Filmcollege 3 Mubii Japan

Japanese Cinema During War an d Occupation Dick Stegewerns University of Oslo

How to Define ‘the War’?

• When does the war start?

1931? Manchurian Incident 1937? China Incident 1941? Greater East Asian War • Is a wartime film a war film?

• Is a wartime film a propaganda film?

War Film Prehistory • Russo-Japanese war ‘films’: important elemen t in the formation of national identity. Success ful genre that financed the modernization of t he film industry • Universal trend: War films = anti-war films • Japanese war films = inferior ‘films’

Japan as Trendsetter?

• Japan’s position as potential harbinger in the 1930s: the first modern film industry at war • Nonetheless underdeveloped genre • Tasaka Tomotaka’s ‘Five Scouts’ (1938) as the first true war film = art. Experiment in low-cos t documentary realism even leading to ‘intern ational’ success

Censure and Control • Kamei Fumio’s taking ‘shomingeki in uniform’ to the extreme: Soldiers at the Front (1939) • Incidents and German influence lead to gradu al awareness that the mass medium of film ne eds to be controlled • Film Law of October 1939: negative attitude = > restrictions and interventions

The Spiritualist War Film • The ultra-nationalists Sawamura Tsutomu and Kumagai Hisatora • The superiority of the Japanese spirit and the i nternal struggle to attain Japaneseness • Anti-rationalist, anti-individualist, anti-cosmop olitan. Voluntary death serving the nation. All citizens are the emperor’s soldiers

Becoming Part of the War Industr y

• August 1941 Implementation of plan econom y. Limitation of film stock and film quota

• Fusion of the film world into three studios: Sh ōchiku, Tōhō, Daiei. 6 films per month.

• Minimum percentage of ‘national policy’ koku saku propaganda films.

Tuning into a Pacific War • Pearl Harbor caught the Japanese film industr y by surprise • Navy-ordered film for the whole nation The W ar at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya (December 1 942) as the new model of war films • War film as a long process of physical and spiri tual training, ended by short combat scene

Characteristics of Wartime Propag anda Films • • • • • • •

lack of justifying rhetoric absence of the emperor scarce combat footage invisible non-explicit amorphous enemy emphasis of patriotism on the homefront comradeship over heroism group over individual

• • • • •

social duty (giri) over human feelings (ninjō) military as surrogate family inferior role of women purity as the supreme moral virtue duty, loyalty, simplicity, sincerity, bravery, self -sacrifice • war primarily as spiritual training

Types of War Films • • • • •

Unite and fight Asian harmony. China Night, 1940 Increase production Historical exemplary men (safe haven) Don’t despair

• Severe lack of why-we-fight and hate-the-ene my films

Praise for Japanese War Films • Ruth Benedict 1944: “monotonous, realistic, n o cavalcade” • Frank Capra 1943: “We can’t beat this kind of thing” • Shomingeki tradition: no superheroes, no maj or events, collective, day-to-day realism, small emotions, individual sacrifice

Different Aims, Different Films • Hollywood made films to explain the nation ‘w hy we fight’ and make them join the, and to h elp the soldiers to facilitate killing the enemy by dehumanizing the Japanese • In Japan explaining the war was a more tricky business and had better be avoided. Most Jap anese didn’t believe in Japanese superiority b ut in Western superiority

End of War

• A new era of love and peace? A Light Wind, Sa saki Yasushi, 1945

Occupation Cinema Continuity • Detailed censure and propaganda films • Compromise between rulers and industry: sa me studios, directors, actors, and censors • Invisible enemy (depiction of allied forces forb idden) • No battle scenes (and no atomic bomb) • No emperor • Jidaigeki slump

Occupation Cinema Discontinuity • • • •

Anti-military, anti-feudal, anti-collective No suicide, no revenge, no swords Democracy, elections, labour unions Prewar democratic roots and wartime resistan ce based on the individual • Central position for (strong) women • Love, kisses, ‘wet scenes’, and baseball

Cinematic New Deal • Idealistic start motivated by anti-capitalist ideas • Return of marxist filmmaker Kamei Fumio and Iwasaki Akira.

The GHQ-approved content of The Japanese Tragedy, 1946 • ‘Democratization films’ by tainted studios, directors, and act ors. Morning of the Osone Family, Kinoshita Keisuke, 1946. M inimal purge of some studio bosses, but stars of spiritualist n ationalism turned into stars of democracy

Cinematic Reverse Course • Cold War priorities take over GHQ minds • Socialist Tōhō strike is crushed by US military • Maximum red purge of Japanese film industry and de-pu rge of studio bosses.

• Marxist directors forced into independent production. St udios back to normal (non-political) commercialism