Yoshitaka Asama (b. 1940) adapted Sakae Tsuboi's best-selling story for the second time-the first was the much-loved Twenty-four Eyes, directed by Keisuke Kinoshita in 1954. Set on an Inland Sea island, this beautiful color film affectionately portrays the warm relationship between a school teacher (played by the popular star Yuko Tanaka) and her twelve pupils over the course of the prewar, wartime, and postwar periods. The film also shows how militarism gradually infiltrated local education, forcing the teacher to resign as her liberalism clashes with the increasing harshness of school authorities. She sees her husband and students one by one drafted and killed off in the war, but she can do nothing but shed tears. The film's sweet sentimentalism may be interpreted as typical Japanese "passive hatred of the war," as opposed to active resistance.-Kyoko Hirano