《Dear Boy》

2014
Single channel video / 30 min 00 sec

私の祖父・田中一久（たなか・かずひさ）は、「軍国少年」であったという。彼は１９４４年、１４歳の時に大日本帝国海軍を志願し特別年少兵として横須賀第二海兵団で訓練を受けた。 その後、海軍経理学校に進学したため、自分自身は戦場の前線で戦う事は無かった。彼が「軍国少年」になった大きな理由の一つとして、音楽の力があったという。（彼は戦後に小学校の音楽教師になった）
時に友と歌い、時にプロパガンダの戦争映画に流れていた曲たち。 そんな「軍歌」と呼ばれる音楽の中には、 “気持ちが勇ましく高揚する”ものと、“悲し切なくなる”ものがあるという。 
 
そんな話を聞き、そこには彼の個人的な記憶や人間関係、あるいは国家の教育や「戦争」というものへの抽象化、美化など、様々なことが重なり合っているように感じた。 
私は彼に、「気持ちの高揚する軍歌」と「とても悲しい気持ちになる軍歌」の３位までを祖父の主観で選んでもらい、当時の大日本帝国海軍の制服のレプリカの衣裳を祖父に着てもらい、アカペラで歌ってもらった。
 
そこでは、海軍に胸ときめかせ、憧れた「軍国少年」の時の思い出や、戦死していった先輩達…沖縄戦により１６歳で特攻戦死した同級生「伊勢」という名の「少年」への記憶がおおく語られた。
 
日本は、第二次世界大戦時に周辺のアジア諸国に対して植民地支配を行い、殺人、暴力を行った。にもかかわらず、祖父と話していると、彼の「戦争」にまつわる思い出や友への追憶によって、そうした加害意識を持ちきれていないような、死そのものに対する漠然とした麻痺を感じた。そうした、彼が固有に経験し、記憶している「戦争」。 その矛盾した感情に向き合って戦争というものを本当の意味で反省したいと思った。
 
 

My grandfather, Kazuhisa Tanaka, was what some may call a "military boy"
In 1944, at the age of 14, he volunteered for the Imperial Japanese Navy and received training as a special youth recruit at the Yokosuka Second Naval Corps.
He later advanced to the Navy Accounting School, so he never actually fought on the front lines of the battlefield.
 
One of the main reasons he became a “military boy,” he told me, was the power of music.
(Later in life, he became an elementary school music teacher.)
He sang with friends, and he listened to the songs that played in war propaganda films.
Among those so-called “gunka,” or military songs, there were ones that stirred a brave and uplifting spirit, and others that brought about a deep sadness and sorrow.
 
As I listened to his stories, I felt that within them lay a mixture of personal memories, relationships, state education, and the idealization or abstraction of what “war” meant. All of these overlapped in complex ways.
 
I asked him to choose, from his own perspective, his top three “uplifting” military songs and top three that made him feel “deeply sad.”
I then asked him to wear a replica of the Imperial Japanese Navy uniform from that era, and had him sing them a cappella.
 
He shared many memories: the excitement and admiration he felt as a young “military boy” dreaming of joining the Navy, the seniors who had died in combat, and his classmate Ise, a boy who died in a kamikaze attack at the age of 16 during the Battle of Okinawa.
 
Japan, during World War II, colonized and committed acts of violence and murder across many neighboring Asian countries.
Yet, as I spoke with my grandfather, I began to sense a kind of numbness toward death, born from his memories of war and the friends he lost.
There seemed to be little space left for a clear sense of guilt as a perpetrator.
 
This war that he uniquely experienced and remembers is filled with contradictions.
By facing those contradictions directly, I wanted to truly reflect on what it means to call war, killing people, a human act.