September 1923

September 1923 (2023)

福田村事件

Based on the murder of nine street peddlers in the aftermath of the Great Kanto earthquake.

Date of release
2023-09-01
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (10)
Runtime
2h 17m
Genres
History, Drama
Director
Tatsuya Mori

Casting

Interesting facts

September 1923 is a Japanese film about the Fukuda Village Incident, in which nine ethnic Japanese people, including women and children, were killed on suspicion that they were ethnic Koreans. It was released on September 1, 2023, the 100th anniversary of the Kantō Massacre.

Production

The director, Tatsuya Mori, first learned of this incident through a small newspaper article about a movement to establish a memorial to the victims. However, he had difficulty finding records on the details of the incident. The contemporary president of the neighborhood association that the victims came from speculated that the six surviving members may have avoided speaking out about the incident, as they felt that they would have been ignored…

Mori described his motivation as follows:

In modern Japan, I think there is a strong and growing tendency to look away from our negative history. But I believe that people grow up by remembering their mistakes.

They had difficulty raising funds for the film due to its subject matter, but eventually managed to raise 35 million yen ($253,000) through a crowdfunding campaign. They also had difficulty with casting, as talent agencies often avoid having their actors appear in controversial films. In spite of this, well-known actors, including Rena Tanaka and Arata Iura, ended up appearing in the film.

Principal photography for the film began on August 20, 2022, and lasted until mid-September. Shooting took place mainly in Kyoto and Shiga prefectures.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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