A boy, living on the streets of a post-war Japan, ekes out his existence through a combination of scavenging and petty theft. Caught by a young woman hiding out in a dilapidated tavern, he and a traumatised soldier are incorporated into her impoverished and impulsively improvised family.

No punches are pulled in Shinya Tsukamoto’s bleak, emotionally haggard drama Shadow of Fire. Thematically the film acts as a companion piece to Tsukamoto’s confrontational remake Fires on the Plain (2014): while that film’s profile of Japanese soldiers in retreat palpably showed that war is hell, this most recent work demonstrates that things were not much better for the civilians back in Japan. The black market provides food and shelter only for those who can pay for it; everyone else in the war’s aftermath are left to subsist, to starve, make moral sacrifices, and to suffer their traumas alone.

It is, of course, not the first time a filmmaker has used a child’s perspective to comment on the horror of armed conflict. Elem Climov’s notorious Come and See (1985) continues to cast a long shadow over the genre, influencing more recent examples like Václav Marhoul’s The Painted Bird (2019). Closer to Tsukamoto’s home, Akiyuki Nosaka’s Grave of the Fireflies has been adapted twice: once in live-action (2005) and more famously by anime director Isao Takahata in 1988. It is a powerful contrast, and accentuates the horror and depravity to shocking extremes. What sets Tsukamoto’s work apart is his humanity. A seam of hope glimmers around the edges, and a lively spark successfully grants Shadow of Fire a heart that the earlier works mentioned tend to lack. That heart has always lay beneath the surface in Tsukamoto’s films going all the way back to his breakout film Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), but here the 64-year-old Tsukamoto demonstrates a richer, visibly more mature experience. By my estimation he remains one of Japan’s most interesting and talented independent filmmakers, and a profoundly talented creative force. Here he writes, directs, produces, and edits. He even acts as his own cinematographer.

Mononymous actor Shuri is powerful and emotive as the nameless young woman. Living in an abandoned tavern, she survives by prostituting her body to the men living nearby. The arrival of a traumatised veteran offers her some hope of restarting her pre-war life and finding both security and family, but his mental condition is simply too damaged to cope. Hiroki Kono’s performance verges on the histrionic. At first the veteran’s outbursts are shocking, but familiarity with the performance breeds contempt. As the child protagonist Tsukao Ogo is sensational: the result, one suspects, of a natural screen chemistry and very careful editing and direction. He anchors the production superbly, particularly during a third act confrontation between a man he has befriended (an excellent Mirai Murayama) and the man’s former commanding officer.

Tsukamoto makes films at a slower pace these days than he used to, but correspondingly his earlier frantic punk works have been replaced by smart, well-considered screen dramas small of scale and high on emotional returns. Shadow of Fire, which is now available on physical media in the UK at least, is a most worthy addition to his ouevre.