- Set in 1854, Torajiro attempts to flee to America, but fails. He is then jailed at a prison located in the mountains, which is owned by the Choshu Hagi family. In prison, Torajiro meets Hisashi, who is in prison for communicating with the lower class. Torajiro and Hisashi get to know each other in the notorious prison that no one has ever gotten out of alive. Ishihara's film, based on a novel by Yamaguchi-born author Kaoru Furukawa, captures Shoin's historical struggle with actor Michiyoshi Maeda who already tackled similar territory when he played one of the Chosyu Five, five young men who traveled to Great Britian in 1853, in Sho Igarashi's 2006 film of the same name. It definitely looks like Ishihara is playing up the romantic subplot between Shoin and a lower caste love interest played by actress Hana Konoe.
- " Hitoya ni Saku Hana (Flower in Prison)" has been produced to commemorate the 180th anniversary of the birth of Yoshida Shoin, a samurai, child prodigy, and imprisoned intellectual who was instrumental in Japan's shift from the rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Meiji Restoration. Born in 1830 Shoin grew up in a society that had been closed off from the rest of the world for two centuries and he thought that this isolation and Japan's rigid caste system were strangling the future of his country. His famous quote on the total seclusion of Japan was "It is like a person in a dark room holding his breath."
When U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry's infamous Black Ships arrived in Uraga Harbor in 1853 saw his chance to let that breath out, and he and a friend Shigenosuke aboard Perry's ship in an attempt to return with him to America. When Perry's crew caught him and returned him to the mainland the ruling Shogunate put him under house arrest, a light sentence considering that the official penalty for leaving Japan was death. It was during his time of house arrest that Shoin saw the whirlwind of foreign influence that Perry's visit had initiated. To try and counteract this Shoin set up a school in his native Hagi in Yamaguchi Prefecture where he taught traditional Japanese values, military strategy and a redefinition of Bushido, the samurai code. This school, the Shouka Sonjuku produced some of the leading revolutionaries who would bring about the downfall of the Shogunate.
Ishihara's film, based on a novel by Yamaguchi-born author Kaoru Furukawa, captures Shoin's historical struggle with actor Michiyoshi Maeda who already tackled similar territory when he played one of the Chosyu Five, five young men who traveled to Great Britian in 1853, in Sho Igarashi's 2006 film of the same name. It definitely looks like Ishihara is playing up the romantic subplot between Shoin and a lower caste love interest played by actress Hana Konoe.
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