He felt no embarrassment about shedding tears during the film as his three friends also wept alongside him as the tale unfolded of the suicidal mission of the doomed Japanese battleship in the closing days of the war.

“I hope we can accept being patriotic without a strange stereotype of being right wing,” said Machida. “Right now, there is sentiment that we should not feel patriotic.”

The release of Japan’s latest war-time movie comes as a growing number in this largely pacifist nation seem to be taking the view that the country owes a debt to its war dead for its current prosperity.

The film’s makers deny it glorifies war - just as Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi says his controversial visits to a Tokyo war shrine do not seek to glorify militarism but to pay respect to the war dead.

In the post-war period Japanese have carried a feeling of remorse for their past military aggression against other Asian nations.

‘Healing nationalism’

But 60 years after the end of the war, there has been an increase in Japanese patriotism that is causing alarm in neighboring Asian nations and putting strains on Japan’s regional relations.

Koizumi’s governing party plans to revise the US-imposed pacifist constitution to officially recognise it has a military, with Japanese troops on a mission in Iraq.

Some 1.58 million people have watched “Yamato” since its release on December 17 as of January 3, ahead of “King Kong,” Hollywood’s remake of the classic ape tale which drew 1.13 million, according to the two distributors.

It was the second most-watched movie here on the weekend of its release, trailing only the latest installment in the phenomenally successful series about the boy wizard “Harry Potter”.

 “Yamato” incorporates a new Japanese way of looking at World War II that puts more emphasis on sacrifice than aggression, according to Yutaka Yoshida, professor of Japanese history at Hitotsubashi University.

“It is a new phenomenon of beautifying war,” he said. “Old war movies always took a critical view of the highest level of the Japanese Navy that ordered such a meaningless military mission.

“This is what academics call “healing nationalism’,” Yoshida said.

“Losing confidence in their own nation after the so-called lost decade of the 1990s, when the Japanese economy experienced long stagnation, many young people now seek something self-comforting in nationalism,” for example to sacrifice oneself for some bigger cause like the nation, he added.

Built as a symbol of Japan’s military power

 The 65,000-ton Yamato warship was launched in 1940 as the largest battleship in the world and a symbol of Japan’s military might but its short history ended in tragedy.

On April 7, 1945, with Japan’s imminent defeat clear to see, the Yamato was ordered on a suicidal mission to attack a US fleet supporting a US landing on the southern island chain of Okinawa.

The Yamato was destroyed in a barrage of fire by almost 400 US planes and sank with the loss of about 2,500 crew, though some 270 miraculously survived.

The two-and-a-half-hour production stars some of Japanese cinema’s biggest names.

Director Junya Sato plays on the emotional relations of the battleship’s anonymous crewmen, particularly those still in their teens while depicting in its climax petals fanning out from cherry blossoms as the sailors wave and shout to loved ones seeing them off at a port.

In one scene Yamato Lieutenant Iwao Usubuchi reads out to teenage troops on deck a poem the character wrote in real life: “We will die in grace leading the way of Japan’s rebirth. Wouldn’t it be the desire of our hearts?”

In another 15-year-old sailor Katsumi Kamio, played by Kenichi Matsuyama, visits the home village of a fellow sailer who died so as to inform his mother of the death.

“I couldn’t hold back my tears when Kamio, getting down on his knees, apologized to his friend’s mother and said, “I’m sorry I’m back alive,’” one of Machida’s friends said to nods of agreement.

Japan saw a series of war movies released before “Yamato” - ”Lorelei”, “Aegis”, “Sengoku Jieitai (Samurai Commando) 1549” -- perhaps reflecting the trend of growing nationalism.

Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, the well-known hawk who is also an author, plans to produce another war movie based on kamikaze to open in spring 2007.

In the production entitled “I Go to Die For Nothing But You”, he will depict youths assigned to carry out kamikaze suicide missions in WWII and a woman who looked after them before they go off to die.

Ishihara, known for his strong criticism of China, co-wrote the 1989 bestseller “The Japan That Can Say No”, calling on his nation to be more assertive against its ally the United States.