No Regrets for Our Youth

Akira Kurosawa saw the replacement of one censorship regime with another at the end of the Second World War. The Imperial needs for feudal spirit and loyalty to lords was replaced by the American need for antipathy towards the militarism that had defined Japanese governmental policy for more than a decade. The whiplash from The Most Beautiful and The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail to No Regrets for Our Youth is rather stark. From a thematic point of view, it feels like two different men m...