The basic concept of Sinking of Japan (Nippon Chinbotsu) - Japan is mortally threatened by a powerful force seemingly beyond human control - is that of dozens of monster and disaster pics, but in his eponymous 1973 novel, Komatsu Sakyo took it one step further: he imagined Japan literally sinking after a massive collision of two tectonic plates. The result is a hellbroth of earthquakes and volcanoes that kill millions and force the evacuation of the entire country. Komatsu's novel became a monster best seller and Toho soon cranked out a hit Higuchi movie based on it, with a then stupendous budget of 500 million yen.
Shinji 's remake delivers the sort of CG effects impossible back in 1973 while adding a more assertive central female character - a rescue worker played by Shibasaki Kou. Also, thankfully, Higuchi explains much of the scientific mumbo-jumbo in terms that even a grade schooler can understand.
Sinking of Japan gets right down to business from its first scene, with a massive earthquake that reduces the city of Numazu to rubble. The film, however, lacks the headlong momentum of Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds, another recent film with an apocalyptic theme. Instead, the narrative follows the stop-and-start pattern of many a 1970s disaster movie - frequently slowing for fraught meetings and partings. The two principals are Shibasaki as rescue worker Abe Reiko, and Kusanagi Tsuyoshi as deep-sea submersible pilot Onodera Toshio. They meet in the first scene, when Reiko saves a dazed Onodera and a girl named Misa (Fukuda Mayuko) who has become separated from her parents in the quake’s fiery aftermath.
Soon after, Japanese government officials learn that Japan will slide into the Pacific in 40 years. A skeptical scientist, Dr. Tadokoro (Toyokawa Etsushi), send Onodera and another pilot to examine the sea bed off Japan to investigate this claim. His conclusion: Japan will vanish in 338 days, give or take several hours.
Through Tadokoro, Reiko reunites with Onodera and tells him that Misa's father is dead and her mother, in a coma. Together they go to visit Misa at her new home - a small restaurant run by Reiko's aunt in a funky Tokyo Bay neighborhood. Onodera is enraptured by the shop and its salt-of-the-earth regulars, as well as by Reiko. To him they represent everything good about a land about to disappear forever.
What can anyone do about this horror? Some insiders say that, to avoid mass panic, the government should lie about the true situation, but the good-hearted prime minister (Ishizaka Koji) appoints his ablest minister, Takamori (Daichi Mao), to head a task force dedicated to saving as many lives as possible.
Sinking of Japan offers enough earthquakes, eruptions and general havoc to keep disaster fans happy. The film's brand of soft nationalism is also of interest. No one sings the Japanese national anthem as yet another cultural landmark falls to rubble, but most of the good characters opt to stay with Japan until the bitter (or rather salty) end. They'd rather die than not have Japanese soil beneath their feet. It's something like the Titanic - if it had several million Captain Smiths.