The Shining Star of Losers Everywhere
This film tells the amazing story of a horse from a small countryside racetrack few people had ever heard about. The horse wore a pink Hello Kitty mask and lost a hundred races, but in 2003 she became a glimmer of hope for losers everywhere.
From 1990 to 2003, Japan endured a period known as The Lost Decade. It was a time when unemployment reached an all-time high and the country’s economy was sluggish. The remote cities like Kochi were hit the hardest. So a group of people came together to figure out how to keep their beloved racetrack from shutting down.
There was this one horse at the track named Haru Urara. She had lost every single race. The announcer started keeping track of how many races the horse had lost so that one day he would be able to say that after losing X amount of races, Haru Urara had finally won.
And so a story was run in the local newspaper about the horse that had already lost 88 times. The idea was to bring attention to the racetrack in order to keep it from closing. But the story struck a nerve in the population. It seemed that almost everybody could identify with the losing horse because of the country’s economical situation. The message was that one needed to try harder even when nobody was looking.
From a business perspective, it was not a good move to keep a horse that was not winning. What usually happens is that thoroughbred horses that don’t win or that retire are put down.
But as time went by and Haru Urara still did not win, more and more people were becoming inspired by her persistence. People with terminal diseases were finding the courage to fight for their lives. People on the verge of committing suicide rediscovered the will to live and many even started attributing magical powers to the horse.
Then in 2004, things changed and the flicker of hope became a full-blown beacon. Who would have thought that a horse would have the influence to bring a nation together in such a remarkable way? Watch this film now.
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