Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36905 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-06-07
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 96 minutes

From Amazon.com
Of the many fine films by Kinji Fukasaku to be released on DVD throughout 2004-05, Under the Flag of the Rising Sun is arguably the most unforgettable. As Japanese film scholar Tom Mes observes in an accompanying essay, it is also an important milestone in Fukasaku's prolific career, since it departs from the director's popular Yakuza films (most notably the epic Yakuza Papers series) while angrily exploring Fukasaku's dominant theme of post-World War II trauma and its anguished effect on Japanese society. Fukasaku claimed this was the film that crystallized his signature visual style, employing color, black and white, freeze-frames, negative images, documentary photographs, and shocking violence to tell the powerful story of a long-grieving widow in contemporary early 1970s Japan (Sachiko Hidari), still struggling to determine the truth behind her husband's court martial and execution on the New Guinea front during the final days of World War II. As she interviews surviving members of her husband's garrison in an effort to clear his name, a Rashomon-like tapestry of conflicting testimony unfolds to form a harrowing, collage of wartime atrocity, endurance, and survival by any means necessary. The cumulative impact of the widow's quest turns this into one of Fukasaku's most intensely focused dramas, leading to a devastating conclusion that qualifies Under the Flag of the Rising Sun as an unflinching classic, ripe for rediscovery as a searing indictment of war and its long-term emotional aftermath. As she did for The Yakuza Papers, Fukasaku expert and ace translator-subtitler Linda Hoaglund provides an insightful commentary that will greatly enhance anyone's appreciation for this and all of Fukasaku's films. --Jeff Shannon

On the DVD
New digital transfer, enhanced for 16:9 televisions
New subtitles by Linda Hoaglund
Audio commentary by subtitler Linda Hoaglund
A new interview with Fukasaku scholar Yamane Sadao
Original theatrical trailer
Essay by Japanese film scholar Tom Mes

Synopsis
The quest of a war-widow for the truth about her husband's death during World War II serves as the backbone for this film, which portrays the Japanese militarism of that time and the attitudes which gave rise to it. Though the government labelled her husband as a deserter, his widow does not believe it, and every day she makes a trip to the war reparations office until she finally tracks down four men who knew her husband in his last days. They tell a harrowing story of the breakdown of humanity at the close of the war. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide