Kura ・ Archive
The Archive
A film condenses the story of a single scrap of paper into a few minutes. This “Kura” (storehouse) is where what lies beneath it — the words left behind, the road traveled, the facts confirmed, and the material the films couldn't hold — is kept, as it is.
Three ways in. Trace by name, by the map, or by the codex (an index of units and eras).
People — the detailed editions
12 people The people the films followed, in the words they left behind.
- #001–004Uehara Ryoji1945 Three brothers, all killed. The night before his kamikaze sortie, a twenty-two-year-old student wrote “a liberal” on paper, and was gone.
- #005Tamura Yoshikazu1943 A notebook whose owner wrote “The End” himself — and how it crossed 5,000 km and sixty years to come home.
- #006Sakai Hanshiro1860 The year the chief minister was cut down at Sakuradamon, a lone-posted low-ranking samurai’s half-year in Edo — nothing but meals.
- #007Maruta Toshimichi1941–42 The diary of a young Hokkaido farmer, catalogued “No Name” by the U.S. Eighty years on, and still not home.
- #008The Makin writer1943 No name, no original. A nameless diary that survived only in the enemy’s translation.
- #009The Nara tablets710–784 A metre-long notice for a lost horse, a three-character sick note, ration slips for dogs and cranes — kept because they were thrown away.
- #010Satō Tomigorō1943–45 A father's notebooks from a starving island — gratitude for a carved spoon, words for his children. The last entry: "The last, perhaps."
- #011Chiri Yukie1922 At nineteen, she decided how to write a language that had no writing, and wrote it down — thirteen songs of the gods, and their preface.
- #012Yamamoto Hatao1954 Fifteen notebook pages, some 4,500 characters, written in a camp from which no paper could be carried out — and brought home in the memories of the men who left.
- #013Inō Tadataka1800 Six men set out to measure the size of the earth on foot — and were stopped for eight days by a strait. The diary records the days they could not cross in exactly the same tone.
- #014Hayashi Ichizō1945 His mother had been against it. Two days before his sortie, the twenty-three-year-old who had gone against her wrote to her: "I also think it might have been better to do as you said." The choice, and the doubt about the choice, sit on the same sheet of paper.
- #017Iwo Jima: the two prisoners1945 Two Japanese soldiers carried the enemy's surrender letter to the headquarters of the unit they had once belonged to. They set out in the morning and returned twelve and a half hours later. Neither country's records preserve their names.
Units — the catalogue
6 units The units they belonged to — and the skeleton catalogue of 3,094 more.
- 28th Infantry Regiment / Ichiki Detachment The other paper behind one man’s diary — the order.
- 239th Infantry Regiment (41st Division) The other paper that sent Tamura Yoshikazu to a collapsing front — the transfer decision.
- 64th Naval Guard Unit Satō Tomigorō's unit. No page of its own yet — it sits in the guard-unit shelf of the catalogue.
- 2nd Infantry Regiment (Mito) A regiment that received its colors in 1874 and ended seventy years later on Peleliu.
- 56th Shinbu Unit (Army special attack, Chiran) The other paper that made Uehara Ryoji a kamikaze pilot — the form called “volunteering.”
- 145th Infantry Regiment A regiment raised in Kagoshima. On 14 March they burned their colours inside a cave. Two days later the enemy's letter was carried to the cave mouth.
Terms — glossary
15 terms The words the films use, with where they come from.
- Ōshō — the call-up With one sheet of paper, a farmer’s son becomes a soldier.
- Gakuto shutsujin — students to the front From the university desk, straight to the war.
- Ihin henkan — the return of personal effects A notebook takes sixty years to come home.
- Kinban — posted to Edo, alone A samurai posted away from home — which is why the diary is all about food.
- Rokaku bunsho — captured documents Words that survive only in the enemy’s translation.
- Mokkan — wooden documents Before paper was cheap: write, shave off, write again, discard.
- Island hopping — the leapfrog strategy Not attacked. Bypassed. The island was left behind.
- Kamuy yukar — songs of the kamuy The kamuy tells its own story, in the first person.
- Furyo yūbin — prisoner-of-war mail A censored postcard: the boundary between the Japanese you may write and the Japanese you may not.
- Tenmonkata — the shogunate's bureau of astronomy The office that kept the calendar. When no one inside could reform it, they brought in an outsider.
- Yokaren — the navy's flight preparatory course The navy's flight preparatory trainees. Divided into three grades — eighteen months, thirty months, six months — set out by imperial ordinance. The third grade drew only from men already serving in the navy.
- Gunki hōshō — the burning of the colours Records exist of regimental colours being burned. At Iwo Jima on 14 March, inside a cave. At Lameng at six in the evening on 7 September. In both cases the record ends there.
- Jigo shōsoku fumei — “no word thereafter” What happened next is unknown. This is how the official record ends.
- Koseki no teisei (Correcting a Family Register) Correcting a family register required a court's permission, not just a clerk's.
- Bōchō (Counterintelligence) The side keeping the secret starts by questioning its own students.