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Admiral Yamamoto (Rengo kantai shirei chokan – Yamamoto Isoroku, or “Combined Fleet Admiral – Isoroku Yamamoto,” 1968) is one of a long line of war epics produced by Japan’s Toho Studios featuring elaborate miniature special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya, the man behind Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, et. al. This one, directed by Seiji Maruyama, is a bit different, functioning partially as a biopic of one of the few Japanese “heroes” of the Pacific War, a man whose reputation, at least among the Japanese, remains unimpeachable. Yamamoto, played in the film by the great Toshiro Mifune, vehemently opposed Japan waging war against the United States and the other Allies, recognizing America’s vastly superior industrial might against a Japan notably lacking in natural resources. Nonetheless, he was one of the architects behind the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and Japan’s early victories in late 1941 and early ’42.
Postwar Japanese movies about World War II generally fall into one of four categories. A tiny number, mostly confined to a handful of movies produced by Shintoho in the late 1950s and into 1960, whitewash Japan’s militarists and their culpability. Others, such as Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition (1959-61) trilogy, uncompromisingly depict the war as it truly was, a great tragedy during which Japan inflicted unimaginable harm on both foreign peoples and its own citizenry. A third type, exemplified by Kihachi Okamoto’s Desperado Outpost (1959) and The Human Bullet (1968), are grimly comical and cynical.
Toho specialized in the fourth type, large-scale epics full of romanticized action and spectacle similar to concurrent American-made war movies like The Longest Day (1962) and Battle of the Bulge (1965). However, these films temper iconography recognizable to western viewers with equal sobering doses of bitter reality, through protagonists recognizing the great folly that ultimately leaves Japan in ruins and a generation of men wiped out for nothing.
That particular sub-genre peaked with Shue Matsubayashi’s marvelous Storm Over the Pacific (also known as I Bombed Pearl Harbor, 1960), the biggest of these big-scale productions, and which co-starred Mifune. In that film he played a real-life admiral named Tamon Yamaguchi, though Mifune’s characterization was virtually indistinguishable from his later portrayal of Isoroku Yamamoto, a role he’d go on to play twice more (in Toho’s The Militarists, 1970, and the American film Midway, 1976). Matsubayashi had himself been an officer in the Japanese Imperial Navy, and brought to Storm Over the Pacific and his other war movies a verisimilitude lacking in almost all other films of this type. He’d been there, even aboard a ship sunk by Allied fighter planes. He saw these films as sad memorials to his fallen comrades.
By 1968, when Admiral Yamamoto was made, domestic box-office figures were plummeting fast industry-wide, mainly due to the growing popularity of television, in virtually every household since tuning in for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Undoubtedly Admiral Yamamoto was prompted partly by Akira Kurosawa’s widely publicized deal to co-direct the 20th Century-Fox financed Tora! Tora! Tora!, a long-in-gestation multi-million-dollar epic from which Kurosawa was notoriously fired shortly after filming began, and which, unfortunately for Kurosawa, brought the controversial production even more press.
Toho’s decision to make Admiral Yamamoto amidst all this couldn’t have pleased Kurosawa, especially with longtime muse Mifune in the title role, to say nothing of the myriad other actors (Yoshio Tsuchiya, Masayuki Mori), writers (Shinobu Hashimoto) and others (composer Masaru Sato) with which Kurosawa was so closely associated.
Dramatically, Admiral Yamamoto is a mixed bag. It’s so damn reverential Mifune has little opportunity to be anything more than a God-like pillar of stoic and savant-like wisdom, but there are many nice moments throughout. The picture opens well, in 1939 Japan where Yamamoto, back in his hometown of Nagaoka, enjoys a leisurely boat ride along the local river at the height of cherry blossom season. He challenges the skilled boatman (Ryutaro Tatsumi) punting him downriver to bring him to shore while Yamamoto stands on his head. This attracts a lot of attention and the two men eventually end up in the drink, much to Yamamoto’s delight. This is neatly bookended late in the film when Yamamoto encounters the boatman’s son on the battlefield.
The movie integrates facets of the historical Yamamoto’s personality well: his love of gambling, his passion for (Japanese) calligraphy, in addition to his various successful and (mostly) unsuccessful naval strategies. What it does not show or ever even vaguely allude to is any aspect of Yamamoto’s private life. His wife and four children are never mentioned once, nor the Geisha mistress he reportedly kept (according to the wife). Quite possibly this was a deliberate decision for legal or other reasons (the film, after all, was made barely 25 years after Yamamoto’s death) but their absence hinders Mifune’s and the screenwriters’ efforts to humanize the character.
In other respects the movie soft-pedals Yamamoto’s personal contributions to Japan’s militarism. In one fascinating scene, it is Staff Officer Kuroshima (Yoshio Tsuchiya), one of Yamamoto’s adjuncts, who delivers and makes the case for Yamamoto’s proposal to attack Pearl Harbor rather than the admiral himself. This might be historically accurate, but it also seems a deliberate attempt to downplay Yamamoto’s culpability for what was a tremendously successful sneak attack with disastrous long-term consequences for Japan.
As with virtually all other Toho war movies of this type, a significant amount of screen time is allotted to a younger supporting character, always played by a rising Toho star. In Storm Over the Pacific the role of the idealistic young pilot was played by Yosuke Natsuki; in Matsubayashi’s Wings Over the Pacific (also known as Attack Squadron!, 1963), also starring Mifune, it was Yuzo Kayama; and here it’s fresh face Toshio Kurosawa as 1st Lt. Kimura, a poor farm boy Yamamoto helped get into the Naval Academy. Here, with the focus squarely on Yamamoto, more than ever this subordinate character seems to exist solely because there had always been one like it in Toho’s past successes, and that the studio was loathe to tamper with a proven formula.
And, as in past Toho war films, virtually every male actor under contract to the studio, along with a few big independent names, appear in Admiral Yamamoto: Daisuke Kato, Yoshio Inaba, Seiji Miyaguchi (that’s three of Mifune’s Seven Samurai co-stars), Yuzo Kayama, Makoto Sato, Masayuki Mori, and Susumu Fujita, as well as talent familiar to kaiju eiga fans, including Akihiko Hirata, Akira Kubo, Kenji Sahara, and Yoshio Tsuchiya. Yoko Tsukasa and beautiful Wakako Sakai turn up in token female roles, and Tatsuya Nakadai narrates.
Declining attendance figures seems to have impacted the film’s budget. This may be the first Toho special effects feature to utilize extensive stock footage from earlier successes. Toho was already doing this to a lesser extent in its giant monster movies, but never to this extent. For Admiral Yamamoto, nearly all of the attack on Pearl Harbor and much of the Battle of Midway are special effects lifted from Storm Over the Pacific while footage from Wings Over the Pacific turns up elsewhere.
However, Eiji Tsuburaya and his Toho Special Effects Group team still came up with several impressive effects sequences. The first is involves an effort to drop barrels containing food, presumably rice, off the coast of Guadalcanal, hoping it will reach the starving Japanese soldiers marooned there. As the stranded men desperately swim toward the dropped barrels, enemy fighters arrive and begin strafing and bombing the light cruiser transporting the food, eventually sinking it while the doomed men frantically try to swim back to shore and the relative safety of the jungle. The effects shots are a complex mix of miniatures and well-executed mattes and represent some of the department’s best-ever work in a Toho war movie.
(Spoilers) For the film’s climax, Tsuburaya’s team recreated the downing of the bomber carrying Yamamoto over Bougainville. The sequence matches historical records of Yamamoto’s death pretty closely, and yet the miniature effects are almost poetic in the way they are photographed. Indeed, they’re more stylized and cinematic than all but a few of the live-action scenes.
Admiral Yamamoto arrives on DVD from an unexpected source: Spain’s Tema label, which also released Storm Over the Pacific, Wings Over the Pacific and a few others simultaneously. The DVD is a real deal, just 8,25 Euros (USD $11.23) versus the usual $50-$65 Toho Video typically charges for its own domestic DVDs, and those are without English subtitles. Here, Admiral Yamamoto is presented in 2.0 Dolby Digital mono in both Japanese and Castilian Spanish, supported by Castilian Spanish and English subtitles. The English subtitles aren’t great, with their share of typos (e.g., “Scared War Unit” instead of “Sacred War Unit.” “Ensing Kimura” instead of “Ensign Kimura”) and a few lines of dialogue here and there aren’t subtitled at all, but overall it’s a decent job.
The region 2/PAL video transfer, 16:9 enhanced and thus preserving the original CinemaScope aspect ratio of 2.35:1, is surprisingly good. Extras include a photo gallery and original trailer.
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Admiral Yamamotorates:
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Admiral Yamamotorates:
Movie: Very Good
Video: Very Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: Photo gallery, trailer.
Deaf and Hearing Impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English and Spanish
Tema Distribuuciones
1968 / Color / 2.35:1 CinemaScope / 130 min. / Street Date April 9, 2013 / Euro 8,25
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Yuzo Kayama, Yoko Tsukasa, Toshio Kurosawa, Makoto Sato, Daisuke Kato, Masayuki Mori, Wakako Sakai, Koshiro Matsumoto..
Cinematography Kazuo Yamada
Art Director Takeo Kita
Music Masaru Sato
![Pacific Pacific](/uploads/1/2/7/6/127646011/891723723.jpg)
Written by Shinobu Hashimoto, Seiji Maruyama, and Katsuya Susaki
Produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka
Special Effects Director Eiji Tsuburaya
Directed by Seiji Maruyama
Genre:, Director:, Writer:, Stars:, Countries: Plot:Lt. Koji Kitami is a navigator-bombardier in Japan’s Naval Air Force. He participates in the Japanese raid on the U.S.
Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and is welcomed with pride in his hometown on his return. As Japan racks up victory after victory in the Pacific War, Kitami is caught up in the emotion of the time and fights courageously for the standard of Japanese honor. But his assuredness of his government’s righteousness is shaken after the Japanese navy is defeated in the debacle of Midway.
I BOMBED PEARL HARBOR is one of the very few Japanese films about World War II to be released in English and offers a fascinating window into Japanese attitudes toward the war expressed some 15 years after their defeat. Granted, this was seen on VHS in a cut, English-dubbed print with some re-editing, so we can’t be entirely sure about the points of view expressed in the original. Numerous questions arise. For instance, did the original open and close with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s radio addresses on the soundtrack as this version does? Or did Japanese audiences hear Emperor Hirohito’s speeches on the soundtrack? The film, as seen in this version, glosses over the causes of the war and the reasons Japan was in it.
There are no mentions of the United States or of Americans at all and, of course, no mentions of Japanese occupation of so many Asian countries during the war. The pilots heading out to Pearl Harbor at the beginning are told it’s their sacred duty to Japan and the Emperor and that the fate of the Japanese empire rests on them. They cheer a “successful mission” after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, a sequence that takes up the first 19 minutes of the film.
Most of the rest of the film is taken up with the Battle of Midway (which took place, as I write this on June 4, on this date 69 years ago). The film is quite explicit in depicting the mistakes made by the Japanese commanders at Midway that allowed the American forces to prevail that day.
As the battle progresses to Japan’s not-so-inevitable defeat, radio reports heard in Japan tell complete lies about the outcome of the battle. It’s evident to an informed viewer that the Japanese military consistently lied to the people and brainwashed its soldiers and pilots so that they could launch lethal attacks without any moral qualms and without any realistic sense of what they could accomplish against American industrial might. This is a pretty profound admission of some form of guilt. Yet it’s undercut by the fact that the pilots are treated as noble heroes throughout. There are sentiments of regret voiced at the end of the film acknowledging what a mistake it all was, but they come too little and too late to satisfy me.I watched the Hollywood film, MIDWAY (1976), right after this, in order to get an American account of the battle.
The two versions stick quite closely to the facts and many of the Japanese military figures from I BOMBED PEARL HARBOR are indeed in MIDWAY as well. MIDWAY even used some shots from this film, along with quite a lot of actual color film footage taken by American combat photographers during the battle itself.
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Toshiro Mifune plays Admiral Yamaguchi in I BOMBED PEARL HARBOR and Admiral Yamamoto in MIDWAY, 16 years later. He’s dubbed in both films by familiar voice-over actor, Paul Frees, the absolute wrong voice for Mifune.
(In MIDWAY, Frees’ attempt at a Japanese accent is completely at odds with the unaccented English spoken by all the Japanese-American actors—James Shigeta, Pat Morita, et al–playing the other Japanese officers.) Some of the reviews here cite the depiction of the Japanese pilots in this film as “ordinary” and “honorable” men, who showed “humanity” and “courage.” I’m sorry, but that’s like characterizing Nazi concentration camp guards in a film about the Holocaust as “ordinary” and “honorable” men who were just following orders. Toho’s first major color war film is without a doubt one of the most impressive of their many 60’s offerings. The only one I can think of this easily trumps this is their later BATTLE OF THE SEA OF JAPAN (1969) which is about the Russo-Japanese War. This is a world war 2 film and probably the quintessential film covering the two largest, most pivotal events of the Pacific theater – Pearl Harbor and Midway.
These battles would be covered in several later American films but never with the gusto of this production.This presentation of the Pacific Theater is a little different than us Westerners are used to. There’s something shockingly surreal about seeing the main characters elatedly cheering the destruction of the Arizona, or referring to December 7th, 1941 as “a wonderful day”. Unlike German or Italian war films to come over the years after the war, this film by a former Axis member is not a guilt-ridden depressing condemnation of the past. Instead, the Japanese (many of the cast and crew members were veterans of the conflict) seem to be quite proud of their effort, camaraderie, and achievements. The attack on Pearl Harbor is shown as a more-or-less unavoidable battle and a great victory.
Little attention is paid to the fact that the Americans are totally oblivious to the fact they’re at war before the bombs drop. The Americans are actually rarely mentioned by name, only as “the enemy” and never seen besides their planes, ships, and ground installations.Little can be said about this movie without mentioning the brilliant effects work by Eiji Tsuburaya and Teruyoshi Nakano. Tsuburaya had made some of Japan’s most impressive propaganda films during the war which recreated the Pearl Harbor attack, and here he gets to do the same but in color and with more money and a larger water tank.
The 1/16th scale models look brilliant and the explosions and fires realistic enough for MIDWAY to steal 16 years later.Dramatically the film comes off as a little stiff, though Natsuki gives an earnest performance as a young pilot. Mifune plays Yamagouchi with his usual gravitas, and many recognizable Toho stock performers pop up in small roles throughout.
The film also suffers from its no-frills straight-forward retelling approach (much like the earlier film THE MYSTERIANS) which means there’s not really any subplots or plot twists. Just action, effects, and historical reenactments to provide entertainment. It also suffers a lot of the same failings as other Toho films of the time with the tendency to reuse effects shots (sometimes twice in a row), lots of jump cuts (such as an explosion goes off, then another, but the camera does not move despite a lot of time being cut out between the two explosions), and a few dodgy miniatures.The real star is the battle scenes; not just the brief Pearl Harbor recreation, but the drawn out Midway battle that takes up the whole second half of the film. Excellent music, cinematography, and wholly believable process shots. Overall a thoroughly impressive war film which is unfairly hard to find. During the 1960’s, Toho, the Japanese movie company which made all the Godzilla movies, produced one or two large-scale special effects movies every year.
“I Bombed Pearl Harbor” (or Japanese original title “The Great Sea Battles of Hawaii and Midway: Storm Over the Pacific”) (1962) is an excellent example of one of these 1960’s Toho special effect movies. This non-fiction film, which is based on a memoir of a Japanese World War II torpedo bomber pilot, depicts the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway from the Japanese side. I remember seeing this movie for the first time back in the 1970’s.
The first thing I realized were the humanity and courage of Japanese pilots, who are frequently portrayed as beastly bad guys in American and British movies. This movie showed me that they were no different from the Allied fighting men. Japanese pilots truly cared about their own comrades.
They showed tremendous courage under fire. They deeply lamented the deaths of their comrades.All of the film’s main characters were portrayed superbly by the Japanese cast members. Yosuke Natsuki played the main character, Lt. Kitami, as a young, gutsy aviator officer with an almost fanatical devotion to his country and the emperor. The character took defeat stoically like a real man. After the horrendous defeat at Midway, in which he lost many of his comrades, he did not whine or gripe; he calmly and unemotionally stated: “However horrible this may be, this is war. I have to face it.” Late international star, Toshiro Mifune, played Adm.
Tamon Yamaguchi, who went down with his flagship the Hiryu. And late Koji Tsuruta, a real-life ex-kamikaze pilot turned actor and singer, played Lt. Tomonari (based on a historical person Lt. Tomonaga who crashed his plane into the bridge of the Yorktown during the Battle of Midway).Moreover, the special effect, which was supervised by late Eiji Tsuburaya (the special effects director of numerous 1950’s and 1960’s Japanese special effect movies), was excellent and awe-inspiring. The scene in which the U.S. Dauntless dive-bombers dropped 1000-lb.
Bombs on the Japanese aircraft careers was awesomely filmed. The site of burning Japanese aircraft careers was a masterpiece of special effect. Some of the special effect scenes are so good that Universal Studio used portions of this film to make its 1976 movie “Midway.”Unlike Universal’s “Midway,” which was badly edited, the editing of this film was coherent and masterfully done. Even though I did not think that the script was particularly unique (the story was simply told in a straightforward way), the overall quality of the film was excellent.
I recommend this movie to all the film buffs so they can see World War II from the other side. During the 1960’s, Toho, the Japanese movie company which made all the Godzilla movies, produced one or two large-scale special effects movies every year. “I Bombed Pearl Harbor” (or Japanese original title “The Great Sea Battles of Hawaii and Midway: Storm Over the Pacific”) (1962) is an excellent example of one of these 1960’s Toho special effect movies. This non-fiction film, which is based on a memoir of a Japanese World War II torpedo bomber pilot, depicts the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway from the Japanese side.
I remember seeing this movie for the first time back in the 1970’s. The first thing I realized were the humanity and courage of Japanese pilots, who are frequently portrayed as beastly bad guys in American and British movies.
This movie showed me that they were no different from the Allied fighting men. Japanese pilots truly cared about their own comrades.
They showed tremendous courage under fire. They deeply lamented the deaths of their comrades.All of the film’s main characters were portrayed superbly by the Japanese cast members. Yosuke Natsuki played the main character, Lt. Kitami, as a young, gutsy aviator officer with an almost fanatical devotion to his country and the emperor. The character took defeat stoically like a real man. After the horrendous defeat at Midway, in which he lost many of his comrades, he did not whine or gripe; he calmly and unemotionally stated: “However horrible this may be, this is war.
I have to face it.” Late international star, Toshiro Mifune, played Adm. Tamon Yamaguchi, who went down with his flagship the Hiryu.
And late Koji Tsuruta, a real-life ex-kamikaze pilot turned actor and singer, played Lt. Tomonari (based on a historical person Lt. Tomonaga who crashed his plane into the bridge of the Yorktown during the Battle of Midway).Moreover, the special effect, which was supervised by late Eiji Tsuburaya (the special effects director of numerous 1950’s and 1960’s Japanese special effect movies), was excellent and awe-inspiring. The scene in which the U.S. Dauntless dive-bombers dropped 1000-lb. Bombs on the Japanese aircraft careers was awesomely filmed. The site of burning Japanese aircraft careers was a masterpiece of special effect.
Some of the special effect scenes are so good that the Universal Studio used portions of this film to make its 1976 movie “Midway.”Unlike Universal’s “Midway,” which was badly edited, the editing of this film was coherent and masterfully done. Even though I did not think that the script was particularly unique (the story was simply told in a straightforward way), the overall quality of the film was excellent. I recommend this movie to all the film buffs so they can see World War II from the other side.
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