Big-budget movies need all the help they can get recovering their production and promotional costs at the box office, so advertisements stating that the 3 1/2-hour epic "Shizumanu Taiyo" ("The Sun That Doesn't Set") is a "big hit" should be taken with a grain of salt. First of all, every movie released in Japan is described as a "big hit" in advertisements after it opens, but in the case of this ¥2 billion blockbuster (reviewed in The Japan Times, Oct. 23), which stars Ken Watanabe as a man trying to reform an airline, the claims are doubly suspicious because major media outlets haven't been providing the kind of free promotional publicity they provide for other blockbusters.

The five commercial TV networks, in particular, may have avoided promoting the movie on purpose. "Shizumanu" is based on a very long novel by Toyoko Yamazaki that was originally serialized in Shukan Shincho from 1994 to 1998 and then published in book form in 1999. Two million copies have since been sold. Everyone who read it, and quite a few who haven't, see it as a fictionalized treatment of Japan Airlines before, during and after the JAL Flight 123 crash in 1985 that killed 520 people. In the book, the company, called Kokumin ("national"), is portrayed as being corrupt and heartless, and the hero is a superhumanly selfless employee who attempts to make the company over in the face of enormous obstacles.

Not surprisingly, JAL has never liked the book, which is probably one of the reasons it took so long to be made into a film. Right now the airline is in such serious financial trouble that it has had to rely on government infusions of cash and loans from the Development Bank of Japan, but not too long ago it was a huge source of advertising revenue for all the major media, which are instrumental in promoting major movies. According to Kinyobi magazine, two studios, Daiei and Toei, were originally set to coproduce "Suzumanu" earlier this decade, but for some reason it never panned out.