MacArthur's Children

MacArthur's Children is a 1984 film about the occupation of a Japanese village by American soldiers at the end of World War II.

Directed by Masahiro Shinoda. Written by Tsutomu Tamura, based on the novel by Yū Aku.

On an island in the Pacific, in a world about to change…  (taglines)

Taglines

• On an island in the Pacific, in a world about to change…

About

• During the war I lived in the spirit that I would die for the emperor because the emperor was a god. When after the war, when it was announced the emperor was no longer a god, he was just a human being, it was a great shock to me and I felt that all the gods who had lived in Japan had all become mortal rather than being gods. Of course, this threw me into great despair. But then it led me to have a curiosity about dealing with this type of theme afterwards -- that perhaps people become gods, gods may crash down and become people. So that kind of fluidity is something that became of interest to me as a fifteen-year-old boy. There is a famous photograph of General MacArthur standing with the emperor and that made it absolutely clear that the emperor was no longer a god, and also it was obvious that that was conscious effort on the part of the Occupation to make that statement. And that was one of the reasons that the English title for the film was called MacArthur's Children. They were no longer the emperor's children.
  • Masahiro Shinoda, The Movie Experience: Conversation with actress Shima Iwashita and director Masahiro Shinoda/Shinoda on Directing (February 27, 1999)

Cast

• Takaya Yamauchi — Ryuta
• Yoshiyuki Omori — Saburo
• Shiori Sakura — Takeme "Mume" Hatano
• Masako Natsume — Komako
• Hideji Ōtaki — Ashigara
• Haruko Kato — Haru
• Ken Watanabe — Tetsuo
• Shima Iwashita — Tome
• Hiromi Go — Masao Nakai

External links

• MacArthur's Children quotes at the Internet Movie Database