Over on the KineJapan mailing list, one member recently visited Japan's controversial Yasukuni shrine to the war dead and noticed that there's an animated movie screening in the attached museum that was directed by Takashi Miike called A VOW FOR PEACE. The movie is split into two stories, one about the Yamaga Lantern festival and one about a guy named Matsuo Keiu who took his midget submarine on the warpath in Sydney Harbor during WWII. Another member of the list chimed in with the info that the digital effects were done by the special effects company run by Yamazaki Takashi, director of ALWAYS and ALWAYS 2.

No one's sure as to what the movie itself is like, since no one seems to have watched it yet, but there's info on it in Japanese floating around. Miike does work-for-hire projects the way most of us eat breakfast - almost every day and without thinking much about them. But the Yasukuni shrine does tend to have its own version of history and it would be interesting to see what version of history he's presenting in this movie.

(More info in Japanese)

(Photo of the back of the DVD)

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(More about Yasukuni Shrine)