Fukasaku's most personal expression of his ideas about Japan's postwar culture, this antiwar drama concentrates on how those who lived through or took part in the terrors of war now choose to survive. In 1971 a war widow, anxious to find the truth about her husband's last days, tracks down four surviving members of his regiment. Hoping to disprove accusations that he was a deserter, she instead uncovers a terrain of lies, half-truths, and cover-ups, with no one able or willing to give her a complete picture of reality. Her discoveries reveal the cruelty of the war's last moments, how inhuman war can make people; and also underscore how each veteran remembers-or forgets-the madness, massacres, and terrors. In this context Fukasaku again finds sympathy with those denied access to Japan's postwar boom. As one character says, "Now we have a class-A war criminal as Premier, yet the ordinary citizen can't rest." (JS)