At military ports like Kure where many battleships congregated, gunpowder was color-coded so each ship’s gunners could identify where their shots landed. In this dramatic scene from In This Corner of the World, Suzu witnesses these colored bursts during an air raid, and envisions paint daubs in the sky.
“Aki Monto” is a term for people living in Aki no Kuni (now part of Western Hiroshima Prefecture) who adhere to a Japanese branch of Buddhism called Jodo Shinshu. “Aki Monto” have a custom of decorating their family graves with special paper lanterns during the Bon Festival in summer.
In WWII, 7-8 meter tall “blindfold fences” were built along the Kure Rail Line to hide the shipyards during the construction of the Battleship Yamato, as seen in the animated film In This Corner of the World.
