It is hard to pinpoint whether the background music is an effective appeal or just overdramatic, and it depends on how you view this film—whether it is an audiovisual essay or a documentary.

Shusenjo is a two-hour audiovisual essay, or an educational documentary film, if you will, on the contentious issue of comfort women. One reason for placing Shusenjo closer to audiovisual essay on the spectrum of digital media is that the director’s voice is very present. He is making strong arguments throughout the film. Different from previous documentaries that dealt with the same issue, Shusenjo went beyond the calling for memorialization. The film dived into the political conflicts associated with this toxic legacy of WW2. Dezaki weaved arguments from both supporters and detractors’ perspectives, making relatively neutral arguments while firmly leaning in the supporters’ side. Extensive documentation was presented, as this debut film was stemmed from Dezaki’s academic work, but at no point did I lose my concentration. The structure is explicit and the unfolding is question-driven, thus making it easy for the audience to follow. The film is broken into several sections, and each section begins with a bold heading and a drumbeat, which repeats so many times that it becomes a character, a brand for Shusenjo. Within each section, revisionists’ responses were often matched with supporters’ contradiction and they appeared to be ignorant and fiercely nationalistic. This editing choice gained the film a feeling of a real debate where the conversations happen concurrently.

It’s impressive how Dezaki managed to invite all those important right-wing figures—it seems like the only person who would have added more weight is Shinzo Abe, however, his photo is shown (and mocked) at various places in the film. Supporters were mostly curators and historians sitting in front of their bookshelves.

Shusenjo made me question about the liberal (and democratic) nature of documentary filmmaking. The film itself is marvelous, so by using Shusenjo as a case study, we can raise some interesting questions. For example, what kinds of audience would be drawn to see the film (if we put aside the question of whether frequent moviegoers are more liberal or not)? How can an educational documentary maximize its impact? Seeing from the audience’s approval and the support from the intellectual circle, the impact of Shusenjo is very promising. But the fact that the five revisionists are suing him shows that there is still a long way to go.

One concern I have is that the conclusions generated from the convincing facts in the film can as well be deceptive. This is kind of paradoxical—Dezaki did a great job on explanations and if he did not make strong arguments, the audience might not learn anything, and to elevate the bar for the audience would distract the educational purpose.

The other concern is that because the film holds a ripe conclusion, on one hand, the audience might be satisfying with it and continue to do nothing (which is fine, but the danger is to think that everything is clear-cut when in fact power relations aren’t always straightforward), on the other hand, the audience might fail to notice other aspects that the director didn’t have the time to touch upon. For example, there are times when people mentioned the problem of patriarchy and misogyny, but Dezaki didn’t elaborate on that and chose to talk about politics instead. The example is not to criticize the film but helps to identify how other aspects of the issues can be downplayed. Here lies a choice: do we want to understand dirty water politics, or is it more important to raise awareness of women’s disadvantageous situation? Right-wing politicians like Mio who have attacked Shiori Ito in the past are still unaware of or unwilling to admit their upsetting ideology. I hope Shusenjo will wake up more people, those who prefer to see “solid facts” rather than hearing unbelievably depressing stories from an alive human being.