It has been a while since I last went to the movies. Today, I had some time in the morning, and decided to go catch this movie that I had wanted to watch but couldn't find the time because of the busy December last year.
I Wish I Could Meet You Again on the Hill Where That Flower Blooms (あの花が咲く丘で、君とまた出会えたら。) premiered in Japan on 8 December 2023, and I was quite surprised that it was still showing in cinemas. Most Japanese movies usually run for about a month, maybe two. When I checked the cinema's website yesterday, it was empty. I thought I was going to have the entire screen to myself. When I made my reservation last night, there was a total of five seats already reserved. But when I showed up today, I was pleasantly surprised. The place was actually about 10% filled.
The story is a time travel story where the protagonist, a high school girl, travels back in time to 1945, near the end of World War Two, and meets a kamikaze pilot who was expecting to be deployed for his first and final mission soon. While there is nothing extraordinary about the love story, it is the setting that tugged at my heart. I had visited the Chiran Peace Museum before and the stories of these young men flying off to a meaningless death had always drew out countless emotions in me. This time was no different, and the protagonist offered a modern perspective on the accepted perception back then of loyalty to Japan and duty to the country. Yet can we really blame those young men? The protagonist knew what happened after the war, she knew the results, and that was why she could form that conviction in her mind that flying off to their deaths was meaningless. But those people in 1945 were raised in a different time, and lived under different circumstances. They did not have a crystal ball that allowed them to make more informed decisions based on knowledge of the future. To them, they were making the best decisions based on whatever knowledge they could find.
Anyway, in the end, I cried a lot during the movie, so much so that my eyes hurt now.
They were still giving out mementos to people who catch the movie.
Side note: A thought also crossed my mind about how Japanese films tend to portray Japanese people as the victims of World War Two. For this movie, it was set specifically in June 1945, within a period of three weeks, so there might not have been more time to go into more details about what led to the war. Somehow, I like the small part in Violet Evergarden The Movie where the old man talked about how they are all to blame for the war, because they were the ones who thought going to war and winning would better their lives. If only more Japanese films would talk about this too...
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