MovieChat Forums > Kokuriko-zaka kara (2011) Discussion > Is the school a school for war orphans?

Is the school a school for war orphans?

posted 11 years ago by mightythor47
6 replies | jump to latest

I hope someone who is familiar with the original story can answer this question. The reason I ask is that when the kids go to see the chairman of the board, or whoever he is, he asks the girl "What did your father do?", in the past tense. But I don't think he knew any of the kids before they showed up in his office. He seemed to just assume her father is dead.

It is an important question, because it may explain why the students are so attached to the school and many seem to think of it almost as their home. If it is true, then the boy must have known already that his own father was dead and that he was adopted by the parents he lives with.

The movie is just full of little details and hints like this. Also I love love love the response of the chairman: if this is what you want, then it is my job to find a way to do it. It is an important message of the film. That attitude is pretty rare among school administrators in the US, and I suspect even more so in Japan.

[–] lagrammairienne 11 years ago

The school wasn't specifically for orphans. I don't remember the scene you mentioned terribly well (having only seen the film once, in English), but I think the assumption that Umi's father is dead would come from the fact that the story takes place only a few years after WWII ended. So many Japanese men died in the war, leaving behind so many children, that it wouldn't seem unusual to go to school with lots of orphans and adopted children. On that note, Shun definitely knew he was adopted. I remember a scene in the middle of the film where Shun tries to talk to his adoptive father about his parentage.

Interestingly enough, the early 60s post-war setting was one of the things that the original manga didn't have; the story of the manga was set in the early 80s.

[–] mightythor47 11 years ago

Thanks for the info, especially about he original manga. As far as the timeline, the movie is set in 1963, so all or almost all of the kids in the school would have been born after WWII. Like you I saw the English version awhile ago, but I seem to remember that the fathers of the main characters died in the Korean War, which would be consistent with their age and the fact that the girl remembers her father from when she was a little girl. Unfortunately when I get a chance to see the movie again I will not enjoy it as much, because I will be obsessing over the chronology!

[–] lagrammairienne 11 years ago

Gah, meant the Korean War, not WWII! Getting my time periods mixed up; Hayao Miyazaki's next film seems to be about WWII, so I've had my mind on that film recently, lol. It's coming out this summer in Japan, but who knows when we'll get to see it in the US.

[–] mechafi 9 years ago

The film takes place in 1963-1964, just before Tokyo Summer Olympics and 10 years after the Korean War ended, to be exact. And Japan wasn't even involved in the Korean War, Umi's father had just been unlucky while navigating in the Sea of Japan and his ship hit a naval mine laid by some participating nation.

So no, Japanese kids weren't commonly orphaned in the Korean War. Umi lost her father in the aforementioned accident and Shun lost his biological father (another accident), his biological mother (death at childbirth) and his other close relatives (atomic bombing) in the Second World War, 19 years earlier (1945).

[–] carbonated_turtle 8 years ago

This movie took place in the 60s, so any of the kids in it would be too young to have had fathers who fought and died in WWII. The only war mentioned in this movie is the Korean war, which is where Umi's father's merchant ship was sunk.

[–] Suzume-san 10 years ago

Actually the chairman doesn't ask "What did your father do?". In the original Japanese he asks "What's your father's job?", in the present tense. And when Umi tells him how her father died, he is obviously touched. From here on he speaks to her using polite language, as if she were an adult and an equal. This is the turning point of the story.

A lovely film, I agree. A story with no villains, no massive drama, just a little slice of life, beautifully depicted.