Grave of the Fireflies

The story is about Seita and Setsuko, a brother and sister in World War II Japan whose mother is killed during one of the firebombings. They go to live with an aunt but things don't work out at all there and so they move into an abandoned air raid shelter.

From the viewpoint of showing the suffering that occurred during the war in Japan, from a Japanese viewpoint, the film is excellent. The firebombings of Japanese cities were horribly effective. More people died in the firebombings than in the explosions of the atomic bombs. Most of the houses at the time were basic wooden structures and once a major fire started the entire area was in danger of being destroyed. My information on the firebombing program can be found elsewhere on my "war" page.

After the death of their mother they move in with an aunt. The aunt is an ultra-patriotic individual and is extremely nasty to Seita and Setsuko, showing them virtually no kindness at all, even getting to the point where they are expected to come up with their own food supply.

Things continue to go downhill, causing Seita and Setsuko to move out of their aunt's house into an abandoned cave-like dwelling by a lake. For a short while things are ok, but before long they are both suffering from malnutrition, especially Setsuko.

The movie is very upsetting, both from the viewpoint of showing how horribly people were suffering from the firebombing, and from the viewpoint of just how little kindness people showed to other people, especially children. This is, in my opinion, probably the saddest film of its type that I have ever seen.

I found out some interesting tidbits about the movie from the book by Peter Carey, Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey with his Son, 2004.

1. The director was Isao Takahata.

2. The person who wrote the story was actually evacuated to Kobe during the war. His sister stayed in Tokyo and was killed in the fire-bombing.

A person they talked to (not involved directly with the movie) was 12 at the time of the fire-bombings. He was staying at Tokyo and during one of the fire-bombings some 120,000 people were killed in one raid. He went to work elsewhere at a factory and that was attacked, although this time by low-flying fighter planes that were strafing the workers as they ran away.

His parents sent him to Kofu, a place near Mt. Fuji, thinking he would be safer there. A fire-bombing there killed 100,000 people out of a population of 300,000. Thus, the deadly effects of the fire-bombing as seen in the movie were quite realistic and definitely based on actual history.


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