At a military school, the entire class goes on a 35-kilometer March. Shûji Sano, on the running team, overeats during a break and falls ill.
Hiroshima Shimizu's movie is disturbing to a modern viewer. The songs the students sing are all about the pleasures of dying in battle, and in the evening, when the students are staying at a local home, their host explains that his son died just before graduation; a shame it wasn't a bullet that killed him, and now he drinks an extra bottle of saki every evening. While the central bit of Sano falling ill and having to be carried on a classmate's back is amusing, the movie as a whole has not aged well... or perhaps it would be more accurate to write that its meaning has become more apparent.
Hiroshima Shimizu's movie is disturbing to a modern viewer. The songs the students sing are all about the pleasures of dying in battle, and in the evening, when the students are staying at a local home, their host explains that his son died just before graduation; a shame it wasn't a bullet that killed him, and now he drinks an extra bottle of saki every evening. While the central bit of Sano falling ill and having to be carried on a classmate's back is amusing, the movie as a whole has not aged well... or perhaps it would be more accurate to write that its meaning has become more apparent.