Film "Sudden Change and Silence" (2) The Path of Silence

The shot of the road in Kunigami Village, Okinawa, used in the Nobutaka Kinjo scene. This is a symbol of silence.
The road that Nobutaka often traveled when he lived at his family home in Kunigami Village before advancing to the Toa Dobun Shoin University in Shanghai, China. It is also the road that continued to wait for Nobutaka's return.
During the era of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and further, the era when Japan plunged into war against the Allied Powers centered on the United States. His mother, Tomi, must have worried about the safety of her son in Shanghai every day. The shot of the road is also the gaze of such a mother. It must never have been a one-way street; there was a path for Nobutaka to graduate and return to his hometown of Okinawa. However, for Nobutaka, joining the Japanese military after graduation was the predetermined course. In 1943, when the student mobilization was decided, Nobutaka was in his third year of university. His graduation was moved up, and he was conscripted.

That Nobutaka also prayed for the safety of his mother in Okinawa is written in his diary. He noted "Mother and sister" as people "who I cannot afford to have die," and continued, "How lonely, how shameful." Why shameful? Perhaps he thought that worrying about his family was undesirable for someone who would eventually become a Japanese soldier.
Nobutaka could not escape the arduous path as a Japanese soldier, which he could not walk without abandoning his longing for his mother. The shot of the absent road tells of the sense of distance, both near and far, between such a Nobutaka and his mother.

What must not be forgotten is that Nobutaka is an Uchinanchu (Okinawan). "As a Japanese who came to the academy, my..." he wrote. Going back in time, the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was an independent nation, was a land invaded and annexed by Japan, and being forced onto the path of a "Japanese" tormented Nobutaka doubly and triply. What was the conclusion of those things? On the empty night road, the history that must not be forgotten—that Okinawa is a victimized land that lost its country—resonates heavily as a basso continuo.