Issue:
July 2025
Join the Film Committee …
Join us on Tuesday, July 7 at 6:30 pm for a sneak preview of the new film Army on the Tree, a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction tale with a powerful antiwar message. Drawn from historical events, the film follows two Japanese soldiers on Ie Island during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, who escape heavy fighting by climbing into a banyan tree - where they stay for the next two years, unaware that World War II has ended, out of fear and an exaggerated devotion to duty, climbing down only to forage for food. Though separated by rank and worldview, the two soldiers (played by Shinichi Tsutsumi and Yuki Yamada) gradually find themselves united in their absurd isolation, clinging to survival in the canopy above a war-scarred land. An adaptation of the legendary Komatsuza stage play of the same name, originally envisioned by acclaimed playwright and author Hisashi Inoue, Army on the Tree has been reimagined by Okinawan filmmaker Kazuhiro Taira to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War. Shot entirely in Okinawa - including in a specially planted banyan tree on Ie Island - the film grounds its surreal premise in the living memories of the actual survivors. Taira’s script draws directly from interviews with the families of the two soldiers on whom the story is based, and captures the quiet desperation and resilience of those left in war’s shadow. A haunting, human-scale allegory of national trauma, the film is marked by humor, pathos and nuanced sentiment. The director and actor Yuki Yamada will be on hand for the Q&A session after the screening. (Army on the Tree, Japan, 2025, 128 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles).
