Apocalypse now... and then

SHINJI HIGUCHI WAS seven when he saw his homeland engulfed in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions before slipping beneath the waves of the Pacific Ocean, leaving millions dead. He survived the ordeal - as did the hundreds of others in the cinema with him, all awestruck by the on-screen armageddon. Nihon Chinbotsu (Sinking of Japan) was the first real adventure movie Higuchi saw and it left a deep impression. He never dreamed he would direct the remake 33 years later.

'I remember being so excited when I saw it,' says Higuchi. 'It was the movie that made me want to start making films of my own. The 1973 version was such an impressive movie. I never really thought I'd be able to produce that kind of work, so I was delighted when I was asked to do it.

'In a way, it's strange that I was chosen by producer Toshiaki Nakayama to remake a movie that had such a huge professional influence on me, rather than me proposing the project.'

Overall, Higuchi has remained faithful to the original plot, but he has clearly stamped his own personality on a film that has already performed better at the box office than he or the movie arm of Tokyo Broadcasting System Television expected when they began the project.

'Improvements in the digital quality of movies and advances in computer graphics for the disaster scenes have made a big difference from 33 years ago,' he says. 'But the biggest difference isn't in the movie itself. In recent years, we've had a number of major natural disasters like those in the film - like the great Hanshin earthquake of 1995 - and that makes the movie more real to the audience than it did in 1973.'

It's not only natural disasters that add to the poignancy of the movie. 'The events of September 11 give us a human element and show how people react to a disaster,' he says. 'At a time when we're surrounded by both natural and man-made disasters, it's not enough to simply sit back and wait for it to happen. That may have been how it was in the past, but now we need to be more active. I want my movie to show the potential of individuals to make a difference - and that's basically every character in the film.'

The original movie is based on a 1973 novel by Sakyo Komatsu that sold four million copies. Toho turned it into a disaster epic that cost 500 million yen (US$4.4 million in today's terms) to produce - a staggering sum at the time.