Beiruting News

TOKYO - Angelina Jolie's new movie "Unbroken" has not been released in Japan yet, but it has already struck a nerve in a country still wrestling over its wartime past.

The buzz on social networks and in online chatter is decidedly negative over the film, which depicts a U.S. Olympic runner who endures torture at a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during World War II.

Some people are calling for a boycott of the movie, although there is no release date in Japan yet. It hits theaters in the U.S. on Dec. 25.

Others want the ban extended to Jolie, the director - unusual in a nation enamored with Hollywood, and especially Jolie and her husband Brad Pitt, who have reputations as Japan lovers.

The movie follows the real-life story of Louis Zamperini as told in a 2010 book by Laura Hillenbrand. The book has not been translated into Japanese, but online trailers have provoked outrage. Zamperini, played by Jack O'Connell, survived in a raft for 47 days with two other crewmen after their B-24 bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, only to be captured by the Japanese and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

Especially provocative is a passage in the book that accuses the Japanese of engaging in cannibalism of POWs. It is not clear how much of that will be in the movie, but in Japan that is too much for some.

"There was absolutely no cannibalism," said Mutsuhiro Takeuchi, a nationalist-leaning educator and a priest in the traditional Shinto religion. "That is not our custom."

Takeuchi acknowledged Jolie is free to make whatever movie she wants, stressing that Shinto believes in forgive-and-forget.

But he urged Jolie to study history, saying executed war criminals were charged with political crimes, not torture.

"Even Japanese don't know their own history so misunderstandings arise," said Takeuchi, who heads his research organization, the Japan Culture Intelligence Association.

Hollywood films that touch on sensitive topics for the Japanese have had a troubled history here.

Theaters canceled screenings of the Oscar-winning 2009 documentary "The Cove" about the bloody dolphin hunts in the Japanese town of Taiji after the distributor was deluged with threats from people who said the movie denigrated the "culture" of eating dolphins, although most Japanese have never eaten dolphin or whale meat.