Review of Grave of the Fireflies / 火垂るの墓, directed by Isao Takahata

If you’re new here and found this blog through the mysterious powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I’m a dedicated reader and movie watcher who thought to turn this website into a little digital archive of sorts.

I was watching and reading so much that I wanted to keep track of it all, so I began blogging as a way to keep these books as memories somewhat forever.

That said, I recently fell into a period of unemployment, and this blog was a solace for me. Not only was it a way to make a little bit of money when there was nothing else coming my way really, but I found, after getting my finances in order, that I enjoyed sitting down to write blog posts when I had nothing else to do in my day.

If you like this review in the end, feel free to click around. This is my digital home, so I’m happy to have you here.

When I was in graduate school, getting an interdisciplinary degree, I actually specialized in colonial Korea. I did my master’s thesis on the women’s literature emerging during that period and the one immediately after it, when the Americans and Soviets were on the peninsula, but the nature of this work meant I had to get familiar with the empire of Japan.

I read a lot of academic and historical books on Japan and its empire during the war. Embracing Defeat is one of the most poignant books one can find in a library about what life was like in Japan immediately after its defeat in the war, and it’s a bit harrowing to get through, but very much worth it.

I’ve been wanting to watch this movie for the longest time, but procrastinated. It was made too easy when Netflix added it to its category of movies (at the time of reading this, I’m not sure if you’ll have the same option on the American version of Netflix), and I was funemployed, so I kind of just shrugged my shoulders and decided to go for it.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much with the context.

At the end of World War II, two orphaned siblings try to survive in a Japan that’s slowly crumbling.

This movie opens up in Kobe, right at the tail end of the war. The Americans are bombing the city in an attempt to get the situation under control, and most of the city has been enjoyed. One family, consisting of a mother and her two children, Seita and Setsuko, are waiting news for the patriarch, who serves in the Japanese navy.

But when the bombing gets too intense, the kids’ mother is severely burned and injured. Seita leaves his sister behind when he goes to the hospital, and he sees that his mother is going to die. She does, he does not tell his sister this to protect her, then they go to move in with their father's sister.

Seita digs up everything he buried before the bombings, and he gives his sister the hard candy he buried. Their aunt then takes their mother’s silk kimonos and tells Seita to sell them for rice, which causes Setsuko to have a meltdown because it belonged to their mother.

They get the rice, but then the food situation becomes even more dire. Their aunt doesn’t even give them the full amount of rice, despite it being their mother’s kimonos that provided the rice, and Setsuko keeps complaining of being hungry. When the aunt becomes bitter that the kids aren’t doing anything productive, Seita brings Setsuko away from the home and into an abandoned shelter.

The siblings start living there, capturing fireflies, but then the fireflies even die. Setsuko buries them and reveals to her brother that their aunt exposed to her that their mother is dead, and she doesn’t understand why the fireflies died so young too.

Reality hits quickly when the duo runs out of rice and food. A farmer tells Seita that they need to return to his aunt, and that if they continue living like this, the two of them will die. Seita then resorts to stealing food and resources during raids, but then a farmer catches him, beats the boy, and reports him to the police. The cops do nothing when they realize that he’s trying to feed his sister.

But Setsuko becomes sick and weary, and Seita takes her to the doctor. The doctor explains she has malnutrition, and only food can save her. Seita takes out all of the remaining money from his mother’s account, then learns Japanese has surrendered. He realizes his father is probably dead, but when he comes back home to Setsuko, she is dying.

He prepares food for her while she dies, then he cremates her and her doll. He puts the ashes in the candy tin, but it’s not even a month when Seita dies himself. He, too, died of malnutrition at a train station, and a janitor goes through his belongings while cleaning all the bodies of the deceased up.

He tosses the candy tin with the ashes into a field, and Setsuko’s spirit is set free. She’s joined by Seita and fireflies, and they board a train together. They arrive at a bench in the modern day version of Kobe, surrounded by fireflies, happy and healthy—unlike their real lives.

Overall Thoughts

This is a fairly simply movie at the end of the day, but it’s particularly crushing to me. These are real events that happened to so many during and after the war, as food and resources were so scarce as Japan’s military efforts were quickly being snuffed out by the Americans and its allies in the Pacific.

Choosing to depict it through the perspectives of kids adds another emotional element, as they have no one to rely on with the deaths of their parents. Their aunt isn’t exactly a charitable person, and I’m sure hard decisions were made by many families to reject orphans because of everything going on in the world.

I think this is a necessary watch at the end of the day. Go and see it if you have the chance and haven’t already. It’s movies like these that ultimately teach up empathy and how to make the world a better place.

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