Bah! A waste of a movie....

Highly recommend "Letters from Iwo Jima".

This movie was made by Americans, not Japanese - and it shows what "Yamato" and practically every Japanese movie ever made about her role in WWII do not.

"Letters" shows great respect for the bravery and sacrifice of the Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima, AND it also shows how the brutal military regime in control in Japan enforced its will on both the populace and the ordinary soldiers of Japan. This latter fact, universally ignored by the revisionist thinking and resurgent right wing nationalist elements in Japan today, is how Japan got into WWII in the first place and is how it ended up in such desperately useless suicidal situations as on Iwo Jima and the final voyage of the Yamato.

"Letters" also takes a strong swipe at the central tenet of bushido - that if you as a soldier/warrior fail in your mission you must commit suicide in order to maintain your honor. This coda was a serious detriment to Japan's war effort (something that I have yet to see admitted to by any Japanese treatment of WWII). A few of Japan's own leaders, such as Yammamoto and Kuribayashi (the general in charge on Iwo Jima) opposed this sort of ritual suicide upon failure of a mission. Notably, both leaders had spent time studying in the U.S.

Just think, WWII was a long and drawn out series of many battles, with both sides making many mistakes and losing men, ships, and aircraft needlessly. The coda of bushido meant that when somebody's mistake resulted in defeat, the defeated soldiers/sailors were supposed to kill themselves in shame. WHY NOT LIVE? SURVIVE! LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES! FIGHT AGAIN FOR YOUR COUNTRY! AND DO BETTER NEXT TIME!

What a stupid waste of lives, to commit suicide rather than to live and learn and try to fight again.

The severe military discipline, based entirely upon this coda of bushido, basically made it impossible for Japan to learn from its mistakes. More importantly, it made Japan's military an entirely top-down culture, strongly discouraging not only dissent or shirking of duty (its original intent, no doubt), but also independant, innovative thinking from the lower ranks, and limiting the degree of improvement in the armed forces that could occur after both successful battles and defeats.

If by comparison, you read anything about the American war effort during WWII, there are a great many examples where initial difficulties encountered early on were overcome thanks to ideas that originated from the lower ranks.

Examples: after the sinking of the US aircraft carrier Lexington in the Battle of the Coral Sea, US aircraft carriers became much more survivable and resistant to sinking thanks to an idea from an enlisted navy man - who thought of the idea of flooding a carrier's aircraft gasoline lines with CO2 after the planes had finished fueling. (the Lexington was sunk because of secondary fire and explosions from her aviation fuel lines - flooding from the original hits during the battle had been controlled quickly and would not have sunk her). Throughout WWII, Japanese aircraft carriers by contrast continued to have this tendency to burn, blow up and sink after only a few bomb hits due to very poor damage control practices, especially in regards to containing the explosive aviation fuel.

Another example - during the early days of the invasion of Europe by Allied forces, the US Army had great difficulty breaking out from the Normandy beaches as the surrounding French farm countryside had an extensive series of giant hedgerows - these were natural tank barriers and were used by the Germans to great effect (tanks that tried to go over them exposed their vulnerable bellies and would get blown up). It was again a lower level American soldier in the maintenance section who thought of the idea of attaching make-shift giant cutters (made from the leftovers of the anti-tank barriers on the beaches of Normandy) to the fronts of tanks in order to cut their way through these hedgerows. And so the tanks cut straight through the hedgerow countryside and the US Army was able to break out of the Normandy beachhead.

Bushido has had a recent resurgence in popularity in Japanese culture today, but modern Japanese need to urgently understand that as much as anything else, bushido contributed to a prolonging of the suffering of the ordinary Japanese soldier and civilian during WWII.

Bushido kept the military elite that governed Japan with an iron fist during WWII in power long after defeat became inevitable. Bushido - this ferocious refusal to surrender even when obviously and desperately overwhelmed, led to the equally ferocious American response - the firebombings of Japan's cities, and the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After America was attacked at Pearl Harbor, America was determined to win and forever remove Japan as a military threat, and win even if it meant burning down the entire country of Japan.

No !

I heartily disagree .........

What you object to are simply trivia -

this shows War as hell , and accurately depicts the IJN as a very disciplined and tough fighting force

( Field Marshal Slim of Burma .....
everyone talks about fighting to the last man - but only the Japanese actually do it )
What more do you want ?
"The patriotic sentiment of the film is actually far-right revisionist taint."

Sorry - but to present the Bushido ideals held - at the time -
you have to have a non-politically correct view point from the actors and dialogue ........

suggest both of you actually read more , about the Pacific War .

The Yamato was a white elephant , true , but the Film shows how the ship was thrown away needlessly

The Yamato may not have accomplished much in her career, but bear in mind the Japanese naval strategy, and their entire war strategy v. America. They knew they did not have the resources (steel nor oil) to compete with the American war machine. They wanted ships and craft that could take on multiple American targets, hence the bizarre design and size of the Yamato class. It was a sound plan, until it was actually instituted. Even if the Japanese had gone with more traditional western naval concepts, it still would have been a failure. The 2-3 ships that could have been built from the materials it took to build Yamato would probably have sunk far sooner than she did.

As far as the movie, I enjoyed it, but it was far from the caliber of war movies we have attained. That's not to say the Japanese don't make good movies, they absolutely do, but as was said before this is relatively new cinematic ground for the "Little Island that Could" and naturally it would be in an almost Anime style, with stylized characters and streamlined plot. Except that they spend about an hour before the Ten-Go sequence suddenly developing characters, dragging the movie down to a crawl.

Worth watching, but I wholly agree with your appraisal of the design flaws, but I cannot condemn it.

I have not seen this film. I held back because of suspicions of something you guys just confirmed. Thank you.

I live in Japan, too. For Japanese, there is something grandiose, even mystifying, about death. Japanese movies often dwells indulgently on the excruciating details of death scenes. It is as if there is an obsessive fascination about death. No one can claim to be an expert about Japan without an understanding of death in Japanese culture. Read something by Yukio Mishima to learn more. For a more interesting read, read his life and death. He exercised everyday to reach peak physical condition only to commit ritual suicide, because it is a beautiful thing to do. Japanese adore him for this. I don't want to pass cross-culture judgment, just making my personal observation.

I can write more and more on this, on Japanese society, personal relationships, or social aspirations, but this is a movie site. All I want to say is: you may find the acting bad but it is a faithful reproduction of interaction between Japanese. Again, I have not seen this movie but many time I find that the "bad acting" in western eyes are really faithful reproduction of Japanese society: strained, formal, minimal-communication, even claustrophobic.

I could make a better film.

You make some good points in an overall informative post, but just wanted to mention the Yamato was also part of the overall Battle of Leyte Gulf, and did encounter the US Navy in The Battle off Samar. Kurita got bluffed by the task force of escort carriers, destroyers and destroyer escorts known as Taffy 3 and turned back before ever actually reaching Leyte Gulf. Musashi never got that far, being sunk in the Sibuyan Sea. Who knows what would have happened if Admiral Kurita would have kept on coming, other than ultimately Japan would have still lost the war.

This movie sucked ass.

"The "Battleship Mentality" was dying before the war and dead after Taranto and Pearl Harbor. Unfortuantely, the construction of Yamato and Musashi persisted. The 3rd Hull, Shinano, was converted to a Fleet Aircraft carrier, and was the largest Aircraft Carrier in the world until the building of the US Forrestal class. Unfortunately, like Yamato and Musashi, it didn't achieve much, aside for killing a lot of Japanese sailors, as it was sunk on its maiden voyage by a US sub. "


Wow, what an arrogant idiot you are.. First of all hindsight is always meh.

Second Musashi and Yamato were constructed in 1937 and finished by 1940.. Pearl Harbour happened in December of 41 and Taranto in November of 1940.. So by that time EVERYONE still thought Battleships would rule the says. Yes, there were a handful of Admirals in the major player-countries navies, who already knew that Aircraft carriers were the future of naval warfare, but they were a minority.