Final part of epic drama about war and its effects upon human beings, follows the fortunes of the Godai family through the Sino-Japanese War through the Soviet Union's sudden attack upon Japanese troops at the end of the war.
Direction
Yamamoto's unflinching staging of Soviet invasion chaos.
Acting
Takizawa's patriarch crumble as empire collapses.
Production
Massive scale battles with 1973 practical craftsmanship.
Director
Satsuo Yamamoto
Osamu Takizawa
Yusuke Godai
Etsushi Takahashi
Eisuke Godai
Ruriko Asaoka
Yukiko Godai
Kinya Kitaoji
Shunsuke Godai
Sayuri Yoshinaga
Yoriko Godai
Shinsuke Ashida
Keisuke Godai
Kei Yamamoto
Kohei Shimegi
Mitsuko Mito
Otaki
Hideki Takahashi
Shintaro Tsuge
Junko Natsu
Toma
Ken Hatano
Takei Hiromichi
Yoshi Katō
Koichiro Amemiya
Shinjirō Ehara
Haiyama
Mizuho Suzuki
Shunichiro Tajima / Narrator
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of a rare 1970s Japanese studio trilogy confronting wartime guilt directly, when most cinema avoided explicit imperial criticism.
Satsuo Yamamoto filmed the Soviet invasion sequences with actual T-34 tanks loaned from a collector — nearly unprecedented for 1973 Japanese production.
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