the lead, tamura, is played by the film's creator, tsukamoto shinya.ar movies focus on. the differing memories of the war in other parts of east asia. japanese movies tend to focus on the war in the pacific, rather than events like the massacre carried out by the invading japanese army in the then chinese capital in winter 1937 — an event known in the west as the rape of nanking. although japanese journalists and academics have worked extensively and honestly on this, it is not a subject that japanese filmmakers have dealt with very much. but their chinese counterparts have certainly put the subject at the heart of their treatment of the war on screen. writer—director lu chuan‘s city of life and death is a vision of unsparing cruelty as the japanese army forced chinese women into sexual slavery. and this film, the flowers of war, explores very similar themes through the eyes of a young american. in this scene, christian bale struggles to stop a cultivated japanese officer taking away the convent girls that he is protecting to a terrible fate. sir, they