[Repost] Watching the movie 'Starry Sky' at OttO, Omiya Station, Saitama (1)
[Preface. Before reposting / 2025.11.26]
This is a repost.
The reason is that after I posted this on Note the other day, I accidentally deleted the content.
Since it was a good movie, I thought it would be a shame to let it stay buried, so I decided to post it again with a preface. The preface follows below.
Those who have experienced war, and those who have not.
With the summer of the 81st year after the war having passed, we are now in an era where the latter are overwhelmingly in the majority.
For example, when we face a problem, we often tend to view things in terms of self-blame or blaming others, don't we?
However, I believe that those who experienced war were dominated by emotions different from either of those—a deeper layer of anger, sadness, and pain toward the unreasonableness of 'war' itself.
That is precisely why films or literature depicting them are so profound, leaving a deep and lasting impression.
We need to engage with the words and records of those who lived in that era, accumulate knowledge about those times, and continue to question the meaning of living in this country. I am feeling that once again.
[Repost / 2025.8.17]
Good evening. This is Kyuri-san.
Today, I went to a mini-theater in Omiya, Saitama, called 'OttO'. Let me write a little bit about OttO first.
The first floor is a cafe & bar. It's a space where you can enjoy light meals, snacks, and drinks, and the bookshelves are lined with movie-related books.
The second floor is a mini-theater with 53 seats in total. It is designed to be easy to view with tiered seating, and it features sofa-style 'two-person box seats' and a parent-child viewing room that accommodates wheelchairs, making it a friendly space for a wide range of people.
The 3rd to 5th floors are apparently a share house with 25 rooms. It seems like you could enjoy a life connected to a movie theater.
I forgot to take pictures. I'm sorry.
Well, today I watched the movie 'Starry Sky'.
This is a documentary that examines the Tsushima Maru incident—in which the school evacuation ship Tsushima Maru, heading from Okinawa to Kyushu on August 22, 1944, was sunk by a U.S. submarine—through various testimonies, as the details were shrouded in mystery due to a gag order imposed after the incident.
The memories of the Tsushima Maru projected on the screen are heavy and sink into a very deep place in the heart.
Leaving aside young people walking through the streets of modern Shibuya, even young people living in Okinawa do not know about this tragedy, and in reality, they are the majority.
The U.S. military apparently considered this ship a 'militarily legitimate target' at the time. However, the fact that there were many civilians, especially school children, on board was only conveyed to the submarine crew after the war. The multi-layered nature of history is quietly called into question.
I thought that the determination of Satoshi Judai, who does not know war, to 'become a storyteller' as the grandson of the late Takao Nakajima, who was a deckhand on the Tsushima Maru, is very significant in terms of planting knowledge of the incident and the war into various layers of society.
'I wish I had been closer to my grandfather's actions as he worked energetically as a storyteller while he was alive.'
Hearing these words from Mr. Judai, I couldn't help but project my own grandfather onto him.
My maternal grandfather also apparently served under an army doctor in Manchuria during the war. However, I never heard him talk about the war while he was alive.
Watching the movie gave me the opportunity to want to ask my mother more about my grandfather from now on.
Movies and art do not just provide knowledge; they connect us to personal memories and family stories. I even forgot to take pictures of the movie theater. How deeply moving.
It was a holiday where I realized that it quietly poses questions to us.