HIROSHIMA: Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car”, which won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film on Sunday, has put a spotlight on the philosophy of peace rooted in the western Japan city of Hiroshima.

In the film, mainly shot in Hiroshima, the main character Yusuke Kafuku, who has lost his wife, is taken to his chauffeur Misaki Watari’s favorite place, a waste-disposal facility located on an axis extending from the Atomic Bomb Dome in the city. Facilities related to the 1945 US atomic bombing of Hiroshima are located on “the axis of peace.”

The central part of the waste-disposal facility is glass-walled so that it does not block the axis.

Hamaguchi decided to film the story about regeneration in Hiroshima after he found that even a waste-disposal facility represents a philosophy of peace.

The background of the movie was revealed by Tomoko Nishizaki, 56, of the Hiroshima Film Commission, who invited Hamaguchi to film the movie in the city and assisted the shooting.

In September 2020, Hamaguchi visited Hiroshima after giving up filming in Busan, South Korea, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Back then, Hiroshima was just one of a number of candidate sites.

Nishizaki took Hamaguchi, who was reluctant to pick the city as he thought that it was too early for him to film a movie in Hiroshima, to her favorite spot, the Naka Incineration Plant, in a waterfront area of the city’s Naka Ward.

She shared with Hamaguchi some thoughts of the late world-renowned Japanese architect Kenzo Tange, who took charge of the city’s post-World War II reconstruction plan.

Tange decided to use the Atomic Bomb Dome, which was ruined by the bombing, as a symbol and decided to build a memorial cenotaph and Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum along the north-south axis so that the axis itself would be considered a monument to peace.

The Naka Incineration Plant was designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, an 84-year-old architect who once worked for Tange. Taniguchi used glass walls for the central part of the plant to allow the axis to reach the ocean.

From such stories, Hamaguchi was amazed that even a waste-disposal facility holds the city’s philosophy and culture of peace, according to Nishizaki.

A few weeks after Hamaguchi’s visit to Hiroshima, Nishizaki learned that the filming would take place in the city and received the script.

“I nearly fell off a chair while reading (the script),” as the Naka Incineration Plant was featured and some of the things she explained to Hamaguchi were used in the lines, Nishizaki said.

The shoot took place in winter 2020.

While filming the movie “I felt as though Hiroshima was empowering and guiding the story about a heartbroken person struggling to somehow find hope,” Hamaguchi said at a press conference in February.

JIJI Press