A behind-the-scenes video of the wrap-up of the film "The Army on the Tree" (directed by Kazuhiro Taira), starring actors Shinichi Tsutsumi and Yuki Yamada, has been released. The video shows Tsutsumi and Yamada at the end of filming.
As it was the last scene being filmed, the call to cut was made and Yamada spontaneously embraced Tsutsumi. "I thought that the greatest reward would be for this film, and for the message that 'these two people lived' to reach many people, and that's all I believed in. I was really happy to have had the chance to act with Tsutsumi, and that he was my superior officer," Yamada said with tears in his eyes, marking an emotional wrap-up.
The film is based on the true story of two Japanese soldiers who survived for two years on a banyan tree in Okinawa, where fierce ground battles were fought at the end of the Pacific War, without knowing that the war had ended. Tsutsumi plays Yamashita Kazuo, a strict second lieutenant dispatched from Miyazaki, and Yamada plays Agena Seijun, a new recruit from Okinawa.
After a fierce battle, the two are cornered by enemy gunfire and barely escape with their lives by hiding in a banyan tree. As they continue to live in the tree with no end in sight, they struggle with their sense of duty as Japanese soldiers and their fear of death, but what is it that keeps them fighting for it?
