I didn’t know what the story was until I got to the cinema. I don’t even know who the hero is. I thought maybe that would avoid preconceived notions?Then the story begins. Taisho’s Japan, like Beijing in the early Republic of China, was a mixture of familiar tradition and unfamiliar modernity, or backward east and advanced West. He was born in such an environment, longing for the blue sky, and trying to touch the new era through books from distant Europe, while turning the pages of borrowed dictionaries. Such young people are not unfamiliar to us, just like the young Jemez Jiangyou and Yuan Longing, including Lu Sun and Goo Moro.
Then the boy grew into a young man. He learned more about making airplanes and immersed himself in the joy of making airplanes. He is a genius, he is hard enough, his dream has not changed, but The Times have changed. As the film keeps saying: “The wind rises, live it” The winds of war had blown into Asia, and in the face of a powerful Europe, a poor and weak Japan was rising, rising at all costs, even starving its own children to send technicians to Germany to learn their skills. On the one hand, there was starvation everywhere in China, and on the other hand, it would take 20 years for her country to catch up with the advanced technology. At the moment of the opening of the aircraft warehouse in Germany, the hero was not only shocked, but also humiliated and hated by the modern Chinese people, which they had experienced enough. A young man sitting in a German hotel is smoking a cigarette and looking at the grey night. He says, “What took Germany 20 years to acquire will take us five years to achieve.” Does that sound particularly familiar? Yes, at this point in time, we are in the same position as Japan when it comes to the powerful West.
Then, like the youth of every age, he met his sweetheart, but the sweetness of love in such a time and space has become difficult and precious. She was seriously ill and had to go to a hospital in the mountains for treatment, but he had the heavy responsibility of building airplanes, and he had to be tracked and watched, and his life might be in danger. In order to be together with the beloved person, the girl chooses to endure loneliness and cold, a person to the mountains for treatment, the youth can only hide in Mr. Black Chan’s home, through postcards and telegraphy silently and lover contact.
Perhaps, the girl realized that her disease is impossible to cure. She walked out of the mountains, came to the beloved side, and in the witness of Mr. And Mrs. Kurokawa married, with the last life in exchange for a short and happy married life. Yet even so, the young man cannot devote all his time and energy to his wife, whose life passes away like an hourglass. I still remember when he heard that the girl was sick with vomiting blood, desperate to put on clothes and run out, crying while still calculating the data of aircraft manufacturing on the tram. His tears wet the pencil marks, but his pen did not stop, he is still working, still racing against the clock to seize the time of five years! Before my eyes, the young men and women in their early twenties had left their homes and moved to Beijing or Shanghai to preach, speak, March and even fight for their country and their nation. Who has no parents? Who has no brothers? Who has no lover? Who has no family? Some of them never married. Some of them wrote in tears, “I’m going to be an unofficial son.” But they did not stop, because The Times did not allow them to stop.
Finally, the talented young man built the best airplane for the army, but it was not what he wanted. He has said he only wants to pursue the technology of human flight. In his dream, people flying in planes are the happiest. His plane was built for people, not bombs. He even lost the last chance to accompany his wife — the girl left him silently after he finally finished the design, and went back to the mountains to walk to the end of life alone. However, the trees want to calm down, but the wind does not stop. The Zero he built took to the skies, carrying bombs across the channel to China. What he was left with was the wreckage of a plane he had designed to look like his own children. Every piece of iron, every string, had been painted by his hand, but all that remained was the shattered wreckage, and the lives buried beneath it.
Here China and Japan diverge. My feelings were complicated in an instant. At that time, the pursuit of military strength was the dream of every nation, even now. Because we all know that backward countries will be beaten, and weak countries will be bullied，But what happens when you’re strong? Is the end of military power really happiness and peace? The postwar Japanese are perhaps best placed to answer this question.
What happened in the last 100 years? That’s the question I’ve been thinking about since I left the cinema. The basic facts of history are known to all, but the mood behind the pressure of history, and how to tell? It is the easiest thing in the world to criticize the evil of another party from the standpoint of justice, like a father scolding his son for breaking Windows. But everything happens for a reason, and mistakes don’t stop without reflection. As the film says: When the wind rises, live well，But when the wind dies down, those who survive always have to do something about the next strong wind.
