Kita no zeronen (2005)

Kita no zeronen: Directed by Isao Yukisada. With Sayuri Yoshinaga, Ken Watanabe, Etsushi Toyokawa, Toshirô Yanagiba. In 1868, after the fall of the Shogun-dominated Japan, the new government orders people from Awaji, near Kobe, to re-locate to the northern part of Hokkaido. These people once supported the now displaced Samurais of the older days. After two years, over 500 of them settled in their new land under the leadership of Hideaki, husband of Shino. However, as crops fail he is to go to Sapporo to learn new techniques of farming, leaving his wife and daughter for 5 years. All this time, the new community is constantly watched by the government which choose to again uproot them from their new homes.

“This finely-etched social portrait details the first wave of colonists who chose to settle into the hardy world of Hokkaido in Meiji, Japan in the 1870s. The first group must transplant themselves into a rustic, untamed wilderness where most charactersu0026#39; loyalty and physical limits are tested; itu0026#39;s a richly forested land that still has a population of hardy creatures like wild bears. Ken Watanabeu0026#39;s character has second thoughts, however, with a land that cannot equal the lushness of his native Awaji. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe story is told deliberately and, at times, slowly, but one gets a good sense of the rustic conditions under which the common folk must try to survive. Travail teaches many to suspend notions of u0026quot;classu0026quot; in the hopes of building a new world from scratch. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWatchable for its fine production and photography – and less for the ordinary simple writing.”