Original subtitles

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?

English subtitles by Minako Yoshida