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Hymn to a Tired Man AKA Youth of Japan
(Nihon no Seishun)

Screening on Film
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi.
With Makoto Fujita, Michiyo Aratama, Toshio Kurosawa.
Japan, 1968, 35mm, black & white, 130 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.

One of Kobayashi’s personal favorites, Hymn to a Tired Man uses a flashback narrative to reflect on war and its aftermath. A mild-mannered office worker is driven to recall his past when his son falls in love with the daughter of the commanding officer under whom he served during World War II. Memories of abusive discipline resurface throwing the former soldier’s relatively quiet postwar life into turmoil. Kobayashi offers an unsparing indictment of the lack of accountability for the scars of battle.

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