In This Corner of the World Trailer – YouTube

I’d like to introduce you to an animated film that was released in 2016 called In this Corner of the World. The film is about the daily life of a woman named Suzu, who marries into a town called Kure from Hiroshima. The story begins in January 1934 and ends in January 1946. If you are familiar with Japanese history to some extent, you may associate words such as “Pacific War” and “atomic bomb” with this story. Of course, these elements come into play, but they are not the biggest ones. The biggest element is daily life. This is a work that fits the term “war in daily life” rather than “life in the midst of war.
The Pacific War begins in December 1941, but the story does not focus on that. The story doesn’t focus on the beginning of the war, rather it skips the beginning of the war because the time jumps from 1938 to 1943. The viewer is left with the impression that the war has started before he or she realizes it.
The end of the war, August 15, 1945, is portrayed in a somewhat impressive way. Suzu, her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and two neighborhood women listen to a radio announcing the end of the war from the emperor. The sister-in-law who lost her own child and the sister-in-law who lost her right arm and niece cry. However, the scene is not that long, and the next scene starts rather quickly.
By the way, the “next scene” is an anime original not found in the original manga, and I love it. It is the scene where the mother-in-law brings out the white rice she has been saving and says the following.

“Let’s cook white rice today without mixing anything. Don’t use all of it. You have a life tomorrow and the day after that.”
This line reminded me of the obvious fact that the lives of those who lived during the war did not end with the war, but continued long afterwards.