Taro Okamoto (1911-1996), one of Japan's most famous artists, traveled to Okinawa in 1959 and 1966. The reason for these trips was his journey to rediscover Japan, in search of his identity as a Japanese person. More than 60 years ago, Okamoto captured the "poignant tenderness of life" of the people, and concluded: "It is in Okinawa that we can find the lost. In Okinawa, I rediscovered myself for the first time." This documentary goes on a journey through Okinawa led by Okamoto himself, 50 years after Okinawa's reversion to Japan.

Leaning over a fence surrounding a U.S. military base, a woman is happily eating ice cream someone gave her. Those who know the status quo of Okinawa will realise that the ice cream symbolises both a promotion policy in compensation for the accepted bases and an image of tourism unilaterally imposed. The filmmaker herself plays the role of the woman who plays the role of (the people in) Okinawa itself (themselves) relying on such realities. Through simulationism, the film embodies the present tense of the local culture’s disappearance, transformation into tourist attractions and rapid homogenisation.

Leaning over a fence surrounding a U.S. military base, a woman is happily eating ice cream someone gave her. Those who know the status quo of Okinawa will realise that the ice cream symbolises both a promotion policy in compensation for the accepted bases and an image of tourism unilaterally imposed. The filmmaker herself plays the role of the woman who plays the role of (the people in) Okinawa itself (themselves) relying on such realities. Through simulationism, the film embodies the present tense of the local culture’s disappearance, transformation into tourist attractions and rapid homogenisation.

Original video

Original video

Original video

In something completely different to Woman at Graveyard, captured here in black and white we have a woman (Yamashiro herself), for some reason in tennis wear, dancing in frenzied fashion to club beats in front of a tomb in broad daylight. As her flying, fluttering miniskirt gleams palely in the dazzling sunlight, a sun visor casts a dark shadow over her face, in a video bursting with vitality that seems to brazenly declare, I will embrace even conflict and wounds and dead, and live with them all.

In something completely different to Woman at Graveyard, captured here in black and white we have a woman (Yamashiro herself), for some reason in tennis wear, dancing in frenzied fashion to club beats in front of a tomb in broad daylight. As her flying, fluttering miniskirt gleams palely in the dazzling sunlight, a sun visor casts a dark shadow over her face, in a video bursting with vitality that seems to brazenly declare, I will embrace even conflict and wounds and dead, and live with them all.

In 2010, while covering the issue of the "secret agreement" at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the author came across diplomatic documents relating to the reversion of Okinawa and was particularly impressed by the handwritten documents of Kazuo Chiba, then Director of the North American First Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, unlike ordinary bureaucrats, "stood out from the crowd and seemed unique". The name of Chiba subsequently appeared in a number of documents left by former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato's secretary, and the author became interested in finding out what kind of person he was.

After an American helicopter crashes into a classroom in Okinawa International University, student Ryuichi is compelled to write a report on a similar accident 52 years ago, in 1959, when an American jet fighter crashed into his grandfather's elementary school. He also plans to hold a peace concert.