BATTLE OF THE JAPAN SEA (1969) – Japan’s Toshiro Mifune led the cast of this Japanese film about their successful naval clashes with Russia during the often-forgotten Russo-Japanese War (February 1904 – September 1905). U.S. servicemen stationed in Japan played the Russians.
Fans of Reilly, Ace of Spies may remember that the Japanese attack on Port Arthur in 1904 was at the core of that program’s second episode.
Other footnotes that might excite interest in this film for people who aren’t familiar with the Russo-Japanese War – President Theodore Roosevelt negotiated the peace between the two nations to end the war; one of the staff officers who accompanied Roosevelt on that venture was a young Douglas MacArthur; and Tsarist Russia’s humiliating loss in the war helped fuel the ultimately unsuccessful communist uprising in 1905.
On to the film itself. Battle of the Japan Sea employs the approach that moviegoers will recall from The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, Midway, even Inchon and others, by having an all-star cast (in the Far East) act out set pieces throughout the scattered fighting. Continue reading
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