‘Climber’s High’ counting down to release, pays respects to the victims of JAL Flight 123

On Thursday Climber’s High director Masato Harada held a special screening of the film for a group of schoolchildren in Ueno Village, Gunma Prefecture—the area of the tragic 1985 plane crash on which the story is based. Also in attendance were the film’s star Shinichi Tsutsumi and singer Chitose Hajime, who performed the theme song Hotaru Boshi (firefly light) for the kids and offered flowers for the victims enshrined there. The film is based on a novel by Hideo Yokoyama and was first adapted to live-action in a television drama that aired on NTV in 2005 in which lovable helmet-haired Koichi Sato played the lead role. Public release is coming later today in Japan.

On August 12, 1985 a roving reporter working for a North Kanto newspaper named Kazumasa Yuki (Tsutsumi) prepares to climb Mt. Tanigawa with a colleague. Suddenly word gets out that Japan Airlines Flight 123, which departed from Haneda and was enroute to Osaka crashed into the ridge of Mt. Takamagahara. The airplane carried 524 passengers and crewmen, and only 4 of the passengers survived. In the ensuing excitement and chaos in the newsroom, Yuki is given the go-ahead to cover the story and receives tremendous pressure to beat out competing news organizations to be the first with the scoop.

Not to be mistaken for a typical disaster flick, “Climber’s High” seems to take a more respectful approach, and much of the film centers around Yuki’s difficulty balancing his duty as a reporter against the backdrop of such staggering human tragedy and the subsequent conflict with colleagues as he tries to deal with the event in the most journalistically responsible way possible. Not much more info is available yet until the reviews come out, but Don from Ryuganji got to see it earlier in the year and seemed to like it.

Trailer 1:

Trailer 2:

Official website

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Tags: climbers high, denden, disaster, ikuji nakamura, keisuke horibe, kenichi endo, kenichi takito, maho nonami, masahiro takashima, masato harada, masato sakai, naomi nishida, sarutoki minagawa, shinichi tsutsumi, tomorowo taguchi, tsutomu yamazaki, yukijiro hotaru, yukiyoshi ozawa