<h1 class="title__title__e436dd806a uc-nf-fontsize-change-dom" > talk about the movie "Home Road": Where is home, how to go home? </h1>
If one day, our homes are destroyed, do we know how to get home? This question may seem contradictory, but it is also a very real question for the Japanese after experiencing Trinity. The movie "Home Road" (2014) explores this problem. "How to Get Home" borrows from how Japan should comfort the devastated country in the face of the worst nuclear accident in history? As an ordinary civilian, how can you view this incident? How should humanity as a whole learn its lessons? In this regard, the film may not come up with some real answers, but it is of great significance in causing reflection and advocacy. When asked "how to get home", the first thing we have to ask is: Where is home? Is it a home devastated by disaster? Is it a temporary house arranged by the government? Is it the home of the future that does not know the substance and has the hope of settling down? Overnight, countless houses were zoned into the disaster zone, leaving them alone within the blockade line to face the aftermath of the disaster. Just like the movie protagonist Jiro returning from Tokyo to his hometown of Fukushima," jike, when he is advised to leave by the police, he just stubbornly says, "This is where I was born, so should I be punished for this?" I'm not going to go." Japanese people who leave their hometowns to develop in other cities will call their home in the countryside "real home", that is, the real home. Today' real home is a home that cannot be returned, and the paradox is really indescribable.
And that tin box-like temporary house, can it be called a writer? In the film, Jiro's mother, Noboriko, and her brother Soichi become refugees after the disaster and have to move to a temporary house. Suffering from cognitive impairment, Noboriko once could not recognize the unit where she lived, and she could not find a house to enter with a key, and the helplessness and anxiety were not limited to people with this disease. Then the daughter-in-law asked about the unopened cardboard boxes in the room, and zongyi said, "How can such a place be a home?" Implicit is resentment over homelessness and revival arrangements. As for the unknowable future of residence, there is no clear description in the film, and there seems to be no conclusion in reality – even if they move to other cities, the victims are still subject to various forms of discrimination. Where can I fit in? None of the above three options seem to be the answer.
So how do you get home? In other words, after the disaster, how should those who survive face the chaos and continue to live? Is it a return to the past, or a revival that has begun again? The film touches on it in a way that is different from the previous disasters, and seems to reflect the particularity of this disaster - after all, whether Trinity is an unfortunate natural disaster or a man-made disaster is still controversial and still indelible scars for the victims.
As a country threatened by nature, the Japanese have been prepared for it since the beginning, both physically and mentally. Physically, there is evacuation training that is included in the regular curriculum, while spiritually, there is a view of disasters that is not lacking in Japanese culture. One of the common ideas is to treat disasters as doomed and powerless events. Some people die, some people live, both are arranged by fate, not within the reach of manpower. The Japanese understand the fragility of life, that the forces of nature can easily take away everything from man, for impermanence. And because of the animism, human beings cannot resist supernatural forces, and can only accept fate and coexist with Z. But for this disaster, are these traditional values enough to respond and soothe people's hearts? The old view of disasters addressed the inevitable challenges of nature, but with the advancement of science and technology, these disasters have gradually become predictable and prepared. More importantly, the Trinity Disaster was a natural earthquake and tsunami, coupled with a leak from an artificially built nuclear power plant, a combination of natural and man-made disasters. Can one still comfort the soul with the theory of fate and the concept of impermanence? Is it still possible to live positively without blaming anyone?
The voices of the victims who are not heard – "As if nothing happened" – is described very bluntly in the film. The total was a farmer, and after the disaster, he lost his livelihood, so he went to the police station to report the case and asked, "The land is polluted by them, the cattle are killed by them, and the rice cannot be imported, so why can't they be convicted?" The policeman asked, "Didn't you receive compensation?" Soichi replied indignantly, "It's not a question of money!" He would rather keep fields that could no longer be cultivated than in exchange for real money. Even later, when a friend introduced him to Aizu to reclaim, he always said, "It's like nothing happened?" , fiercely declined the other party's invitation. Such an approach, which one may suspect, is nothing more than the creation of the film's idealization of reality. But in fact, the idea of Zongyi never left the land, and after Trinity, there were many cases of peasants committing suicide because they were forced to abandon farmland and destroy livestock. In the film, Soichi and Jiro's peasant friends also commit suicide because of the harsh reality, leaving a last word: "I'm sorry, please forgive me." Because farming is a part of life and the meaning of survival; because the land is a heritage passed down from generation to generation, it is impossible to guard the field and shame the ancestors; because every grass and tree has a spirit, and the crops instinctively and meaningfully transform into human nutrients can only be discarded meaninglessly. This "I'm sorry" is actually a rather sharp accusation. The victims of the disaster had to abandon their farmland and destroy their livestock, which was equivalent to personally destroying the corpses, "as if nothing had happened." This cruelty and misery are unprecedented–a mere natural disaster will not require you to be an executioner. When there is no logical reason for fate, there are countless overlapping big hands behind it, it seems that a sentence of impermanence of life is no longer enough to respond to a special disaster.
From erasing memories of disasters to nurturing a new future, Jiro has been in Tokyo since he was in high school, as opposed to his brother, who remained in his hometown and was forced to move out until disaster struck. After the trinity incident, his family moved away due to the disaster countermeasures method, and Jiro secretly returned to his hometown of Fukushima. Saying that it is secret, first, because of the estrangement from home and family for many years, and second, because it is the hometown and has become a quarantine area prohibited by law, it can only sneak back to Fukushima. When Jiro's old acquaintance Kitamura asks him why he came back, Jiro says that he came back because no one was here, because the rice fields, farmland, cattle, etc. are all calling him home. Jiro takes Kitamura to the field, and the two talk while rummaging through the dirt. Kitamura thought, "If you put on a face that nothing happened, can you act as if nothing happened?" Jiro replied, "Since no one is here, it can be assumed that nothing has happened." This is a satire on the authorities' handling methods, and it is also Jiro's irony of himself. What Jiro wants to think of as "nothing has happened" is both a disaster and his painful, unfulfilled life. However, Jiro, who had wanted to live in no man's land before returning to Fukushima, slowly realized that people cannot survive alone. He then thought about living with his mother: "I want to take my mother home, I want to be a new person." It is better for the land to be inhabited by people than for a man to die alone." Jiro returned to his ruined and unexplained hometown in order to reorganize his life and be a seed to nurture his homeland and his future. To live with others is to not be willing to let no one see the trajectory of their own life, a self that regains strength and is ready to start a new life.