Overview
In the winter of 1945, Sakura the elephant gave birth to a baby elephant at Tokyo Fujimi Zoo under the watchful eye of the zookeeper Shota Tanabe. Around the same time, Shota's wife, Setsuko, also gave birth to a son. Hanako, the baby elephant, grows up while deepening her bonds with elementary school students who love zoos. However, as Japan enters the Pacific War, the military orders the animals in the zoos of five major cities to be killed.
DirectorRyô Kinoshita
ProducersYoshimasa Onishi, Junichi Shinzaka
ScreenplayNobuo Yamada
Top Casts
Tetsuya Takeda
Shota Tanabe (Tokyo Fujimi Zoo Keeper)
Kurara Haruka
Sachiko Kogure (Akimoto's fiancée/Pianist)
Midori Hagio
Setsuko Tanabe (Shota's wife)
Mari Mizutani
Mariko Kurita (Director Kurita's daughter)
Nobuyo Oyama
Momoyo (Shota's mother)
Chōichirō Kawarasaki
Hideo Hayakawa
Kan Mikami
Kikuo Yokoyama (Akimoto's sidecar driver/Army Sergeant)
LaSalle Ishii
Genji Oshima
Noboru Mitani
Kiyoshi Saito
Shigeru Kōyama
Masahiro Murakami
Details
LanguageJapanese
Production companiesTOHO, Shogakukan, Bandai