Understanding 'Prisoners of Sakura'

Last weekend, students and faculty from the Russian Department went to the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival’s screening of ‘Prisoners of Sakura,’ a Japanese production originally under the title ‘The Cherry Blossoms Sorokin Saw’ (ソローキンの見た桜, Soroukin no mita sakura). This event was sponsored and paid for by the Wiswell Foundation. This story portrays two sides of the Russo-Japanese War through the love story of Yui Takeda, a volunteer nurse, and Alexander Sorokin, a prisoner of war being kept in Matsuyama, Japan. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and would like to analyze it further from my perspective.

As a student that is majoring in Japanese along with a minor in Russian, I felt that there were elements reminiscent of Japanese cultural tradition in the way they were portrayed. Two traditional literary aesthetics in particular: mono-no-aware (物の哀れ) and yuugen (幽玄) were artfully incorporated into the cinematic atmosphere to evoke a certain sensibility. Mono-no-aware refers to the empathy one feels towards things and people and their suffering. Yuugen is an element usually cited these days as the defining element that sets apart Japanese horror movies on the world stage. It refers to a certain awareness or sensibility to the way the world works, especially in the way mysterious events such as premonitions or ghosts appear in a story.

Mono-no-aware is essentially the reason as to why traditional Japanese modes of artistic expression such as puppet theater (文楽), theatrical commentaries on society (狂言), kabuki (歌舞伎), and nou (能) incorporate such strong emotional response. This is especially true with negative emotions that create a sense of longing or rectification. ‘Aware’ itself  is an untranslatable word that describes this deep emotional pain we feel when enjoying these performances. While a western audience may have a hard time appreciating the culture surrounding this aesthetic, it still remains as the driving force in many modern Japanese forms of expression such as anime, manga, and drama. Yuugen was seldom utilized in this film, but was present in scenes were a death occurred or suspense was building towards the resolution.

In addition, the main character in this story, Sorokin, is faced with the classic Japanese literary conflict of giri (義理) “duty of societal obligation” vs ninjou (人情) “the emotion that makes us human.” This conflict, funnily enough, is notoriously present in samurai literature. Sorokin fulfills the role of an emotional hero that has to choose between his obligation to Russia, the country he loves, and Yui, the woman he loves. 

If I had a major criticism of the film myself, it would have to be that there wasn’t very much perspective on the actual war from either side. While I understand the movie wasn’t created with the intention of being used as educational material, the plot is so fixated on the the two main characters that the viewer looses sight of what is going on in the background. Also the movie could have done a better job at incorporating more aspects of Russian culture altogether. The movie is a Japanese production of course, so it’s somewhat understandable that it would be geared towards a Japanese audience.

It is worth noting the sister relationship the state of Hawaiʻi has with Ehime prefecture, the region in which this film takes place. Hawaiʻi currently has 5 sister regions, all of which are in Japan.