Daughter of Yan'an

I don’t know how to describe my sister. So instead of conveying with words, I decided to point a camera. The documentary 'Chizuru' was directed by Masakazu Akasaki of Rikkyo University's Department of Body Expression and Cinematic Arts in the School of Contemporary Psychology. This film, planned as his graduation project, is a fresh and gentle family story that continuously filmed Akasaki's sister, Chizuru, who has severe intellectual disabilities and autism, and their mother over the course of a year.

Naoshi is a hale old man of 79 from the Kesen district of Iwate Prefecture who has spent his whole life working as a woodcutter and carpenter. When the tsunami hit in March 2011, the wooden beams of his house didn’t even warp after water reached the second floor, although his son was washed away and drowned in the flood. Naoshi is determined to rebuild his house in the exact same spot, to live out his days in the place he was born and continue to honour his son’s memory.

Waichi OKUMURA, a 80- year-old WWII veteran and other 2600 ordered to stay on in China and fight along with the Chinese nationalists in the post-1945 civil war. Racing against the time, he powerfully campaigns to expose the secret military orders that kept them in China years after Japan had surrendered. His journey starts from the hot spot of Asia, the Yasukuni shrine. His quest takes him to China, where he had once become the killing machine, and finds truths about the Japanese military as well as himself under the long spell by it. During his journey, he meets a Chinese old lady who was kidnapped, raped, and confined by the Japanese soldiers. From her, he hears a story of human evils - and even forgiveness.