Nankyoku Monogatari - Plot

Plot

In February 1958, the Second Cross-Winter Expedition for the Japanese Antarctic Surveying Team rode on the icebreaker Sōya to take over from the 11-man First Cross-Winter Expedition. Due to the extreme weather conditions in Antarctica, Sōya could not get near enough to the Showa Base and they decided not to proceed with the stay-over.

The First Cross-Winter Expedition retreated by helicopter, but they had to leave 15 Sakhalin Huskies at the unmanned Showa Base. The dogs were left chained at the base, as the team thought that they would be returning, but they did not due to fuel shortages. The team was worried about the dogs, as the weather was extremely cold and only one week of food was available.

Meanwhile, eight of the fifteen sled dogs managed to break loose from their chains (Riki, Anko, Shiro, Jakku, Deri, Kuma, Taro, and Jiro), but the other seven were not so fortunate. As they journeyed across the frozen wilderness of Antarctica, the dogs were forced to survive on their own feces, hunting penguins and seals on the ice shelves and even eating the excrement of seal for food. As months passed, several of the dogs died or disappeared in the glacier. Riki was fatally injured by an orca while trying to protect Taro and Jiro. Anko and Deri fell through the ice and drowned in freezing waters. Shiro fell off a cliff to his death, and Jakku and Kuma disappeared in the wilderness.

Eleven months later, on 14 January 1959, Kitagawa, one of the dog handlers in the first expedition, returned with the Third Cross-Winter Expedition, wanting to bury his beloved dogs. He, along with the two dog-handlers Ushioda and Ochi, recovered the frozen corpses of seven dogs, but were even more surprised when they discovered that eight of their dogs had broken loose. To everyone's surprise, they were greeted warmly at the base by two dogs, Taro and Jiro, brothers who were born in Antarctica.

It is still unknown how and why the brothers survived, because an average husky can only live in such conditions for about one month. In the movie, the director used the data available, together with his imagination, to reconstruct how the dogs struggled with the elements and survived.