Army (陸軍 Rikugun) is a 1944 Japanese film directed by Keisuke Kinoshita and starring Chishū Ryū and Kinuyo Tanaka.
[6] According to film critic Donald Richie, the scene was spared being cut because arguably Tanaka's emotions were caused by her internal conflict between her duty to be happy to send her son off to war and her own selfishness by loving and trying to possess him.
[3][7] Koresky attributes the scene's power to purely cinematic elements, i.e., "expressive cutting, the variations in camera distance, Tanaka’s stunning performance.
"[3] As a result of the final scene, which according to Richie was called "deplorable and an unnecessary stain on an otherwise fine film," Kinoshita was subjected to enhanced attention from the censors until the end of the war.
[3] According to author Alexander Jacoby, Army is superficially conformist but the final scene is an expression of Kinoshita's "antimilitarist sentiments.