I didn't expect to see One day, Issei Takahashi and Yu Aoi, two extremely popular Japanese idol stars, star in such a heavy movie.
Not only heavy, but also bold, blatantly punching the government: "The Spy's Wife"
Kobe, Japan, 1940.
Yusaku and Satoko are an enviable couple.
Yusaku runs a multinational trading company, Satoko works as a housewife, and the husband and wife love each other and live a good life.
When there is nothing to do, the two will also be a bit of literature and art, self-written and self-directed to shoot a romantic short film, played for relatives and friends to enjoy.
However, all this was completely changed by a trip to China by Youzuo.
A month ago, Yusaku embarked on a journey to Manchukuo.
Manchukuo, also known as Puppet Manchukuo, was a puppet puppet regime supported by Japan after its occupation of northeast China, with its "capital" in Xinjing (present-day Changchun, Jilin).
In order to make northeast China completely become Japanese territory, the Japanese government moved millions of Japanese civilians to the northeast region as political immigrants.
Japan has no scruples about expanding its territory on Chinese soil and forcibly occupying materials, so many things are sold cheaper than in Japan.
Yusaku plans to purchase some supplies, and even more wants to see the new world in the government propaganda.
Of course, he will not forget to bring his beloved camcorder, intending to photograph everything he sees...
A month later, Yosaku returned as scheduled.
But he secretly brought a woman back without his wife and placed her in a hotel.
What's even more bizarre is that not long after, this mysterious woman was suddenly killed, and Chen Washu in the sea...
It wasn't until the police came to investigate that Satoko learned all this.
Could it be that the best of luck has been derailed?
Satoko couldn't bear it, and repeatedly pressed the question, Yusaku told a secret that shocked the world...
"The Spy's Wife" is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and starring Yu Aoi and Issei Takahashi, released in Japan in October 2020, with a Douban rating of 7.4.
The film was shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 77th Venice Film Festival and eventually won the Silver Lion Award for Best Director.
The two leading actors, Issei Takahashi and Yu Aoi, contributed excellent acting skills in the film, and the opponent scenes of the two were evenly matched and full of dramatic tension.
Some netizens commented: True anti-war rather than anti-war defeat, in the crazy country, sober people will be considered crazy. Being able to face the fact that the Japanese army was human experimenting in China on the big screen was a challenge in itself.
In fact, Japan has many anti-war film and television dramas, but most of the time, it is to render the suffering brought by the war to the Japanese civilians, and it is rare to see the deep suffering they have brought to other countries as a party to the war.
This is also where such works are often criticized by Chinese audiences.
And this "Spy's Wife" is a very rare anti-war movie to expose the main plot of the Japanese military violence.
The truth that Yusaku saw in northeast China and refreshed his three views was that the infamous Unit 731, from 1937 until the end of World War II, took Chinese to conduct brutal human bacterial experiments and develop biological and chemical weapons.
The woman he quietly brought back was the lover of a military doctor in Unit 731.
The medic was killed for revealing the truth, and before being killed, he gave the woman a precious experimental manual that recorded how the plague was transmitted, as well as a wealth of details about captives doing live experiments.
Yusaku even captured precious images of human experiments.
In the film, it's a two-minute, suffocating, silent black-and-white image, most of which comes from real historical sources.
Doctors in white coats pose with skinny patients;
Cut down human organs;
Discarded corpses, piled up like mountains;
Chinese tied to a stake and staring at the camera...
Although the picture is blurry and there is no blood, it is chilling...
This is not the first time Japan has photographed this history.
In 2017, Japan's NHK television broadcast a documentary: "The Truth About Unit 731: Elite "Healers" and Human Experiments"
The film exposes the audio recordings of the trial of the backbone members of Unit 731 in the former Soviet Union after the war, and its amount of information is huge and the plot is tragic and heinous.
It has been said that we expose human bodies to anthrax gas, and then their hands, feet and faces begin to decay...
Some people said: We put typhoid bacillus into sugar water, 50 prisoners were found each time, forced them to drink, and sure enough, typhoid fever broke out, and more than a dozen people died at a time.
Some people say: We do frostbite tests, put the experimenters outside at minus 20 degrees, and then use a large fan to blow cold air at them, artificially causing frostbite, the experimenter's fingers and toes become hard and black, and they fall off with a wooden stick.
It is also said that we will carry the fleas of Y. pestis and live in the same room with the experimenter to observe their reaction.
Most of the people who were used for experiments were Chinese anti-war soldiers, but there were also ordinary people, even women and unanheated children.
These people will be repeatedly experimented, constantly become the sick, and after being cured, they will continue to be infected with germs and repeatedly tortured until they die.
It's like a replica of Auschwitz, where no one gets out alive.
This documentary and the film "The Spy's Wife" are not satisfied with exposing the brutal truth of the Japanese invasion of China, but try to reflect on something deeper: how did the atrocity happen?
The documentary raises this question:
The reason why human experiments were carried out that year was because Unit 731 brought together the top medical experts from institutions of higher learning such as the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University.
Why would a doctor who should have saved lives break through the bottom line of human nature and try inhumane human experiments?
Could it be that each of them, their conscience, was eaten by a dog?
The fact is that the public opinion environment in Japan at that time gave people a feeling that it was reasonable to torture and kill Chinese.
At that time, the Japanese government found a high-sounding excuse for its own aggressive behavior, that is, to lead the Asian countries to get rid of Western colonial rule and jointly move toward independence and prosperity.
On the radio, it was broadcast that Japan would work with Germany and Italy to build a new world order.
In the cinema, there are also brainwashing propaganda films, describing aggression as: we are carrying out an important peace mission.
At that time, the government and the media repeatedly stressed that Japan's development in China was hit hard, and the Japanese just wanted to help China progress, but Chinese took revenge and killed a large number of Japanese compatriots.
They have obscured the facts of aggression and expansion, tried their best to incite the people's anti-China sentiments, and made the people believe that Chinese are enemies, and the enemies should be eliminated quickly.
This sentiment also spread to the academic community, so much so that many medical experts published articles at the time proposing to do live experiments to support military combat.
They understand this as a form of patriotism.
At this time, the military used huge research fees as bait to attract universities to continuously send medical talents to Unit 731.
A military doctor who had participated in human experiments said in an interview:
The chief told me that these Chinese were bandits, death row prisoners, we did not kill them, and the last to die was us...
I also sympathize with them, but in that atmosphere, I don't dare to say that I feel that I feel that they are pitiful, and saying it is tantamount to being unpatriotic...
At that time, japan, the whole country was filled with fanatical and extreme nationalist sentiments, and the atmosphere was very tense.
The government arranges for gendarmes to monitor the people, and if there is a little disturbance, they can be accused of "espionage" and "collaborating with the enemy and betraying the country", and the common people are also suspicious and suspicious and report to each other.
For example, at the beginning of "The Spy's Wife", the British customer who did business with Yousaku was inexplicably arrested and given the crime of divulging military secrets.
The logic of the gendarmerie is simple: Britain is an ally and an enemy country, and British businessmen are in Japan, which is basically a spy.
Not only that, but it is also unpatriotic to openly express love for the culture of the enemy country.
Satoko and Yusaku, because of business needs, usually deal with foreigners, the couple also love to wear dresses, drink imported whiskey...
This is reminded by people "well-meaning": you guys, people will talk nonsense, there is a possibility of offending others...
There is a very tragic scene in the movie:
Because of the secret possession of human experiment notes, Yusaku's nephew was tortured and his fingernails were plucked alive.
The victim has his back to the camera, and you can't actually see what's going on, only a terrible scream.
In the next picture, the gendarmes put the bloody nails one by one on Yusaku's hand, and Yusaku's hand trembled involuntarily...
Overall, this "Spy's Wife" is restrained, restrained, and meaningful, but it is these blank spaces that give people the space to imagine, and even more terrifying than facing the brutal picture.
But even in such a dangerous situation, Yusaku remained steadfast in his belief that he would smuggle out the country with video materials and experimental notes in order to be able to accuse the Japanese army in the international political community, so that the United States could enter the war and japan would be defeated.
Yes, you read that right, Yusaku's wish was: Japan was defeated.
That is, he is going to be a traitor.
He said to his wife: I am a cosmopolitan, my allegiance is not to a country, but to universal justice, and I cannot tolerate injustice.
The wife didn't understand at first: I just want our happiness.
Yusaku said angrily: Our compatriots are committing heinous crimes in a distant country, our happiness? How can happiness, which is based on injustice, be called happiness?
In that crazy era, Yusaku, as a sober individual, was doomed to pain and loneliness, doomed to intolerable, nine deaths...
We know today that World War II would not end until 1945, and that Yusaku's adventure of 1940 would not succeed.
Everything he and his wife did was in vain, and it will not be remembered by history...
But their faith and sacrifice cannot be said to be worthless.
As Satoko's thought-provoking accountability goes: Times have changed you, can't you change this era?
They are reminding us that the reason why people are human is to keep the most basic moral bottom line no matter what the situation.
The Japanese scholar Takeshi Kojima, in the book "The History of Japan Written to Me by Todai Daddy", once commented on the war of aggression launched by Japan in modern times:
It is not only politicians and military personnel who need to bear the responsibility of war, but without the support of the people, war cannot be fought...
Each of us is the standard-bearer of history, and we have the responsibility to carry the future of our country. In order not to say "cheated" or something like that, be sure to cultivate your judgment.