Filmed from Kinoshita's own screenplay and original story idea under its Japanese title of Sekishunchô, Farewell to Spring starred the director's frequent collaborators Keiji Sada as Eitarô Makita, Akira Ishihama as Kôzô Teshirogi and Yûsuke Kawazu as Naoji Iwagaki. The director's brother, Chûji Kinoshita, composed the soundtrack, as he would for so many of his brother's films. Produced for the Shôchiku Eiga studios, the film was shot in a color, widescreen process called "Shochiku Grandscope" with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Kinoshita preferred to shoot his films on location, rather than work under the constraints of a film studio. For Farewell to Spring, he chose various locations in Aizu-Wakamatsu, in the Fukushima Prefecture of Japan. Today, that same area is better known for the destruction of its nuclear power plant by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. Before that, however, the area was famous as the site of a tragic event during the Boshin War of 1868-69. The Byakkotai, or "White Tiger Force", was a group of 16 and 17-year-old sons of samurai from the Aizu area who participated in the war. During the Battle of Tonoguchihara, twenty of the boys were separated from their unit and mistook a fire in the distance for their hometown's castle. Believing that they had lost the battle and their lord and their own families had been killed, all twenty boys attempted suicide by seppuku, with only one surviving. Throughout Farewell to Spring the characters visit Aizu and the shrine to the White Tigers, singing songs and doing folk dances about the legend of the lost boys.
Some have referred to Farewell to Spring as Japan's first "gay" film, due to the emotional nature of the relationships between the male characters, which scholars have linked to the director's own homosexuality. What is certain is that Kinoshita specialized in films that portrayed the drama in the lives of ordinary people, rather than grand or heroic figures. He found that "there are so many greater but unknown people in this world," and his films sought to reflect that.
by Lorraine LoBianco
