The conventional Japanese World War II movie is something of a paradox. Usually set in the war's closing days and after (I've heard Emperor Showa's surrender statement so many times now I could recite it in my sleep), with a pacifist message implicit or explicit, it nonetheless celebrates traditional martial virtues.

The heroes — be they tokkōtai (suicide squad) pilots flying one-way missions from Kyushu airfields or teenage girls tending the wounded in Okinawan caves — are finally as stoic about their appointed deaths as any samurai. Far from a futile waste, they and their surviving loved ones typically believe that their ultimate sacrifice is for the good of the country. In fact, the characters who glow brightest with pure, selfless devotion are the most likely to meet a noble end, while their impure survivors are wracked with guilt.

Based on a 1993 novel by Jiro Asada, Kiyoshi Sasabe's "Nichirin no Isan (The Legacy of the Sun)" promises to be a different sort of Japanese war movie — but ends up being another sentimental justification of self-destruction for the greater glory of Dainippon (Big Japan).