The Japan/America Film Wars

World War II Propaganda and its Cultural Contexts

Abé Mark Nornes, Fukushima Yukio, Abé Mark Nornes,Fukushima Yukio, Abé Mark Nornes, Fukushima Yukio

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000458466
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

With contributions from noted critics and film historians from both countries, this book, first published in 1994, examines some of the most innovative and disturbing propaganda ever created. It analyses the conflicting images of these films and their effectiveness in defining public perception of the enemy. It also offers pointed commentary on the power of visual imagery to enhance racial tensions and enforce both positive and negative stereotypes of the Other.

PART I THE CALL TO CINEMATIC ARMS

Fig. 1. (Credit: National Archives)

Feeling in Tune — Perhaps Inspired...

John Grierson

Long ago the documentary film set itself the not very popular task of talking about facts when people were more interested in illusions; of describing social problems which were embarrassing to some and ugly to many; of keeping men’s consciences just a little closer to the dreadful grindstone of actuality.

At this time we are all, in one way or another, concerned in the high duty of creating and maintaining the morale which is necessary for a hard and absolute war. We are concerned with that most vital of all defenses in depth: the strong spirit of the people and their will to order and sacrifice. In that work it is not a question of which is lesser or greater: to lighten men’s hearts with comedy or to hold them to the sticking point with films of more serious content. Both are necessary. I was reminded of this the other day by a story which came over from Mr. Brendon Bracken, the Minister of Information in England. It seems that when the Soviet War Delegation visited London, they asked Mr. Bracken if they might see a film; and Mr. Bracken said he would be very pleased, and he had some very nice documentaries to show them. The Soviet spokesman said, “Thank you very much — and he was sure the documentaries were very nice indeed, but, it Mr. Bracken didn’t mind, the one film on earth his warriors wanted to see was Mr. Chaplin’s Dictator.

Today’s war tasks take us away from our peace-time concern with sociological problems. They are more immediate and more urgent. We are concerned with reporting the battle fronts. We have the duty of keeping the people in touch with their men on distant battlefields, on the high seas and in the air. Because authenticity has always been our watchword, we cannot avoid its more dangerous implications now. Already some of us know the responsibility of sending our camera-crews into danger and losing our people; and among the warring nations scores of cameramen have already died in the line of duty. In that record of bravery Germans, the Russians and the Australians have been particularly honorable. Wherever, in all the elements, there has been front-line fighting, their cameras have been up.

We have the more difficult duty — the most difficult of all from a mental point of view — of shaping from our war observations on every front — both military and civilian — the strategic pattern of highly complex events: of helping the people to a broad and simple understanding of what is happening — of where they fit in — of what in duty is expected of them. Nothing is so certain as that men cannot give their best if they are bewildered, and particularly so in a democracy; and the greatest, perhaps, of all our film responsibilities is to give people, in simple dramatic patterns of thought and feeling, a sense of the true issues which lie behind the maze of events in this difficult moment of human history. Feeling themselves in tune — perhaps inspired — they will the more intensively give of their utmost and so will we.

John Grierson was a pioneer of documentary cinema, having initiated documentary movements in both England and Canada. During the war, he was the commissioner of the National Film Board of Canada. These are excerpts from a speech he presented to the movers and shakers of Hollywood concerning the duty of documentarists in Total War. The occasion was the 14th Annual Academy Awards banquet in 1942.

In this field the best work today is being done, I think, by Louis de Rochemont and Stuart Legg.

It would be a poor business, however, if in following the hard and objective patterns of historic events, we forget the simple pattern of human reaction which persists in death and disaster, like seed in the scorched earth. None has kept the humanist record more nobly than Joris Ivens, Herbert Kline and Rey Scott in their war-time descriptions of Spain and Poland and China; and the English School is doing it brilliantly in films like London Can Take It, Ordinary People, Letters from Home and Target for Tonight. The cry of humanity is not, perhaps, the most potent motif in propaganda, nor the most useful, when the new forms of war are calling us hard and inexorable disciplines of all kinds. But we would be denying our democratic birthright if we ever became so hard that we could not hear it.

Lastly, there is a duty which falls on all of this industry alike. It is humble; it is deeply ordinary; it carries no honors with it. Theaters will not applaud it; like private soldiering, it will go completely unnoticed. But it is none-the-less vital. That is the simple duty of chores of war publicity and instruction. We can use the film to help the fighting services in their daily instruction; we can help the thousand and one Civilian Defense Services to a better understanding of their sometimes quite local duties; we can aid industrial morale and speed the organization of new skills in the service of our country. Mr. Disney has already given his great talent to such routine affairs as the teaching of gunnery and the encouragement of war savings; and nothing has honored Hollywood more than the willingness of men like Mr. Zanuck, Mr. Ford and Mr. Capra to step down from the grandiose preoccupations of major production to perform these simple but necessary jobs.

There will be much more of this to do in the future. There is a contribution which every kind of film and every kind of technician can make to help everyone — on military and civilian front alike — to do his job just a little bit better, and feel, however obscure he may be, a fighting force in the national effort. I hope you will not take it amiss if I say to an industry that has so often sought only the exciting, the meretricious and the spectacular, that this sober and humble and unselfish duty of helping the people, wherever they may be organized, to effective citizenship and good soldiering, will be the best evidence that we have, in all reality, aligned our art with the public purpose and have dedicated it, in all realism, to the pressing needs of our united cause.

PART II THE JAPAN — AMERICA FILM WAR

War and Cinema in Japan

Shimizu Akira

I Japanese Attitudes Toward the War

Japan’s Invasion of China: The Absence of a Sense of Guilt

The Shōwa period officially began on 25 December 1926, but since the period’s first year consisted of only one week, the true beginning of the era must be situated in 1927. In June of that year, Prime Minister Tanaka Gi’ichi, a former member of the army, organized the “Eastern Conference” (Tōhō Kaigi), only two months after taking office. The leaders of the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of War, the Naval Department and the Kantō (Kwantung) Army all took part in the conference. The Kantō Army, an elite corps dispatched for the protection of Japan’s interests in Manchuria, derived its name from the “Kantō-area” (Kantō-shu), the Japanese appellation of their newly leased territory located at the southern tip of the Liaotung Peninsula (including Lushun (Port Arthur) and Talien).

The purpose of the Eastern Conference was to decide upon Japan’s basic policies toward China. While the former Cabinet had pursued a policy of cooperation with the United States and England, and of non-intervention in China, the new conference leaders set forth a more aggressive policy of “self-defense” for the protection of Japan’s interests in Manchuria and Mongolia. This policy of “self-defense,” which in actuality translated into military intervention, effectively furnished the pretext for Japan’s invasion of China.

Immediately following the conference, Chinese newspapers published the text of the so-called “Tanaka Memorial,” which begins with the words, “If you want to conquer China, you must first conquer Manchuria and Mongolia; if you want to conquer the world, you must first conquer China.” The memorial was translated into English and achieved world-wide notoriety; after the war, it constituted a major issue in the Tokyo Trials. However, it was concluded that the memorandum was a sham. Be it as it may, as Kamei Fumio has pointed out in his 39-minute documentary (A Japanese Tragedy (Nihon no higeki, also The Tragedy of Japan, 1946)) the policies that were advocated in the memorial, which he showed in the opening part of the film, were actually those carried out by Japan until her disastrous defeat in World War II.

How did the Japanese public react to the prospect of an invasion of China? To the Japanese, whose government had taken every opportunity to intervene in China’s internal affairs, often using military force, the invasion seemed nothing out of the ordinary; in fact, it seemed almost commonsensical. Therefore, there was no feeling of guilt or wrong-doing among the people, many of whom did not even associate Japanese politics with the term “invasion.”

With the exception of a few intellectuals who habitually tried to gain insight into the future by connecting past and present events, to those who were blessed with the possibilities or occasions to look beyond national boundaries and outside into the world, and to those believers in leftist thought, the vast majority of the Japanese had taken their prewar education at face value. They did not feel any incongruity towards the emperor-system which was at the center of prewar ideology.

The ordinary Japanese at that time were not only unaware of the meaning of invasion, but also lacked any feeling of guilt toward the concept of war as such. This may seem incomprehensible to those who grew up after Japan’s defeat in World War II, but unless we try to put ourselves into the mental framework of the Japanese of that time, we will never understand prewar Japan. In order to do so, it is also necessary to go back in history.

Two Successful Wars

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 brought an end to feudalism and transformed Japan into an unified state with the emperor system at its ideological center. The Meiji leaders, eager to catch up with the modern capitalist powers of Europe and the United States, embarked upon a policy of economic growth achieved by militarization, epitomized by the motto “rich country, strong army” (Fukokū kyōhei). The desire to modernize furnished the pretext for a typically imperialist policy, intent on increasing Japan’s domination over its neighboring countries. For the leaders of a narrow island-country, imperialism was seen as the only way toward progress and material enrichment.

Japan’s imperialist policy reached two climaxes in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) in which Japan fought the Ch’ing Empire which controlled all China, and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), waged against Imperial Russia. The Sino-Japanese War arose from the contestants’ competing aspirations to the Korean peninsula; anxious not to fall behind its powerful neighbor, Japan embarked upon a “preventive war” to assert its claims upon Korea.

At the close of an eight-month long battle, Japan achieved complete victory over the Ch’ing Empire which turned out to be unexpectedly weak militarily. Besides crushing China’s aspirations to Korea, Japan wrested the Liaotung Peninsula, Taiwan and the Penghu Islands from China, and also obtained an indemnity which was more than sufficient to compensate it for its military expenses.

However, not even a week after Japan’s claim upon the Liaotung Peninsula was sealed, Russia, along with Germany and France, demanded the restitution of the territory in the so-called “Triple Intervention.” Japan reluctantly gave in, but fostered a feeling of deep-seated resentment against Russia from then on.

Subsequently, Russia went on to build the Eastern Chinese Railway in the north-eastern part of China (Manchuria), and declared Lushun and Talien, both on the Liaotung Peninsula, leased territories. In addition, the Russians gave no indication of planning to withdraw the troops they had sent to China, ostensibly to help suppress the Boxer Rebellion of 1898. Russia also expanded its railroad network in China by laying a railroad from the city of Harbin, located at the center of the Eastern Chinese Railway, to Lushun and Talien. To top it off, it also created a military stronghold in Lushun. Of course, this amounted to an outright colonization of Manchuria. If allowed to run their full course, these policies would not only threaten Korea’s independence, but also prevent Japan from acquiring new territories. Out of this sense of crisis, staking everything on one card, Japan waged another “preventive war,” this time by challenging one of the world’s most powerful countries, Russia.

Although the Japanese troops had to stop the pursuit of the Russian ground forces at the city of Feng Tian (Mukden, today’s Shenyang) because of a lack of ammunition, they were able to deal the Russian navy a deadly blow. Through the mediation of the United States, the contestants signed a peace agreement. The Kantō (Kwantung) region became Japan’s leased territory. In the bargain Japan also acqu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction to the Series
• Preface
• Part I The Call to Cinematic Arms
• Part II The Japan-America Film War
• Part III Manufacturing the Enemy
• Part IV Violent Images and Their Various Pleasures
• Part V When the Human Beings are Gone...
• Part VI The Films: From Mukden to Tokyo Bay
• Bibliography
• Sources
• Index
• Contributors