Celebrated film director Shohei Imamura made several path-breaking but rarely shown documentaries in a mid-career detour from 1967–1975. In two works originally made for Japanese television, Imamura travelled first to Malaysia and then to Thailand to investigate the lives and experiences of Japanese soldiers who, during World War II, chose to desert military service and remain in Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, Imamura follows one false lead after another as he tries to locate unreturned Japanese soldiers who had given up the culture of their home country to integrate with Malaysian society.

Through these circumlocutions through the complexities of post-war Malaysia, Imamura examines the conduct of the Japanese military in Southeast Asia, particularly during the 1942 Sook Ching massacre. He eventually tracks down A-Kim, a former soldier who has converted to Islam and lives in a Malaysian community. In conversations with Imamura, Kim describes the strange pact he has made with his country of birth.

Shohei Imamura (1926–2006, Japan) is widely recognised as one of the most important directors to emerge from the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s. A master storyteller, his works are typically ribald and earthy, revealing the lives of the ‘sub-proletariats’ of society, including criminals, pimps, and pornographers. The investigation of the primal gives his works an anthropological aspect even as they implicitly critique the costs of modernity and capitalism. Imamura was awarded the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1983 and in 1997 for Narayama-Bushi-Ko (The Ballad of Narayama) and Unagi (The Eel) respectively.