In the late 1980s, a couple of years before the end of the Showa imperial era, a group of Japanese war veterans gathered for a reunion. The international military tribunal for the Far East, Tokyo in ruins, the black clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki – these were men who had lived through miseries that to baby boomers and their children must have seemed so long ago, so remote, as if they were the nightmare history of another country. At least, they did to me. After all, by the time the US TV broadcaster PBS filmed these old soldiers for its 1988 documentary series Japan, the country had reinvented itself: it was no longer a cash-strapped loser of a global war but a winner of the peace that followed.
The documentary’s most striking moment captures the veterans as they greet each other. “The bows they give… are carefully controlled, so as not to give offence,” says the narrator, as two men lower their heads. Footage of the exchange, which lasts a couple of seconds, is immediately repeated in slow motion. “The more junior of the two [in rank] bows first and then bows again, checking by a quick glance that his bow is the lower of the two.”
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