A documentary by Kaoru Ikeya. In Japanese and Mandarin with English subtitles. Rated PG.

Some victims are less sympathetic than others.

Consider the case of the Ostdeutsch. Even though not all of these German settlers in Central Europe were either Nazis-come-lately or even men of military age, I find it hard to get teary-eyed when I think about them, even though millions were killed or dispersed in 1945. So, apparently, does everybody else. That’s why they so rarely appear in the history books.

Although it’s hard to believe, the subjects of Kaoru Ikeya’s 2006 documentary are even less immediately likable than the European hard-sells I just mentioned. They are the survivors of 2,600 Imperial Japanese soldiers who fought for the Kuomintang after military defeat in the Second World War forced them to stop bayoneting helpless Chinese peasants in the name of the Emperor.

Five hundred and fifty would die in combat and many more would be captured. Now the survivors’ chief goal in life would appear to be getting the Japanese government to admit that they were acting under orders and not just behaving like irresponsible mercenaries.

The film’s emphasis shifts from a not entirely convincing court case to a series of reminiscences about atrocities committed under duress. Throw in some disconnected shots of jingoistic older Japanese denouncing the modern world and totally clueless younger ones agreeing with everything they’re told, and more than one western viewer will be left scratching their heads.

This jarringly nonlinear approach might be the only way to apprehend such a puzzling mindset at present. Japan’s continued denial of responsibility for the deaths of tens of millions of fellow Asians is hardly conducive to producing a rhetorically compelling documentary of the Marcel Ophí¼ls variety.

Indeed, under current circumstances, this might be the clearest possible picture that the director was able to acquire. When institutional power refuses to come clean, confusion is the inevitable result.