The acting and direction in the film is C level. It was hard to tell the obvious amateur actors in the military intel office from the supposed professional actors. But despite the horrible acting and direction, the characters were well-developed and a few were even sympathetic. The commie Jap who sees the light was one of those. This was not your usual phony commie scare movie of the fifties. This was the real McCoy, because North Korea did try to disrupt Japanese shipping from Tokyo to the war effort.
And there was quite a large communist movement in Japan after Japan was returned to the Japanese; it gave some Japanese men a way to oppose American occupation of their homeland. Fortunately, making money became more important than regaining international honor in the eyes of the world, and the vast majority of Japanese rejected communism naturally. Socialism really did not appeal to the Japanese masses. Capitalism was far too attractive. The movie does not bring this out well, but the story was more interesting than the acting.
Review of Tokyo File 212
