Reception
Rhapsody in August received mixed reviews on its release in 1991.
Some critics made much of the fact that the film centered on the film's depiction of the atomic bombing as a war crime while omitting details of Japanese war crimes in the Pacific War. When Rhapsody premiered at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, one journalist cried out at a press conference, "Why was the bomb dropped in the first place?" At the Tokyo Film Festival, critics of Japanese militarism said Kurosawa had ignored the historical facts leading up to the bomb. Japanese cultural critic Inuhiko Yomota commented:
"Many critics, myself included, thought Kurosawa chauvinistic in his portrayal of the Japanese as victims of the war, while ignoring the brutal actions of the Japanese and whitewashing them with cheap humanist sentiment."
Kurosawa's response was that wars are between governments, not people, and denied any anti-American agenda.
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