Nijushi no Hitomi Movie Village

"Nijushi no Hitomi" or "Twenty-Four Eyes" is a 1954 movie filmed on Shodoshima that follows the lives of a school teacher and her first class of students as they grow up on the island during the rise of Japanese nationalism in the leadup to WWII. After the shooting of a color remake in 1987, the movie set used for the filming was opened to the public as the "Nijushi no Hitomi Eigamura" movie village (二十四の瞳映画村).

The movie set consists of an entire reconstructed village, including a school house, over a dozen homes, a shrine, a canal and a few fields. Visitors can enter all the buildings, some of which were transformed into restaurants, shops and small museums. The village conveys a nostalgic atmosphere of past decades, and is pleasant to explore even by those who have not seen the movie.

Among the buildings are a restaurant that serves old-fashioned school lunches and an antique movie theater where the original movie is constantly shown. In two small museums, visitors can learn more about the writer of the original story and about Japanese cinema in general.

A few hundred meters away, along the road leading to the movie village, stands the school house from the original movie. Unlike the replica in the movie village, that school house was actually used as an elementary school from 1902 until 1971. Visitors may enter this school house, too, and tour the three wooden classrooms against a small entrance fee.