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Season of the Sun
Movie

Season of the Sun

1956 • Unknown

Woke Score
4
out of 10

Plot

The film tells the story of a group of high school boxing team members who spend their days drinking, sailing and chasing girls, and who more often than not spend their nights getting into brawls. In particular, it focuses upon Tatsuya, a sullen young man, who falls in love with Eiko, a proud upper-class girl.

Overall Series Review

The film documents the 'Taiyozoku' (Sun Tribe), a generation of wealthy, listless, post-war Japanese youth. The narrative is driven by the aimless nihilism and hyper-sexualized hedonism of its characters, focusing on the tumultuous, self-destructive romance between high school boxer Tatsuya and the upper-class Eiko. It acts as a raw, sociological critique of moral decay and generational rebellion following national defeat. The content is controversial for its time, featuring depictions of casual violence, sex, and drinking. The movie avoids modern progressive tropes, instead focusing on themes of class privilege and the existential vacuum of a society struggling for identity. The core conflicts are generational and internal to Japan’s social structure, not rooted in contemporary Western identity politics.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The narrative is centered on class privilege and generational conflict within a single, ethnically homogenous society. The critique is directed at the wealthy youth's lack of purpose, not intersectional hierarchy or immutable characteristics. There is no vilification of 'whiteness' or forced diversity, as the film is set entirely within Japanese culture.

Oikophobia6/10

The film is a primary work of the 'Sun Tribe' genre, which is defined by the 'nihilistic lifestyle' and 'loss of identity' among post-war youth. The narrative portrays the inherited home culture as having produced a deeply disillusioned and morally corrupt elite generation, which aligns with the high score definition of framing the home culture as fundamentally flawed and corrupt.

Feminism3/10

The movie completely lacks the 'Girl Boss' or 'Mary Sue' tropes. The male leads are depicted as hyper-sexual and prone to violence, not emasculated or bumbling idiots. The gender dynamics are purely transactional, raw, and destructive. The score is low because it actively avoids modern feminist messaging, but is not a celebration of complementarianism either, instead showing a toxic, non-familial dynamic.

LGBTQ+1/10

The plot focuses entirely on a traditional male-female pairing, albeit a destructive one. The movie contains no elements of centering alternative sexualities, deconstructing the nuclear family as a political concept, or introducing gender ideology lectures.

Anti-Theism6/10

The defining theme is the 'existential nihilism' of the 'listless postwar youth' who embrace hedonism, violence, and thoughtless spending. This complete lack of 'higher moral law' and embrace of subjective morality and vice in a spiritual vacuum fits the anti-theist principle of the high-score rubric, even without explicit hostility toward a religious institution.