In This Corner of the World Movie Review

I knew I was going to like this film just a few minutes into it. There’s a scene in the opening of our protagonist as a young girl looking through a telescope at a beautiful hall with a green dome on top before panning left to the more distant donjon of Hiroshima Castle. I very excitedly said to my wife, “You know what that is?!” Which being a normal person she didn’t. It was the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, better known as the A-Bomb Dome today, in its pre-war splendor.

Since I don’t know Japanese well the poor woman then had the misfortune of needing to verbally translate this movie for me for the next two hours. (She knew what she was getting into when she said ‘yes’ at the altar.)

I love period movies. Recreating past eras, not just clothes and buildings, but the cultures as they were with customs and dealing with the particulars of life can be like bringing the viewer into a lost world when it’s done right. With In This Corner of the World we get to see wartime Japan from the perspective of an average person in a fictional yet realistic portrayal of family life.

This story revolves around Suzu, a young Hiroshima girl married off to an Imperial Japanese Navy desk clerk and sent away to live with his family in the hills of Kure during World War II. She’s an upbeat artist whose sketches and painting sometimes intermingle with her real life hand-drawn and water-colored world who can daydream through a casual stroll through the city as easily as she can through an air raid.

The story is very episodic but with longer arcs as Suzu both acclimates to her new life as a spouse and the family gradually begins to accept her. For the most part it’s funny and light as we see Suzu learn new mundane tasks that grow more difficult as the war develops.

It has a nostalgic look, but there’s no rose-colored lenses as the family deals with the unpleasant realities of wartime life. Some are amusing like her run in with the dreaded military police and others are just harsh but honest and we see how the family endures a bleak period in Japanese history as daily air raids begin to hit Kure. For anyone worried about a gut-wrenching Grave of the Fireflies story, it never gets that dark though it does get close at times during the back half and doesn’t shy away from depicting the gruesome aftermath of a bombing and its effects on even the most optimistic of people.

Right off, as a period piece I love that it makes the most of its period. Suzu’s situation stems from an arranged marriage, which is a dead practice in modern Japan but still prevalent at the time. Like watching her go about daily life and its little dramas it’s fascinating because this isn’t how it is anymore but there’s a lot of little things to learn about how it was. The story and setting are highly detailed and apparently well-researched, lots of attention was paid to the minutiae of daily life from the Suzu’s home-making activities to background actions like watching her get off a charcoal-powered bus as it’s refueled. I was quite happy with a scene on a train where the passengers were required to close all the blinds when passing the Kure naval station because it’s something true to life that could have easily not been shown but it adds to the atmosphere and sense of time and place.

The mandatory neighborhood associations and tightening restrictions on rations and train access are interestingly never viewed as bad or negatively (except the idiocy of the high and mighty secret police) but simply as part of how life is, just like the handing of the fire bombings and air attacks, which I think keeps In This Corner of the World from ever straying into the realm of social commentary. It’s up to the viewer to decide what they think of things, which is how I prefer it.

The locations are gorgeous, and not just because of the warm and vibrant colors but again the attention to detail paid to the Japan that was. From the countryside farms and homes to the modern and stylish cities of Hiroshima and Kure, the movie makes the most of its almost fantastical settings as places viewers would want to visit.

Sadly, even without the bombings, these scenes would not exist anymore as the march of time and progress eventually replaces almost everything. The beautiful urban center of Hiroshima would likely be as unremarkable as any other major Japanese city today. Watch the Kure & Hiroshima: Then and Now bonus feature to see what I mean.

This combination of good story, period culture and customs along with the history, daily life elements, and the setting make this an ideal period piece film to get lost in.

If you enjoy the movie as much as I did I also recommend you get the manga. There’s more of the kinds of short slice of life stories that make the movie enjoyable and it takes a lot more pains to demonstrate and explain various details of Suzu and her family’s lives. It’s sold by Amazon as a single massive volume or as three digital ones.

On a personal note, the real litmus test for its accurate depiction of wartime civilian life came a few months after I’d seen it. My wife’s grandmother had recently passed and left behind her recollections of World War II. She was a country girl from the small town of Kawatana who worked in the torpedo factory that sprang up there during the war. Reading her personal anecdotes and stories both my wife and I immediately thought of how much it reminded us of the movie.