According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film deals with the uncertainties and tensions immediately following the Japanese surrender at the end of the war. Matthew Fox will also star as a member of MacArthur's staff whose also looking for his former Japanese lover:
Fox plays Gen. Bonner Fellers, a member of MacArthur's staff and a leading expert on Japan. He's charged with reaching a decision of historical importance: Whether Emperor Hirohito should be tried and hanged as a war criminal.I've said it before and it looks like I will have to keep saying it: Hollywood can make a movie set anywhere in the world, in any era of history... and still somehow find a way for the movie to star a white guy. And this is literally the third movie I've heard of in the last year revolving around a white protagonist in post-war Japan.
Interwoven throughout the political saga is Feller's quest to find Aya, a Japanese exchange student he met and fell in love with years earlier in the U.S.
Production is set to start later this month in New Zealand and Japan. More here: Tommy Lee Jones joins 'Emperor.'