Sea Without Exit: Japanese World War II Picture From the Pen of Yoji Yamada!

Now this is a surprise ... veteran Japanese director Yoji Yamada has risen to well deserved international prominence in recent years thanks to the successes of The Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade, two stellar films that fully deserve the attention they've received. Now it's pretty well known that Yamada is currently at work on a third samurai film to complete a thematic trilogy with Twilight Samurai and Hidden Blade. What I didn't know is that he's also co-written a script (with Motofumi Tomikawa of The Eel) based on a World War Two novel by Hideo Yokoyama. Here's a synopsis:

"Koji Namiki, a talented young pitcher, who had won the National High School Baseball Championships enters university, but soon afterwards injures his elbow. He and his teammates work hard to get back on the field placing all his hopes on a new slow-ball, "the magic pitch." However, the outbreak of WWII wipes out the baseball ambitions from everyone. They join the military and in the navy undergo the severe training that prepares them for death. Death awaits them in a "kaiten" (special attack submarine or "human torpedo") within the gloomy ocean depths, but Koji never gives up his dream of the "magic pitch.""

So, the setting has changed but those key Yamada themes of the idealist caught at the end of an epoch are still in full effect.