Unfading Sun

I watched a movie called "Shizumanu-Taiyo" (Unfading Sun) written by Yamazaki Toyoko.

I've heard the title and its author before, but I didn't have any idea of what this is about.

The film starts by a very shocking scene of the 1985 air crash in Osutakayama, killing more than 500 people.

(When this accident happened, I went swimming at a primary school. When I came home, I saw the news on TV. Although I didn't really understand the whole tragedy, I remember it was a very hot summer day.)

I guess, for many people, being killed by air crash is, beyond our imagination, the most frightening moment. I think, this is partly because flying a heavy metal object is beyond our everyday feeling. We trust technology in our head, but we can't believe in this from the bottom of our heart.

To ease our fear, it is often said that the percentage of air crash is lower than that of car crash. So, we try to believe the myth that aircraft is a safe vehicle. However, when this sort of air crash happens, our fear about airplane comes to life. (I think why the terrorism on September 11th was so shocking was partly for the same reason). On the plane, literary, there is no way to escape. You just have to wait for the time of death.

The film is not simply about the accident. Behind the accident, there are a lot of reasons, such as a conflict between employers and employees, cutting the expense on safety etc. Many of them are indirectly but surely connected to the accident.

The obvious message behind the story is to criticise JAL's policy emphasising the profits at the expense of safety and employees, but, from a more global point of view, it seems to me that JAL is just described as a symbolic company representing post-war Japan. It may be possible to understand the accident as a preview of bursting of the bubble economy a few years later.

A lot of political fights and competitions in the company are described, but all of these battles are so trivial, in front of the death on the airplane crash. In this sense, it is very interesting to see that the protagonist, Onchi, returned to Africa in the last scene. This scene reminds me of "Deep River" written by Endo Shusaka, in which people, after a lot of tragedies, are attracted to go to River Ganges.

Of course, this is just one possible interpretation. As many other great novels do, this gives a lot of other messages and connotations. After watching, I can't stop thinking about the ideas the film provides.