The Story Behind Building the Battleship Yamato: an Intellectually Stimulating Movie Choice for FReepers

IMDB Movies ^ | June 2021 Release | Takashi Yamazaki, Director

[poconopundit]

This weekend my wife and I watched a feature length Japanese movie on TV Japan entitled The Great War of Archimedes, a movie that has nothing to do with Archimedes, and there's actually only one -- terrific -- intense battle simulation scene in the flick.

I'll do my best here to convince you FReepers that this is a great choice to watch (in English subtitles) -- and try to not give the plot away.

What the Movie IS and IS NOT:

• It is NOT a War movie, though the first few minutes of his movie show a highly realistic and thrilling battle at sea. The director of this flick also directed Godzilla, and there are some spectacular special imaging effects at key moments.

• The closest parallel to well-known movies is A Beautiful Mind starring Russell Crowe. Yet, I think Archimedes does a far better job of showing what genius is made of.

• It IS a guy's flick. Besides a group of geishas, there are scant few women who appear in the film. Yet, the two young male stars are heart-throbs for Japanese women -- and the 50-ish actor who plays Admiral Yamamoto has that rare shibui quality, a refined gravity (Sean Connery) that women find attractive in certain older men -- but cannot find in a young man.

• It IS one of those movies that attracts a number of great Japanese actors. The older guys who play the admirals, ship builders, and architects are well-loved actors and among the finest older actors in Japan.

• It IS a movie that touches on themes that FReepers will eat up: government corruption, war history, war strategy, intrigue/infighting, deep state stuff, the glory of engineering, cost analysis, and human mathematical/thinking power as opposed to computer analytics.

• It IS a movie with some humorous moments as the young and old "rascals" duel with each other with arguments, dirty tricks, and amusing situations. Rigid military rules collide with the brainpower that can only be gotten from an eccentric mathematical savant.

• It IS a fictional Japanese movie about war preparations that fully exposes the group think and failed strategy that destroyed the Japanese nation in World War II. And it's kind of remarkable the Japanese could produce a movie that exposes that failure.

[rlmorel]

"...Therefore, these plates are the only warship armor plates that could not be completely penetrated by any gun ever put on a warship when installed leaning back at 45°, as they were in the actual turrets!!! Even to completely hole the plate all the way through at that inclination requires a brand new 16"/50 Mark 7 or German 38cm SK C/34 gun at point-blank range firing the latest versions of their respective AP projectiles; it might be cracked at a lower striking velocity, but no hole put entirely through it! And they said guns had completely overmatched all armor - not so!!!

Very cool...I did not know that! Wow!

[Captain Walker]

I'm with VDH on this.

From everything I've read, it's clear that Yamamoto felt that the only chance Japan had of preventing US interference in their plans for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was to put the US in a position where a negotiated settlement would be preferable to combat, and that the best means to do this would be to inflict a surprise strike in the hopes of crippling the US Pacific Fleet.

Most of those in his circle were telling him that his idea was lunacy; unfortunately, they couldn't propose a better option for engaging the US if the US decided to take on Japan.

[dpetty121263]

I saw another Navy report the Belt armored steel was inferior on latter built Japanese Battleships due to dirt being in the metal.

[Captain Walker]

It is my understanding that Yamamoto told the Imperial Staff that attacking the United States would be a disastrous blunder because he had studied and traveled throughout the US as a junior naval officer and saw what we were capable of industrially. But they told him to plan for attack anyway and he dutifully did so.

I think he was pushing pretty hard for this attack, even though he was well aware that Japan stood no realistic chance against the US if he failed.

I think it's popular in American lore to portray the Japanese as either stupid or naive with regard to their decision to attack Pearl Harbor, and there is simply no evidence for this.

Japan's plans for Southeast Asia were simply never going to be accepted by the US, and they were well aware that conflict was almost inevitable. The only question was which approach held the most realistic chance of success.

And yes, Yamamoto had studied in the US; as I pointed out earlier, he also predicted that if we could reach Japan with our bombers, we would simply drop incendiaries on them. (Japan's vulnerability to incendiary bombs was no secret to anyone in the run-up to the Second World War.) He was quite prescient about what the US was capable of, both morally and militarily.

[central_va]

Fast forward to today where Free Traitors™ gave everything to the Chinese. Blood money.

[central_va]

he had studied and traveled throughout the US as a junior naval officer and saw what we were capable of industrially.

If today A Chinese Naval officer did the same what would he report back?

[central_va]

IJN Fleet carriers were named after the major islands in the Japanese archipelago.

All, Here is a great website that documents the IJN:

Imperial Japanese Navy Page

[Yardstick]

Yes, good details there — thanks!

[higgmeister]

Toshiro Mifune's portrayal of Admiral Yamamoto would have been the best ever if his voice had not been dubbed by Paul Frees of "The Time Machine" talking rings fame.   Oh yeah, and the voice of the alien in "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers."

[poconopundit]

It’s a good story, rlmorel. One time when my destroyer, the USS Turner Joy DD-951, was operating in Japanese waters, I got a chance to spend a few days at sea on a Japanese destroyer, who I boarded in Yokosuka.

But I don’t have any remarkable differences. The food was different. Maybe the sailors were more serious. The head (bathroom) was attached to a holding tank, so the smell of that was pretty vile. U.S. warships empty straight into the ocean.

I knew the game of Japanese Go, so I played that a couple times with the ship’s captain — and he showed me I was a mere amateur.

My brother in law is a chief petty officer in the Japanese maritime self-defense force, their Navy. He was a bit different because he was a great marathon runner and ran representing JMSDF.

[poconopundit]

Great, RandallFlagg. Glad to hear your report.

[poconopundit]

Love it, SunkenCiv. In the writing business (which I’m in), the “experts” say, “keep it short and to the point.”

But that’s not what the readers want. Readers love it when a writer rambles seemingly off-point to something interesting or humorous. Indeed, the greatest of all American writers, men like H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain would often let go of the steamboat’s helm and drift off course a while. Isn’t this where FR’s true value lies?

NOTE: I’m now reading Mencken’s Notes on Democracy and every page contains gems of insight mixed with his signature rascality.

Actually, FR is much better than a live meeting or Zoom call with the same people it forces each FReeper to spend time “working” their off-the-cuff remarks.

Which is to say, I love your ramblings. Much learned. Don’t know if anybody has written a book about the transformation of America that World War II brought, but it’s one helluva story.

[poconopundit]

Agree. Toshiro Mifune was better utilized in Red Sun with Charles Bronson and Ursula Andrews.

https://www.google.com/search?q=movie+red+sun+with+bronson+and+mifune&tbm=isch

[rlmorel]

I am in agreement with poconopundit, SunkenCiv...but I admit, it is because I don’t use things like Twitter that force you to make your point in a hopefully pithy and memorable way. I only really started texting a few years back.

It just doesn’t translate for me, but then again, the limit of my use of acronyms for communication has largely been LOL, IMO, and OMG!

So thanks. I like the detail.

[SunkenCiv]

Strunk: Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!

(good advice, but then he said it three times)

[SunkenCiv]

:^)

[GOPJ]

You’re a good writer too pundit... that said I learn from Civ too. interesting folks here...

:)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks GOPJ.

[higgmeister]

I really enjoyed watching Red Sun a few months ago.   Just between you and me, I subscribed to The Criterion Channel on ROKU years ago so I could have all of the Zatoichi films and Akira Kurosawa with Toshiro Mifune films only a remote away.

[Does so]

“At Dawn We Slept” was my Dad’s favorite book.

A VP-17 Black-Cat PBY Pilot in the Pacific (with “Enlisted Pilot” Lou Conter in the right seat), he kept this text next to his favorite chair until he died—aged 97.