In This Corner of the World
Sunao Katabuchi/MAPPA
Initial release: November 12, 2016
The most tragic word in any language is "if." "If only I had done this." "If only she had stayed." "If only I hadn't said that." Regret is part of the human condition, each of us weighed down by the burden of our choices. In This Corner of the World is a film full of regrets in a world marked by war and the atomic bomb.
1943, Kure, a major port town not far from Hiroshima, Japan. Small-town girl Suzu is a new bride in a (hastily) arranged marriage. She's moved in with her husband's family, and while there's an awkward period of adjustment (with her sister-in-law being fairly rude and domineering, though it's nothing personal in that she's Just Like That) she fits into the family pretty well. Suzu is an aspiring artist, juggling her duties as a wife and a wartime Imperial Japanese citizen with her desire to draw all that she sees. It's almost idyllic, but the war at this point is starting to turn against Japan.
Based on a manga by Hiroshima resident Fumiyo Kōno, In This Corner of the World is a tragedy masquerading as a slice of life film. The war looms large in the background; Suzu's niece is well-versed in the naval ships in the harbor. Military police are suspicious of Suzu's drawing skills, thinking it possible espionage. And as the Allies draw ever closer, American bombing campaigns take their toll, culminating in the death of Suzu's niece, the loss of her drawing hand, and finally, terribly, the destruction of Hiroshima, with all the suffering that followed.
Animated in Kōno's art style, In This Corner of the World depicts a world of soft, gentle beauty, but always with the hard edge of the war just beneath the surface. In scenes similar to The Wind Rises, sometimes Suzu sees the world in a painterly, almost impressionistic fashion, clouds of flak appearing in pinks and yellows, like flowers. Sometimes she just gets lost in her own little world (and the real world, too.) It gives her the sense of being neurodivergent, something her adopted family doesn't quite acknowledge in words, but
they certainly understand that she's a little bit different. But life goes on. She helps cook and clean, trying new substitutes and old techniques. She's happy, even telling her husband at one point that she hopes she doesn't meet anybody from her past, because she's worried it could make her wake up from her dream. It's only the time-delayed bomb that kills her niece which sends Suzu on the path of regrets; "I could have stood on this side," she laments, "I could have held her other hand." The whole country is leaden with regret. No one in the
family is more upset at the news the war has been lost than Suzu: all
that hardship, suffering and loss, and for what?
As with other World War II anime films, most notably that of Studio Ghibli, some might see In This Corner of the World as revisionist, Japan as a smol bean uwu victim of America targeting civilians. And to be sure, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes by any reasonable metric. But that's not the point of the film. The war looms large over the film, but America barely figures into it. Suzu unwittingly compares it to the weather; as her niece knows all the names of the ships in the harbor, so too does Suzu know the names of clouds, including the ominous anvil cloud that signals a coming storm. Imperial Japan does not escape criticism either, represented as it is in the military policemen who spend half a day screaming at the top of their lungs at the family because their artsy, ditzy daughter-in-law might be a spy. "She was a stranger before she was a wife," they say. What rot. In contrast, the American occupiers are depicted as friendly, if perhaps careless.
There are two versions of the film. The original theatrical release was in 2016; a couple years later there came a vastly expanded release, titled In This Corner (And Other Corners) of the World. At 168 minutes, it's currently the fourth longest animated film in the world. Its main difference is several new scenes regarding Rin, a young prostitute that Suzu befriends, unaware of Rin's connection to both her and her husband's pasts. This is the version I watched, on Crunchyroll (with some kinda crappy subs) and despite what you may think, it doesn't screw up the pacing at all: as a slice of life anime, albeit one with a darker tone, In This Corner of the World is necessarily episodic, and the additional scenes only add to the devastating nature of the film's finale.
In This Corner of the World can be a tough watch. And yet there's a hopefulness to it. Far from the lightless emotional depths of Grave of the Fireflies, Suzu's tale ends on a bittersweet high note. Despite all the loss, she means to rebuild her life. A sequence of a young girl whose mother died in the aftermath of the bombing evokes the horrifying spectacle of Barefoot Gen, but even this dirty, hungry child gets a new lease on life. And therein lies the real meaning of Suzu's story, of finding beauty in the world no matter how dark it gets, of pushing on through the worst life can throw at you. Life goes on, and we with it; we can be weighed down by our past, or we can forge a new path.