Osanai Haruo

Follow-up to 'The People of Sunagawa'

The inhabitants of Cape Muroto in Kochi Prefecture depend on fishing for their living, but have no fishing port in their village and so use the port of Uraga in Kanagawa Prefecture as their main port. 22 crew members in a wooden boat of less than 100t fish for tuna in rough seas, 4,500 miles away from home near Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean, where hydrogen bomb experiments are being carried out. The film focuses on an 18-year-old trainee and his labors aboard the fishing boat for two months, precisely reflecting the fisherman’s daily life.

At a time when the USSR and the USA fervently vied to develop nuclear arms, the mass media buzzed with terms inspired by nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll such as the “Daigo Fukuryu Maru Incident,” the “ash of death,” “radioactive tuna,” and “radioactive rain,” and nuclear testing continued, Japan, the only nation to have suffered an atom-bomb attack, felt massive anxiety. “What is the radioactive ash of death?” “What effect does it have on living creatures?” Against the background of the era, the film scientifically describes the terrors of radioactivity with the cooperation of many scientists, physicians and research institutions.

Early pinku.