Bashing

Yuko was taken hostage in Iraq while working there as an aid volunteer. After she is released she comes back to her home town in Japan. But what meets her is not relief. The people around her treat her as a national disgrace. She is blamed for having helped another country instead of her own. Even having been taken and not killed is turned into something she is charged with. She cannot find work and people move away from her. The film tells that exclusion in a quiet, tight register. It also shows the part the press and public opinion played. Fusako Urabe takes the lead in Masahiro Kobayashi’s Japanese film of 2006.