The Face of Jizo

The film takes place over four days in the summer of 1948. The place is Hiroshima. Mitsué is one of those who survived there. She lives alone since the bomb. One day her father’s ghost turns up. He has learned that she has fallen in love. He tries to talk her into starting that new life. His insistence is warm and full of humour. Mitsué will not have it. What she says is heavy. People were killed in my place, she says. I do not have the right to be happy, she says. The film is about the weight a survivor carries. The bomb stays offstage and its effect is inside the room. The story is adapted from a play by Hisashi Inoue. Rie Miyazawa and Yoshio Harada appear in the ninety nine minute film, a Japanese production Kazuo Kuroki finished in 2004.