Cycling Chronicles: Landscapes the Boy Saw (2004) - full transcript
Cycling Chronicles:
Landscapes the Boy Saw
You only look upon us from afar.
And you pretend you know it all.
Why do you stay with he crowd?
That's none of your business.
You're just landscapes, all of you.
Go get lost.
"17-year-od killed his mother."
Did he really kill her?
Your mother is the one closest to you,
so you have to kill her,
if you can't kill yourself.
I wonder if I can go that far.
I don't think so.
We don't take things so seriously.
Oh, I guess this boy really did.
Yeah, with his homeroom teacher
pickng on him.
About his grades and all.
Then he had his teammates picking
on him for being lousy player.
My parents have such huge expectations
of me and...
keep nagging at me to do better.
I might just go over the edge
like he did.
Was his girl also at him?
With "you should be more positive,"
and that sort of stuff?
No, he didn't have a girl.
Unlike us, he didn't even
have friends he could talk to.
"A 16-year-old killed his other,"
He's tired with his baseball.
"A 16-year-old killed his other,"
There were tests and extra lesons.
He wasn't allowed to look tired.
"High school boy on a killing spree."
Too tired and poor to have girl.
Too worn out to masturbate.
"Another killing by a 17-year-old."
Washing you underpants afterwards.
Not a most dignified thing to do.
"Another high school killer?"
I agree.
"Another high school killer?"
When it's too much for me,
"Another high school killer?"
I might just do the same thing.
If they pressur me the way
they did with this guy, I will, too.
It's not simply anger or paying back.
"No longer goody-goody."
It's not simply anger or paying back.
"No longer goody-goody."
It's more "Why am I here?"
I don't know where I am heading for
in this life of mine.
I grow so confused and all.
and there's nothing I can do.
"A 6th-grader kills his mother."
They have molded you to their liking.
They think they can do as they like.
What?
"Allegedly murdered his mother."
They expect too much from us.
They expect too much from us.
I never asked them to give life to me.
We were just outcomes of
mom and dad having sex.
We are a sorry lot, aren't we?
They gave life to us so that
they could bring us up to be slaves.
I see what you mean.
Better go berserk than
slave your life away.
Now, I'll find a reason
to go berserk myself.
Where should I look?
Don't be an idiot!
You don't have to look for a reason.
It's everywhere.
Why is it so quiet here?
We are here. That's all.
Falling from the sky
or coming out of the ground,
we are quiet now, but we are staying
here only for moment.
I have no place to stop and stay at.
When fish cakes slide off the back
Of our Japanese teacher
Say, when my mother dies
Say, when I die
Des-des pair-pair
Des pair-pair
The blood stumbled
It stumbled in my shoes
While I ran over the bases
And I got a lump
That's quite ABCDE
While the coach yelled me
The blood stumbled again
Inside the lump
You see
Gyarados, Snorlax
Poliwag, Blastoise
Bottom of the 9th, two outs
Whith the bases loaded
I run and run blindly
I run and run and run
Hey, they'll catch up with you.
It's no use running.
I run because I wan to run.
How old are you?
Seventeen.
Seventeen?
Where did you come from?
From that way.
You're going that way?
Where are you going?
I don't know how far I'm going.
You don't know? Are you bicycling
all the way?
Yeah.
That must be tough.
Tough but at 17, you are
in the prime of your life.
Now, when I was 17...
I was 19 when the war ended.
And when I was 17...
At 17, I was obsessed with death.
About how I should die, you know.
During the war,
we were prepared to die
for the Emperor and the nation.
There's collection of letters
written by students...
who were killed during war,
and they wrote about...
noting but death, about
how they were prepared to die.
But the war turns you into a killer.
It's not about dying yourself.
It's about killing others.
And you kill not only enemy soldiers.
You kill women and children.
You kill people.
More often, rather than getting
killed, you kill.
Japan lost 3 million people
during the war.
But we also killed 20 million people
from Asia and the Allies.
That's war for you.
During the war, I thought a lot
about dying.
but I didn't think much about killing.
When I was...
examined for conscription,
I was suffering from TB.
And I was the only one
among the lot...
that was rated C.
I was rated C.
I was to repeat to the officer
that I was rated C.
And a C-rated was seldom called up.
So, I don't know what the army
was really like.
However, my brother...
He went to fight in Mongolia.
He was detained there after the war.
He never came home, but died
in Mongolia due to cold or hunger.
Well, quite recently.
I went to Mongolia.
They had this cemetery
on the outskirts of Ullan Bator.
More than 100 Japanese people
who died...
during detention are buried there.
I visited the cemetery.
I saw a monument there.
It was obviously set up there
by one of our Diet members.
Someone from my home country.
whose name I knew.
He was a minister once, too.
It was a wooden monument.
And it had a message,
written in black Chinese ink.
over the white surface.
"Rest in peace, you heroes of war."
"Our country has now revived
from the damages of war."
I was very angry
when I read this message.
During the war, people were led
to believe...
that they must die gladly...
for the Emperor and for the country.
But we lost the war.
People were detained in Mongolia.
Detention could have been
a way of revenge.
They my also have wanted to...
"brainwash" the soldiers
to give up their militarism.
Stalin wanted labor power...
for his development plans of
Siberia and Mongolia.
So he took Japanese officers and
soldiers...
who were captives of war
to those areas.
He did more than that.
He appealed to Korean people,
especially North Koreans.
His appeal was such...
that more than 100.000 of them,
all ordinary folks,
went to Siberia.
Of course, these people went
of their own will.
But the fact remains that
there are hundreds of thousands...
of Koreans still scattered
all over Siberia.
Recently, no, I would say,
not very recently,
Russia realized the mistake
of this Stalinish policy...
of detaining and bringing in
foreign population...
to reinforce labor power
for area developpment.
Anyway, when Japan lost the war,
the country fell to pieces,
and those soldiers only wished
to be home.
It was ony natural for them...
to yearn to be home
as soon as they could.
And, yearning, they died...
from hunger and cold.
And the message on the monument
told them to rest in peace,
because the country was now revived.
It implied that those people
were the stepping stones...
for Japan's postwar recovery.
What a utilitarian, materialistic
point of view!
The mesage really made me mad.
The war was over,
but the fact remains that...
we killed 20 million people
from Asia and the Allies.
Not only soldiers...
but also civilians including
women and children.
We had to think it over.
Speaking of war responsibility,
they all died, believing
and actually saying that...
they were dying for the Emperor.
Yet we couldn't bring down
the Emperor system.
The system was...
jointly sustined...
by the U.S. occupation forces...
and japanese politicians.
The United States was afraid that...
the overthrowing
of the Emperor system...
might cause riots in Japan.
With the system maintained,
the Japanese government accepted...
the new Constitution which states
that the Emperor is but symbol.
They argued that it was
"imposed" on them by the U.S.A.
However, the clauses about...
anti-war stance,
unarmed neutrality,
and human right were
all hollowed out subsequently,
with a lot of verbal trimmings.
During the war, we were brought up
under the national war cry:
"Sacrifice yourself for the nation"
We were led to believe that
we all had to live and die...
for the Emperor and the nation.
I believed that I must be prepared
to die for this cause.
I really did.
When we lost the war,
the era of personal greed set in.
"Do what you want and
seek your own interests."
And we no longer thought of others.
In other words,
most of old veterans of war,
those wo actually went to war,
died without telling anyone,
not even to their own family,
about their guilt...
for having killed
women and children...
in China and Southeast Asia.
The LDP politicians
have been trying...
to create and maintain a nation,
which is as close as possible...
to an Imperial nation.
They have employed a lot of...
verbal deceptions to that end.
All these have messed up
human relationships.
The militarist regime has turned
into a Democratic country,
But the resulting society is
strangely unstable.
and extraordinarily hollow.
And the current Cabinet has
started to think...
that it can send
Japanese military forces anywhere,
even to some war that was
initiated by the U.S.A.
Of course,
being young is very important,
and you're in that age.
But it is also
a very difficult period in life.
Your youth must not stand
upon someone else's pain.
Respect others, and only then
you can relate to them.
Whether it's a romantic relationship
or friendship.
Then, only then, your youth can come
to its full bloom.
I have a son.
He is over forty now,
but when he was around twenty,
he used to say,
"Boy, you lived during a nice time, Dad."
"You were young when society was..."
"going through a radical change,
after the war and all."
"We don't have that any more."
"We have everything predetermined
for us."
"We have no choice."
And there's some truth
in what he said.
Because you live in a society
that stands on political deceptions,
it is hard for you
to feel gratified...
about being young in it.
That must be extremely hard...
for all of you in your generation.
But, after all is said,
this going far on your bicycle,
it's something you can do
ony when you're young.
So do it. Really, do it.
Hey, boy!
Come to the fire.
I'm not afraid of being a poacher.
But what if my boat goes down
in a storm?
Being a poacher, I can't possibly
call the rescuers.
We always break the rules.
Otherwise, we can't live.
The government wants us to
follow the fishing agreement.
So, if we stick to
our taditional ways,
we are branched poachers.
I must tend to the net, engine,
and fridge.
There's also shopping to be done.
I seem to have more and more things
to tend to.
My old fisherman's tips are
no longer useful.
I agree with you.
We can keep our fisherman's pride
by being angry.
Our anger shows that we are
fit and fine.
Okay, let's get angry, drink,
and complain.
In our time-honored fisherman's way.
It's a good idea, isn't it?
Why do you stay...
with the crowd?
Mom, where's God?
God? On top of the clouds, I guess.
How come he doesn't fall off?
Oh, I don't know. It's just a lie
ancient people thought up.
Say, when my mother dies
Say, when I die
Des-des pair-pair
Des pair-pair
Hey, lad. wait.
Lad.
Please!
What's the matter?
I sprained my ankle.
Get on my back.
Why, thank you.
You're very kind.
Which way?
Over there.
Oh, sorry.
Hey?
The way's blocked.
They don't come this far
to remove the snow.
You have to go round that way.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
It's so nice of you.
I was about your age.
I was 16 when I came to Japan.
Once I was here, they made me work
every day.
Then the war was over, and
they let us free. I was so happy.
But after all that hard work,
I could no longer bear a child.
But I married a man
from my own country.
but he sailed home to Korea
from the port of Niigata.
Yes, it is so
Now I know
It really must be
Our 500 years of
Agony and bitterness
Why am I still here
Living?
Is it some kind of
A joke?
Where am I going?
What did the boy see?
Landscapes the Boy Saw
You only look upon us from afar.
And you pretend you know it all.
Why do you stay with he crowd?
That's none of your business.
You're just landscapes, all of you.
Go get lost.
"17-year-od killed his mother."
Did he really kill her?
Your mother is the one closest to you,
so you have to kill her,
if you can't kill yourself.
I wonder if I can go that far.
I don't think so.
We don't take things so seriously.
Oh, I guess this boy really did.
Yeah, with his homeroom teacher
pickng on him.
About his grades and all.
Then he had his teammates picking
on him for being lousy player.
My parents have such huge expectations
of me and...
keep nagging at me to do better.
I might just go over the edge
like he did.
Was his girl also at him?
With "you should be more positive,"
and that sort of stuff?
No, he didn't have a girl.
Unlike us, he didn't even
have friends he could talk to.
"A 16-year-old killed his other,"
He's tired with his baseball.
"A 16-year-old killed his other,"
There were tests and extra lesons.
He wasn't allowed to look tired.
"High school boy on a killing spree."
Too tired and poor to have girl.
Too worn out to masturbate.
"Another killing by a 17-year-old."
Washing you underpants afterwards.
Not a most dignified thing to do.
"Another high school killer?"
I agree.
"Another high school killer?"
When it's too much for me,
"Another high school killer?"
I might just do the same thing.
If they pressur me the way
they did with this guy, I will, too.
It's not simply anger or paying back.
"No longer goody-goody."
It's not simply anger or paying back.
"No longer goody-goody."
It's more "Why am I here?"
I don't know where I am heading for
in this life of mine.
I grow so confused and all.
and there's nothing I can do.
"A 6th-grader kills his mother."
They have molded you to their liking.
They think they can do as they like.
What?
"Allegedly murdered his mother."
They expect too much from us.
They expect too much from us.
I never asked them to give life to me.
We were just outcomes of
mom and dad having sex.
We are a sorry lot, aren't we?
They gave life to us so that
they could bring us up to be slaves.
I see what you mean.
Better go berserk than
slave your life away.
Now, I'll find a reason
to go berserk myself.
Where should I look?
Don't be an idiot!
You don't have to look for a reason.
It's everywhere.
Why is it so quiet here?
We are here. That's all.
Falling from the sky
or coming out of the ground,
we are quiet now, but we are staying
here only for moment.
I have no place to stop and stay at.
When fish cakes slide off the back
Of our Japanese teacher
Say, when my mother dies
Say, when I die
Des-des pair-pair
Des pair-pair
The blood stumbled
It stumbled in my shoes
While I ran over the bases
And I got a lump
That's quite ABCDE
While the coach yelled me
The blood stumbled again
Inside the lump
You see
Gyarados, Snorlax
Poliwag, Blastoise
Bottom of the 9th, two outs
Whith the bases loaded
I run and run blindly
I run and run and run
Hey, they'll catch up with you.
It's no use running.
I run because I wan to run.
How old are you?
Seventeen.
Seventeen?
Where did you come from?
From that way.
You're going that way?
Where are you going?
I don't know how far I'm going.
You don't know? Are you bicycling
all the way?
Yeah.
That must be tough.
Tough but at 17, you are
in the prime of your life.
Now, when I was 17...
I was 19 when the war ended.
And when I was 17...
At 17, I was obsessed with death.
About how I should die, you know.
During the war,
we were prepared to die
for the Emperor and the nation.
There's collection of letters
written by students...
who were killed during war,
and they wrote about...
noting but death, about
how they were prepared to die.
But the war turns you into a killer.
It's not about dying yourself.
It's about killing others.
And you kill not only enemy soldiers.
You kill women and children.
You kill people.
More often, rather than getting
killed, you kill.
Japan lost 3 million people
during the war.
But we also killed 20 million people
from Asia and the Allies.
That's war for you.
During the war, I thought a lot
about dying.
but I didn't think much about killing.
When I was...
examined for conscription,
I was suffering from TB.
And I was the only one
among the lot...
that was rated C.
I was rated C.
I was to repeat to the officer
that I was rated C.
And a C-rated was seldom called up.
So, I don't know what the army
was really like.
However, my brother...
He went to fight in Mongolia.
He was detained there after the war.
He never came home, but died
in Mongolia due to cold or hunger.
Well, quite recently.
I went to Mongolia.
They had this cemetery
on the outskirts of Ullan Bator.
More than 100 Japanese people
who died...
during detention are buried there.
I visited the cemetery.
I saw a monument there.
It was obviously set up there
by one of our Diet members.
Someone from my home country.
whose name I knew.
He was a minister once, too.
It was a wooden monument.
And it had a message,
written in black Chinese ink.
over the white surface.
"Rest in peace, you heroes of war."
"Our country has now revived
from the damages of war."
I was very angry
when I read this message.
During the war, people were led
to believe...
that they must die gladly...
for the Emperor and for the country.
But we lost the war.
People were detained in Mongolia.
Detention could have been
a way of revenge.
They my also have wanted to...
"brainwash" the soldiers
to give up their militarism.
Stalin wanted labor power...
for his development plans of
Siberia and Mongolia.
So he took Japanese officers and
soldiers...
who were captives of war
to those areas.
He did more than that.
He appealed to Korean people,
especially North Koreans.
His appeal was such...
that more than 100.000 of them,
all ordinary folks,
went to Siberia.
Of course, these people went
of their own will.
But the fact remains that
there are hundreds of thousands...
of Koreans still scattered
all over Siberia.
Recently, no, I would say,
not very recently,
Russia realized the mistake
of this Stalinish policy...
of detaining and bringing in
foreign population...
to reinforce labor power
for area developpment.
Anyway, when Japan lost the war,
the country fell to pieces,
and those soldiers only wished
to be home.
It was ony natural for them...
to yearn to be home
as soon as they could.
And, yearning, they died...
from hunger and cold.
And the message on the monument
told them to rest in peace,
because the country was now revived.
It implied that those people
were the stepping stones...
for Japan's postwar recovery.
What a utilitarian, materialistic
point of view!
The mesage really made me mad.
The war was over,
but the fact remains that...
we killed 20 million people
from Asia and the Allies.
Not only soldiers...
but also civilians including
women and children.
We had to think it over.
Speaking of war responsibility,
they all died, believing
and actually saying that...
they were dying for the Emperor.
Yet we couldn't bring down
the Emperor system.
The system was...
jointly sustined...
by the U.S. occupation forces...
and japanese politicians.
The United States was afraid that...
the overthrowing
of the Emperor system...
might cause riots in Japan.
With the system maintained,
the Japanese government accepted...
the new Constitution which states
that the Emperor is but symbol.
They argued that it was
"imposed" on them by the U.S.A.
However, the clauses about...
anti-war stance,
unarmed neutrality,
and human right were
all hollowed out subsequently,
with a lot of verbal trimmings.
During the war, we were brought up
under the national war cry:
"Sacrifice yourself for the nation"
We were led to believe that
we all had to live and die...
for the Emperor and the nation.
I believed that I must be prepared
to die for this cause.
I really did.
When we lost the war,
the era of personal greed set in.
"Do what you want and
seek your own interests."
And we no longer thought of others.
In other words,
most of old veterans of war,
those wo actually went to war,
died without telling anyone,
not even to their own family,
about their guilt...
for having killed
women and children...
in China and Southeast Asia.
The LDP politicians
have been trying...
to create and maintain a nation,
which is as close as possible...
to an Imperial nation.
They have employed a lot of...
verbal deceptions to that end.
All these have messed up
human relationships.
The militarist regime has turned
into a Democratic country,
But the resulting society is
strangely unstable.
and extraordinarily hollow.
And the current Cabinet has
started to think...
that it can send
Japanese military forces anywhere,
even to some war that was
initiated by the U.S.A.
Of course,
being young is very important,
and you're in that age.
But it is also
a very difficult period in life.
Your youth must not stand
upon someone else's pain.
Respect others, and only then
you can relate to them.
Whether it's a romantic relationship
or friendship.
Then, only then, your youth can come
to its full bloom.
I have a son.
He is over forty now,
but when he was around twenty,
he used to say,
"Boy, you lived during a nice time, Dad."
"You were young when society was..."
"going through a radical change,
after the war and all."
"We don't have that any more."
"We have everything predetermined
for us."
"We have no choice."
And there's some truth
in what he said.
Because you live in a society
that stands on political deceptions,
it is hard for you
to feel gratified...
about being young in it.
That must be extremely hard...
for all of you in your generation.
But, after all is said,
this going far on your bicycle,
it's something you can do
ony when you're young.
So do it. Really, do it.
Hey, boy!
Come to the fire.
I'm not afraid of being a poacher.
But what if my boat goes down
in a storm?
Being a poacher, I can't possibly
call the rescuers.
We always break the rules.
Otherwise, we can't live.
The government wants us to
follow the fishing agreement.
So, if we stick to
our taditional ways,
we are branched poachers.
I must tend to the net, engine,
and fridge.
There's also shopping to be done.
I seem to have more and more things
to tend to.
My old fisherman's tips are
no longer useful.
I agree with you.
We can keep our fisherman's pride
by being angry.
Our anger shows that we are
fit and fine.
Okay, let's get angry, drink,
and complain.
In our time-honored fisherman's way.
It's a good idea, isn't it?
Why do you stay...
with the crowd?
Mom, where's God?
God? On top of the clouds, I guess.
How come he doesn't fall off?
Oh, I don't know. It's just a lie
ancient people thought up.
Say, when my mother dies
Say, when I die
Des-des pair-pair
Des pair-pair
Hey, lad. wait.
Lad.
Please!
What's the matter?
I sprained my ankle.
Get on my back.
Why, thank you.
You're very kind.
Which way?
Over there.
Oh, sorry.
Hey?
The way's blocked.
They don't come this far
to remove the snow.
You have to go round that way.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
It's so nice of you.
I was about your age.
I was 16 when I came to Japan.
Once I was here, they made me work
every day.
Then the war was over, and
they let us free. I was so happy.
But after all that hard work,
I could no longer bear a child.
But I married a man
from my own country.
but he sailed home to Korea
from the port of Niigata.
Yes, it is so
Now I know
It really must be
Our 500 years of
Agony and bitterness
Why am I still here
Living?
Is it some kind of
A joke?
Where am I going?
What did the boy see?