:26:36
When filming this ceremony I knew I was present
at the end of something.
:26:39
Magical cultures that disappear leave traces
to those who succeed them.
:26:44
This one will leave none;
the break in history has been too violent.
:26:48
I touched that break at the summit of the hill,
as I had touched it at the edge of the ditch
:26:55
where two hundred girls had used grenades to commit suicide in 1945
rather than fall alive into the hands of the Americans.
:27:00
People have their pictures taken in front of the ditch.
:27:02
Across from it souvenir lighters are sold shaped like grenades.
:27:12
On Hayao's machine war resembles letters being burned,
shredded in a frame of fire.
:27:17
The code name for Pearl Harbor was Tora, Tora, Tora,
the name of the cat the couple in Gokokuji was praying for.
:27:25
So all of this will have begun with the name of a cat pronounced three times.
:27:38
Off Okinawa kamikaze dived on the American fleet;
they would become a legend.
:27:44
They were likelier material for it obviously than the special units
who exposed their prisoners to the bitter frost of Manchuria
:27:50
and then to hot water so as to see
how fast flesh separates from the bone.
:27:54
One would have to read their last letters to learn
that the kamikaze weren't all volunteers,
:27:59
nor were they all swashbuckling samurai.