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シグロ作品 Production Company : Siglo Ltd |
| 1986年、復帰15年目を迎えた沖縄読谷村に帰省する彫刻家金城実。カメラは彼に同行する。読谷村はその約48％がいまだに米軍の基地に占められており、核兵器が格納されていると言われている。住民たちが反戦運動を行っていたのはそれだけの理由ではない。読谷村はかつて米軍が最初に上陸し、あの激しい沖縄戦をおこなった、まさにその場所である。大戦時の米軍上陸の映像が示され、当時の状況について老人たちが語る。42年前に起こったチビチリガマ(塹壕)での集団自決について人々が決して忘れられないのは、偶然にも生き残った人々や自決者の親族がいるからだ。金城実はその事実を忘れまいとする住民たちと共に「チビチリガマ世代を結ぶ平和の像」を制作するためにやってきたのだ。家族を全て失い一人生き残った少年も今では初老になったが、未だに恐るべき過去が彼の脳裏をよぎる。その妻は彼と結婚して初めて家族の存在の大きさを知ったと語る。子供たちにもその事実は伝わっていた。そして一人の女子高生が卒業式で「日の丸」を持ち去った。「日の丸」や「君が代」が彼等にとって何を意味するかは明白であった。事件の後、彼女たちは冷静に語り合う。土本典昭の『水俣―患者さんとその世界』からスタッフを務めていた監督の西山正啓は明確な構成力を示し、読谷村の感情を示す。 | In 1986, fifteen years after Okinawa's reversion to Japanese possession from the US, the camera traces the return of a sculptor named Kinjo Minoru to Yomitan village. At that time, about forty-eight percent of Yomitan village was occupied by US military bases, and it is said that nuclear weapons were also housed on the bases. That is not however the only reason that residents of Yomitan organized an anti-base movement. Yomitan village is also the location where one of the fiercest battles of the Second World War was fought, when the US military landed. As images of that landing scroll through the film, elderly residents who were present at the time of the battle describe their memories of it. The people depicted are relatives, or those who, by some form of miracle, lived on after the mass suicide which took place at Chibichirigama 42 years ago. Kinjo has returned to Okinawa in order to work with these people to plan a peace statue linking Chibichirigama with the outside world, such that they never forget the fact of the mass suicide. When the rest of his family were killed in that incident when he was a youth, Kaneshiro lived. Although he has aged, he is still unable to rid himself of the memory of that frightening past. His wife recounts how she became convinced of the importance of family shortly after marrying him. The children were also told the truth about the incident. When, at the graduation ceremony of a girls' high school, one girl walks away with the Hi no maru, the Japanese national flag. The meaning of the Hi no maru and Kimi ga yo, the national anthem, becomes more apparent, and after this incident, the students calmly reflect. As well as depicting the emotional vigor of Yomitan village's inhabitants, this work shows the increasing sophistication of director Nishimura Masahiro, who worked on the staff of Tsuchimoto Noriaki's Minamata series since Minamata--The Victims and Their World ( " Mibamata --kanjasan to sono sekai, " 1971). |