Title: The Story of Qiu Jin

Director: Jiang Wen

Starring: Jiang Wen | Shi Jianquan | Shu Ping | You Fengwei

Year of release: 2016

　　In the final stages of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the story unfolds in a remote little village called Gajiatái, located near Shanhaiguan in Hebei Province.

　　One night, two sacks containing prisoners were escorted into the home of a villager named Ma Dashan. One was a Japanese soldier, and the other was an interpreter. Originally, they had agreed to retrieve the prisoners after eight days, but thereafter there was no further word. After the two captives had been held in the village for some time, the villagers deliberated and decided to execute them to avoid trouble. The Japanese soldier, Hanaya Kosaburō, initially resolved to die for his country, while the interpreter, Dong Hanchen, exploited the language barrier to cling to his chance of survival. After several failed attempts to put them to death, the villagers concluded that their fate was not yet sealed and continued to keep the two prisoners secretly imprisoned in the village.

　　Six months later, Hanaya Kosaburō resolved to repay Ma Daisan and the villagers for sparing his life, proposing a deal: the villagers would return him and the interpreter to the Kempeitai, while the Japanese side would exchange them for two carts of grain. At Ma Daisan’s urging, after some deliberation, the villagers accepted Hanaya’s terms and signed the agreement. Together, they escorted the two prisoners back to the Kempeitai. Upon arrival, though Captain Sakazuka felt it dishonored the samurai code, he nonetheless agreed to honor the pact and led his men in delivering the grain to Gakōdai. Once the supplies reached the village, the Japanese summoned the entire community—old and young—to drink and celebrate, sharing food and merriment. Midway through the festivities, Sakazuka suddenly announced to his troops that the Emperor had surrendered to the Allied forces and that Japan had been defeated. The situation took a sudden turn: the Japanese began slaughtering innocent civilians, turning the entire village into a slaughterhouse, then set fire to reduce the mountain hamlet to ashes. In this catastrophe that wiped out the whole settlement, only Ma Daisan survived. Soon afterward, Kuomintang forces took over most of the Japanese prisoners, including the unit to which Hanaya belonged. On a rainy day, Ma Daisan, disguised as a tobacco peddler and wielding a sharp axe, burst into the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, hacking at anyone he encountered; several Japanese soldiers were killed or wounded. He was eventually captured by Kuomintang soldiers and sentenced to death. The executioner was none other than Hanaya Kosaburō, the very man with whom they had once lived and worked side by side.