About the event
Director Izuru Narushima, 2023, 128 min., in Japanese with English subtitles and with Introduction.
Starring Koji Yakusho, Masaki Suda, Nana Mori.
Free entry, reservation mandatory.
Or contact +352 46 41 51 51 or culture.embjapan@lx.mofa.go.jp.
You will receive a confirmation email by the Cultural Section of the Embassy, to tell you if your reservation has been successful!
The film
The film shows the life of Kenji Miyazawa, famous Japanese novelist, poet, and writer of children’s literature, from his birth in 1896 to his death from acute pneumonia at age 37 in 1933. The movie is adapted from a novel by Yoshinobu Kadoi who won a top prize for novelists in Japan, the Naoki Award, for this work. The story also focuses on Kenji’s father, Masajiro Miyazawa.
This film also received “Prix du Jury“ at the 17th KINOTAYO Contemporary Japanese Film Festival last year.
This biopic “FATHER OF THE MILKY WAY RAILROAD” looks at the short and eventful life of Kenji Miyazawa, in a heartful drama about art, ambition, and family.
The Embassy of Japan in Luxembourg is proud to present the life story of an influential Japanese writer, his father and family, based on Naoki Award novel named after Miyazawa’s most famous story.
The actors
Masajiro Miyazawa is played by Koji Yakusho, one of the most representative Japanese actors in recent memory. He is internationally known from films such as “Tampopo” (1985), “Memoirs of a Geisha (SAYURI) “(2005) and “Babel” (2006), and recently played the protagonist in Wim Wender’s “Perfect Days” (2023), where he won the “Prix D’interpretation Masculine” in the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and the movie is currently Oscar-nominated for the 96th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film.
Kenji Miyazawa is played by Masaki Suda, he is a popular young actor, who received many awards, including the 41st Japan Academy Film Prize for Best Actor in 2018, and played the role of the Heron in Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-nominated “The Boy and the Heron” in 2023.
The Poet
Kenji Miyazawa (1896 – 1933) was a Japanese novelist, poet, and writer of children’s literature in the late Taishō and early Shōwa periods. Practically unknown as a poet during his lifetime and passing away at only 37 years old, his work then gained reputation posthumously and enjoyed a boom in the mid-1900.
Sometimes named the “Hans Christian Andersen of Japan”, Miyazawa’s most famous works have been adapted into anime as well, most notably “The Night of the Milky Way Railroad” (銀河鉄道の夜) and “The Restaurant of Many Orders ” (注文の多い料理店).