Raising of the Yamato fires a broadside at the futility of war

Julian Ryall

Sixty years after it was sunk, the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Yamato is about to recreate her final journey on screens across Japan. And while the producer's target of 10 million viewers for the film is ambitious, an even harder task might be in convincing movie-goers in the rest of Asia that it is not a nationalistic work.

'I want this to be more than just a successful film,' says Haruki Kadokawa, producer of Toei's Yamato: The Last Battle, which opened in Japan yesterday. 'I want people who see it to have more energy and to live their lives with confidence. I want people to have more pride in Japan and a sense of responsibility.'

The largest battleship in the world when she cast off from the docks at Tokuyama, southern Japan, on April 6, 1945, the Yamato had been an icon for the nation. In the last months of the conflict, however, the Japanese leadership preferred suicide charges to surrender and pressed the pride of its fleet into the most spectacular of kamikaze raids.

Weighing in at 72,800 tonnes and able to bring nine 40cm guns to bear, the Yamato set sail against the American fleet off Okinawa. Allied radio intercepts and code-breakers gave advance warning of her approach and the Yamato was attacked by an estimated 350 US aircraft off southern Kyushu.

It took 22 hours to turn the most powerful warship of its era into a smoking hulk that eventually sank with the loss of more than 3,000 crew. The vessel's last resting place, 350 metres below the surface of the Pacific, was only confirmed in 1985.