Alone Across the Pacific

Alone Across the Pacific follows a young Japanese man, Kenichi Horie, who sets out to sail a small boat across the ocean to San Francisco. His ambition puts him at odds with his family and with Japanese law, which at the time barred small craft from venturing beyond the country's coastal waters. Years of preparation go into the voyage, yet the crossing brings hardships he could not have anticipated, and his resolve is tested repeatedly along the way. The story draws on Horie's own account of the trip.

Kon Ichikawa directed the film, working from a screenplay by Natto Wada. It was the ninth of the fifteen films he directed, following Bonchi and preceding The Money Dance. Yūjirō Ishihara plays the young sailor, with Masayuki Mori and Kinuyo Tanaka as his parents, Ruriko Asaoka as his sister and Hajime Hana as a friend. Nikkatsu Corporation and Ishihara Productions produced the 97-minute adventure, released in Japan in late 1963.

On IMDb, the film holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from around 540 votes, and on TMDB it also sits at 7 out of 10, based on a much smaller number of votes. Both figures point to a modest but consistent level of approval from viewers.