Grave of the Fireflies

Taking place toward the end of World War II in Japan, Grave of the Fireflies is the tale of the relationship between two orphaned children, 14-year-old Seita (清太) and his young 4-year-old sister Setsuko (節子). The movie begins in Sannomiya Station and portrays Seita, in rags and dying of starvation. A janitor comes and digs through his possessions, and finds a candy tin containing ashes and bones. He throws it out, and from it spring the spirits of Setsuko and Seita, as well as a cloud of fireflies. The spirit of Seita continues to narrate their story, which is, in effect, an extended flashback to Japan near the end of World War II, during the Kobe firebombings.

The flashback begins with dozens of American B-29 Superfortress bombers flying overhead. Setsuko and Seita, the two siblings, are left to secure the house and their belongings, allowing their mother, who suffers from a heart condition, to reach a bomb shelter. They are caught off-guard as the bombers begin to drop hundreds of incendiary bomblets, which start huge fires that quickly destroy their neighbourhood and most of the city. Although they survive unscathed, their mother is caught in the air raid and is horribly burned. She is taken to a hospital, but dies a short time later. Having nowhere else to go, Setsuko and Seita move in with a distant aunt, who allows them to stay but convinces Seita to sell his mother’s kimonos for rice. While living with their relatives, Seita goes out to retrieve leftover supplies he had buried in the ground before the bombing. He gives all of it to his aunt, but hides a small tin of fruit drops, which becomes a recurrent icon throughout the film. Their aunt continues to shelter them but as their food rations get smaller and smaller, she becomes increasingly resentful. She openly remarks on how they do nothing to earn the food she cooks.

Seita and Setsuko finally decide to leave and move into an abandoned bomb shelter. They release fireflies into the shelter for light, but Setsuko is horrified to find that the next day they are all dead. She digs them a grave and buries them all, asking why they have to die, and why her mother had to die. What begins as a new lease on life grows grim as they run out of rice, and Seita is forced to steal from local farmers and loot homes during air raids. When he is caught, he realizes his desperation and takes an increasingly ill Setsuko to a doctor, who informs him that Setsuko is suffering from malnutrition but offers no help. In a panic, Seita withdraws all the money remaining in their mother’s bank account. As he leaves the bank, he is distraught when he learns from a nearby crowd that Japan has surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Powers and that his father, a Captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy who had promised him that Japan could never be defeated, is probably dead, since nearly all of Japan’s navy is now at the bottom of the ocean. He returns to the shelter with large quantities of food, only to find a dying Setsuko hallucinating. Seita hurries to cook, but Setsuko dies shortly thereafter. Seita uses supplies donated to him by a farmer to cremate Setsuko, and puts her ashes in the fruit tin which he carries with his father’s photograph, until his own death from malnutrition in Sannomiya Station a few weeks later.

In the movie’s final scene, the spirits of Seita and Setsuko are seen, healthy and well-dressed, sitting side-by-side as they look down on the modern city of Kobe.

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