While technically a war movie, Nakano Spy School takes place behind the scenes, as an army lieutenant played by Daisuke Kato tries, without funding, enthusiasm or any other kind of support from the Japanese military, to realize a vision of an elite forces of espionage agents who would, upon graduation from his rigorous and specialized training academy, go forth and infiltrate countries all over the world and supply Japan with sensitive information for, well, decades and decades, more or less forever.

He recruits the most capable officers in the army and effectively ends their lives. They discard their army uniforms, never to wear them again, put on business suits, change their names, and immediately abandon their previous lives, families, everything, and disappear into the training camp to learn numerous skills, from safe-cracking and the use of poisons to dancing and sex.

The main character is Jiro and the first pang comes when he puts away his uniform. He'd only been able to acquire it in the first place becauser his fiancée, Yukiko, who lives with his mother, had given him her savings.

So that's kind of sad. But it's nothing compared to what comes later.

After Jiro disappears, Yukiko relentlessly tries to find out what happened to him. She uses her experience as a typist for a British import company to get a job in the Japanese military office in hopes of picking up some information about Jiro.

But her previous employer was a British spy and sees an attempt to manipulate Yukiko for his own purposes. He tells her that the Japanese government executed Jiro for expressing views critical of the war effort, and that the reason Yukiko keeps running into a blank wall is because there's a conspiracy to cover up this shameful deed.

So perhaps she'd like to help the British by passing over sensitive information that comes across her desk at her new job, to get back at the murderers of her fiance.

Things proceed from there and it's a tragic and cheerless affair.

It's a rewarding movie to watch, however, because everything about it is great, from the acting—particularly Mayumi Ogawa's Yukiko—to Tadashi Yamauchi's score and the brilliant photography of Setsuo Kobayashi. Presumably Masumura should share the credit for the inventive compositions and uses of space and angles.