(This article was originally produced by Morrowind Wood)
Hello, hello everyone, today I will talk about a comfort women-themed film "Ghost Town", a history that cannot be forgotten.
The film opens with bright sunshine, gentle singing, a quiet and comfortable small village, daily play with friends, and learning Japanese at school, but they don't know what it means. On this day, Zheng Min and his little friend played a game and bet, won the little friend's amulet, and when he returned home, he was known to his mother and beat him. At night, my mother talked about the Japanese soldiers arresting people everywhere as soldiers, afraid that my father would be arrested, fortunately, Zheng Min was small, it should be fine, and stayed up late to make a talisman for Zheng Min.
The next day, Masatoshi chased butterflies in the field and walked around, returning home to see the Japanese soldiers, and her mother gave Masatoshi a look to let her leave, but Masatoshi did not see it, and Masatoshi was seen by the Japanese soldiers again and wanted to be taken away. Before leaving, her mother gave Zhengmin an amulet and instructed Zhengmin to remember his hometown address and come back, and finally Zhengmin was taken away by the Japanese army. Jeong-min is asked to board a train full of captured girls who naively think they are going to work in a shoe factory.
Jeong-min met Young-hee in the car, became a good friend, and after several turns, finally arrived at the comfort station, where he was asked how old he was by the steward, in order to protect himself, Jeong-min deliberately underreported a year, but it turned out to be the beginning of a nightmare. Jeong-min was taken for a physical examination, then washed up, and taken to a compartment in the comfort station. At this time, a Japanese soldier came in, and after Zheng Min saw it, he shouted in Japanese, hoping to be released, but these Japanese soldiers had no humanity at all, directly stunned Zheng Min, and raped her.
Here, the same tragedy is staged in each compartment, and outside the proposed compartment, there is a long line of Japanese soldiers, and these Japanese soldiers are like going to the toilet, one after another. And the dead girls were on the side of the road, and a Japanese soldier saw these corpses and actually thought of taking off the cheongsam on the corpse and wearing it for a young girl, and this girl was Chinese, more painful than physical bullying, more painful than the contempt for your country, trampling on your dignity.
On the other side, Masatoshi met a kind Japanese soldier who did nothing and let Masatoshi rest for ten minutes. Usually, the girls can only chat when the wind is released, rest for ten minutes, and a big sister sang Arirang, a gentle song, it seems to take Zhengmin back to her hometown and return to her parents. But after the break, the girl faces hell again. A young girl wanted to rest for a day because of her menstruation, but she was still whipped and bullied by the Japanese soldiers, and eventually died here.
Seeing this, Masatoshi planned to escape, and the kind Japanese soldier gave Masatoshi a map of his troops. In the evening, Zheng Min and three other friends secretly ran out, and as a result, one of the friends was lost, caught by the Japanese soldiers, beaten and wounded, but never gave up friends. When Jeong-min saw it, he decided to go back, and Young-hee and Jeong-min also went back, while another friend chose to leave. The Japanese soldiers, who could not question anything, called out all the girls, tortured them one by one, but none of them betrayed their friends, stripped the girls naked, and said to them, You are not a who lives for the imperial army. And those girls who are sick will be taken away in the name of treatment, in fact, they will be taken to a deserted place, where a big pit has been dug early, and inside the pit are their companions, and their fate can only be to die elsewhere. Because the kind Japanese soldier did not shoot in time, he was killed directly by the captain. Then they burned the bodies as if it had never happened.
Later, the Japanese soldiers were finally defeated, but they cruelly decided to burn all the girls to death in an attempt to cover up such crimes, but fortunately the Korean soldiers arrived in time to save them. Jeong-min and Young-hee run into the grass, thinking that they are finally saved and are going home, but a Japanese soldier catches up with them and shoots at them, jeong-min, in order to protect Young-hee, blocks the shot, and although the Korean soldiers kill the Japanese soldiers, Jeong-min remains here forever.
Then the timeline comes to the present, and although the elderly Young-hee returns to his hometown alive, he can't let go of the events of that year until he meets the young girl Eun-jin. Eun Jing was raped by the man who robbed the house, and the father who understood this scene and the robber got into a fight, and the two fell in a pool of blood. Enjing who witnessed all this, with the ability to channel, can see the dead, can even let the soul possess, borrow Enjing's body to the living people, say something that has not time to say, Eun Jing touched the amulet made by the elderly Young-hee for the first time, as if seeing the soldiers and butterflies, at this time we can also see that the butterfly symbolizes the maiden, and later because the elderly Young-hee has always been unable to let go, so please Eun-jing did the ritual, borrowed Eun-jing's body, Jeong-min came to Young-hee, and Young-hee finally released the past, In this way, he finally took Zheng Min back to his hometown. Then I began the ghost village festival, remembering the gentle Arirang, a group of white butterflies, as if those pure girls had flown to their hometown, just like the name of the film, the ghost returned to their hometown, may they all return to their hometown.
Originally this was a very heavy film, before watching it has been ready for tears to burst the embankment, but after watching the overall found that the whole is very depressed, but did not collapse to cry, may have just cried, the result of time jumped back to the modern, the director used the double timeline non-stop conversion to restore the story, more because for a heavy historical theme of the film, light catharsis, depiction of suffering is far from enough, and the director uses this way to let us jump out of the film to think. In the film, a young girl arrives at the comfort station and asks where the steward is? The answer is, here, hell. But have teenage girls who have passed decades or returned to their hometowns really come out of hell? In the film, Enjing was raped by the robber and taken in by the grandmother who did the work, and after the grandmother knew what happened to Enjing, she said something like this: The child will have a big problem outside and will only be bullied. Why is there a big problem, why is it bullied, it is obviously the fault of the robber, why the victim is bullied and ridiculed. There is also a passage in the film, the elderly Young-hee sees it played on TV, the government began to accept the victimization report of the "comfort women", so Young-hee came to the place of the report, only to hear the staff say: "We have to report the performance of the standing team quickly" "But our area does not have it" "Even if there is, there is a bit of that, to be honest, I know that there will be no performance, unless crazy, who will say that kind of past, isn't it" At this time, the elderly Young-hee walked over, "What's wrong, Grandma, need help" "I... I am... That crazy woman, what's wrong! ”。
Many comfort women have finally escaped from hell, but when they return to their hometowns, they are not understood by the people around them, and does this push them to hell again? In 2016, when the Shanghai "Hai Nai Jia" comfort station was facing demolition, the reporter interviewed nearby residents, and some people thought that comfort women were a disgrace and should not be spoken in schools, because schools are to talk about positive energy. Some have even completely misinterpreted the meaning of comfort women, thinking that they are prostitutes. Compared with the heaviness of history, the status quo makes people feel more helpless, and we may not be able to decide whether the Japanese government will apologize or not, but what we can do is face up to history and not repeat the mistakes of the past.