Naoki Hyakuta: "Entertainment has the power to captivate people of all generations" Part 1

I never thought it could be made into a movie...

My debut novel as a writer, "The Eternal Zero," is being made into a movie and will be released nationwide in December (Production: "The Eternal Zero" Production Committee, Distribution: Toho). It might sound biased coming from the original author, but it's a truly well-made film. I'm a huge movie fan myself, having watched films almost daily from my late teens through my early twenties. This movie is one of those rare gems you might only see once every ten years – it's that highly acclaimed.

I attended two preview screenings. After the second one, I noticed the women's restroom was incredibly crowded. When I asked a female reporter who had seen the screening with me, she said everyone was having a hard time fixing their makeup after crying.

Actually, there had been several attempts to adapt this into a film before. Many people brought scripts over repeatedly, but none were satisfactory, so I turned them all down. The paperback version is a lengthy novel, over 600 pages, and I thought it would be impossible to condense that into a little over two hours of film. I even thought that if, by some chance, it absolutely had to be made into a movie, I'd have to write the screenplay myself.

The role of passing it on to younger generations

I'm surprised myself that the original novel sold 3.5 million copies. When it was published seven years ago, it didn't win any awards, nor did it get reviewed in newspapers or magazines. It received absolutely no attention. Yet, somehow, it started selling steadily, and before I knew it, it reached 3.5 million copies.

I believe it's the power of word of mouth. Initially, over 90% of readers were men in their 60s and older. Then it spread down through the 50s, 40s, and 30s. Despite being a war story, even people in their early 20s and late teens started reading it. When I asked bookstore staff, they said women now make up a very large portion of readers.

What surprised me most about reader feedback was how many young people posted their thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, Mixi, and other platforms. While that was heartening, the most common comment was that they knew nothing about the war.

They didn't know about the attack on Pearl Harbor, World War II, the Tokyo air raids, or Japan's defeat. They knew the events happened, but they didn't know the details. They were saying things like, "So this is what my grandparents went through in the war?" and "I should have listened to them more."

Schools don't teach the details of the war, and ultimately, only those who take an interest in such things get to learn about it after entering the workforce. Most young people have no idea how the Japanese fought that war. That such young people read 'The Eternal Zero' was both surprising and deeply gratifying.

I had heard war stories from my own father. But the reality is, his generation hardly ever spoke about it to their grandchildren. That was actually the original motivation for writing 'Eien no Zero'. When I started writing, my father had terminal cancer and was told he had six months to live. Shortly before that, one of my uncles had also passed away from cancer. If things continued like this, the history of my father's generation who went to war would fade away. As someone who heard war stories as a child, I felt there was a need to pass this history on.

*The Eternal Zero* is a story about a young man, the grandson of a generation that went to war, who gradually learns how his grandfather, a fighter pilot, fought and died by visiting the people who fought alongside him. While scenes from wartime appear, the narrative is firmly set in the present. I felt this approach would make it easier for today's young people to understand how someone their own age lived through wartime. (Author's note)

<Continued in Part 2 >