Personal perspectives on the tragedy of war are bound to be rampant this week, so Sunday's installment of Nihon TV's "Document" series (Sunday, 1:25 a.m.) might feel like overkill to some people. As history, though, it offers something more interesting.
The documentary charts the 60-year history of a collection of 728 picture postcards. All of the cards were sent by a soldier in the Japanese Imperial Army to his wife back in Japan during the Pacific War. The soldier, who died in battle on the island of Luzon in the Philippines at the age of 31, dreamed of becoming a painter, and each of the postcards contains not only a message, but a beautiful handmade picture.
Though seven years elapsed between the time the couple became engaged and the husband's death, they were only together one full year. Most of their marriage, in a sense, existed on these postcards. Fifteen years after the war, the wife decided to exhibit the postcards as an example of the horrors of war and as a tribute to her husband. The cards were exhibited throughout Japan.