's radio broadcast announcing Japan's surrender, is dripping with the kind of tragic irony in which he excelled. Though perhaps a little too densely intricate in its historical details for foreign tastes, this is probably Okamoto's best film.
The picture begins with a whirlwind prologue putting the 24 hours to be dramatized into context and introducing most of the key players. In the wake of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan's leaders mull over the Potsdam Declaration, and after much deliberation turn to Emperor Hirohito (Koshiro Matsumoto) to make a final decision. He declares his desire to avoid an Allied land invasion and spare his subjects any further suffering. Though War Minister Korechika Anami (Toshiro Mifune) opposes surrender, loyalty to his emperor supersedes everything else.
However, a group of militant zealots (Toshio Kurosawa, Tadao Nakamaru, Makoto Sato, and Akira Kubo, later joined by Etsushi Takahashi), part of the emperor's own Imperial Guard, regard Japan's leaders as cowards who have taken advantage of the emperor at "a weak moment" and plan a coup d'etat to isolate Him while at the same time hoping their cause will quickly spread among the armed forces.** Key to their plan is preventing the broadcast of the emperor's pre-recorded message to the Japanese people, scheduled for 12:00 noon on August 15, 1945.
Japan's Longest Day is a terrific film. Needless to say, we already know how the story ends, but Okamoto and screenwriter Shinobu (Seven Samurai, Harakiri) Hashimoto, adapting Soichi Oya and Kazutoshi Hando's "non-fiction novel" about a lesser-known but real historical incident, builds palpable tension through deliberately-paced, believable character development and the general bureaucratic and military chaos amidst Japan's fall. When the situation finally turns violent a little more than halfway through the film it's very powerful because the foundation for its unleashing has been so carefully built. (Hashimoto's screenplay rightly won the Kinema Jumpo prize that year.)
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