Yasukuni the Movie Plays to a Packed Theater

Yasukuni is coming to 23 theaters across the country, one of which may be close to you.

According to this Yomiuri report, the movie opened to a packed crowd in trendy Shibuya (if, unsurprisingly for a documentary, in an 129-132-seat theater used for small-bore films), and no protesters were to be seen. The Sankei reports that all the first-day tickets were quickly sold out, Perhaps the private screening held for some right-wing leaders (no, not the one for the Diet members, in case you wondered) cleared the air, in the same way Western criticism of Shintaro Ishihara’s drama on the final days of Kamikaze pilots died down once the film opened. Indeed, the tributes page features a couple of plugs (one a little iffy) from nationalist/right-wing figures*. The veteran journalist Soichiro Tawara also endorses it, giving it the ultimate mainstream imprimatur.

*… as well as well as a blurb from this Taiwanese “ero-terrrorist” blogger. No, seriously. She also posted on the movie on her own blog here. There is a serious, very reasonable dialogue going on there among the people commenting from all sides, totally unlike the crap you cannot see too little of that is found in the 2 Channel chat rooms.