Must-watchWorld War II · Film · 1988
Grave of the Fireflies
火垂るの墓
After an air raid burns down their home in Kobe, a teenage boy and his little sister try to survive on their own in the last months of the war.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 3 places.
Stop 1: Kobe
Incendiary bombs rain on their neighbourhood; Seita carries Setsuko to safety, but their mother is badly burned in the shelter.
Stop 2: Nishinomiya
Key location
Unwelcome at their aunt's house, the siblings move into an abandoned shelter by a pond and light it with fireflies.
Stop 3: Sannomiya Station, Kobe
The film opens and closes among the homeless and starving who sheltered in the station after the surrender.
What really happened
From March 1945 American B-29s switched to low-level incendiary raids on Japan's largely wooden cities. Kobe was hit hard on 17 March and again on 5 June 1945, when much of the eastern part of the city burned; by the surrender, firebombing had devastated more than 60 Japanese cities and left millions homeless amid severe food shortages.
The film adapts Akiyuki Nosaka's 1967 semi-autobiographical story. Nosaka lost his home and his adoptive father in the June raid on Kobe, and his baby sister later died of malnutrition; he wrote the story partly out of guilt for surviving her. Studio Ghibli released it in 1988 as a double bill with My Neighbor Totoro.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- 火垂るの墓
- Directed by
- Isao Takahata
- Countries
- Japan
- Languages
- Japanese
- Released
- 1988
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- China & Southeast Asia
- Themes
- Animation
- Home front
