Rhapsody in August = Hachigatsu no kyshikyoku

In this moving and thought-provoking film, four Japanese teenagers begin a voyage of discovery when their parents travel to Hawaii leaving them in the care of their grandmother, Kane. The elderly woman painfully recalls the death of her husband, and the horrors inflicted on the Japanese people when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki during World War II. Through her recollections her grandchildren learn the importance of remembering the past and of placing blame on war itself as opposed to the foreigners who waged it. It is a lesson that is challenged when her Japanese-American nephew arrives from America. His attitudes and opinions reveal that the relationship between Japan and America is far more complicated than a simple matter of understanding and forgiveness. Kurosawa’s subject here is the process of memory and commemoration, played out by different generations of Japanese on both the personal and social levels. Cast includes Richard Gere, Sachiko Murase, Hisashi Igawa and Narumi Kayashima.