Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy 9781501306129, 9781501306150, 9781501306143

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Images
Notes on Japanese, Chinese and Korean Names
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Aims and objectives
Chapter outlines
Notes
Part 1 Colonial Cinema and the Imperial Machine
Chapter 1 Constructing the Cinematic Japanese Empire: Taiwan and Korea
The colonial modern
Korea, censorship and language
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 2 Nations in Harmony: Imperial Cinema
Manchuria and images of harmonious living
Bright lights and city spaces: Shanghai and Hong Kong
South East Asia
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 3 Landscape and the Space of the Colonial Moment
Natural, original and primitive
Modern city and rural Korea
Mapping the greater Empire: Trains in the colonial imaginary
Manchurian dreamscapes
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 4 Army Recruitment Films
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 5 ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’: Articulations of Womanhood
Objects of nationhood
Education, gender and nationhood
The ambiguous nature of the modern girl
Military labour and gender
Conclusion
Notes
Part 2 Contemporary Manifestations and the Legacy of Empire
Introduction to Part Two
Chapter 6 Remembering the Empire
Taiwan: Nostalgia, affection and market politics
Korea and the impact of global cinema trends
From the masculine hero to the female spy: Chinese cinematic remembrances
South East Asia
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 7 Japan Remembers, Japan Forgets
Under the stars and stripes: American and Japan in the post-war period
Shin-Toho and a return to a heroic war
‘We need men prepared to live … if no one tries to survive, our dying will be in vain’: Imperial hegemony reinstated from the 2000s onwards
Variations in the narrative
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 8 Representing the Rape of Nanjing
Looking West: UK, USA and German visions of Nanjing
Conclusion
Note
Chapter 9 Legacy of Empire
Co-production as cooperation
Travelling symbols: East Asian transnational stardom
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Selected Filmography
Index

Citation preview

Divine Work, Japanese Colonial ­Cinema and its Legacy

Topics and Issues in National Cinema Volume 7 Series Editor

Armida de la Garza, University College Cork, Ireland

Editorial Board Mette Hjort, Chair Professor and Head, Visual Studies Lingnan University, Hong Kong Lúcia Nagib, Professor of Film, University of Reading, UK Chris Berry, Professor of Film Studies, Kings College London, UK, and Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre, UK Sarah Street, Professor of Film and Foundation Chair of Drama, University of Bristol, UK Jeanette Hoorn, Professor of Visual Cultures, University of Melbourne, Australia Shohini Chaudhuri, Senior Lecturer and MA Director in Film Studies, University of Essex, UK

Volumes in the Series: Revolution and Rebellion in Mexican Film, Niamh Thornton Ecology and Contemporary Nordic Cinemas, Pietari Kääpä Cypriot Cinemas, edited by Costas Constandinides and Yiannis Papadakis Aesthetics of Displacement, Ozlem Koksal Film Music in ‘Minor’ National Cinemas, edited by Germán Gil-Curiel Italian Style, Eugenia Paulicelli

Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy Kate Taylor-Jones

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

N E W YO R K • LO N D O N • OX F O R D • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10018 WC1B 3DP USA UK www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Kate Taylor-Jones, 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Taylor-Jones, Kate E. author. Title: Divine work, Japanese colonial cinema and its legacy / Kate Taylor-Jones. Description: New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. | Series: Topics and issues in national cinema; volume 7 | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2017003733| ISBN 9781501306129 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501306143 (epdf) Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures–Japan–History and criticism. | Motion pictures–Japan–Colonies–History. | Imperialism in motion pictures. | Nationalism in motion pictures. Classification: LCC PN1993.5.J3 T395 2017 | DDC 791.430952--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003733 ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-0612-9 ePDF: 978-1-5013-0614-3 eBook: 978-1-5013-0613-6 Series: Topics and Issues in National Cinema Cover design: Alice Marwick Cover image: Warriors of the Rainbow - Seediq Bale – 2011 © ARS Film Production/REX/Shutterstock Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events, and the option to sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Images Notes on Japanese, Chinese and Korean Names Acknowledgements Introduction

vi vii viii 1

Part 1  Colonial Cinema and the Imperial Machine

1 2 3 4 5

Constructing the Cinematic Japanese Empire: Taiwan and Korea Nations in Harmony: Imperial Cinema Landscape and the Space of the Colonial Moment Army Recruitment Films ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’: Articulations of Womanhood

21 42 55 83 102

Part 2  Contemporary Manifestations and the Legacy of Empire Introduction to Part Two

127

6 7 8 9

131

Remembering the Empire Japan Remembers, Japan Forgets Representing the Rape of Nanjing Legacy of Empire

Bibliography Selected Filmography Index

159 180 195 205 223 227

List of Images Figure 1 Hurrah! For Freedom! (1946)

2

Figure 2 Military Train (1938)

35

Figure 3 Military Train (1938)

35

Figure 4 Military Train (1938)

35

Figure 5 Military Train (1938)

73

Figure 6 Military Train (1938)

73

Figure 7 Volunteer (1941)

95

Figure 8 Volunteer (1941)

95

Figure 9 Volunteer (1941)

95

Figure 10 Volunteer (1941)

99

Figure 11 Fisherman’s Fire (1939)

117

Figure 12 Fisherman’s Fire (1939)

117

Figure 13 Fisherman’s Fire (1939)

117

Figure 14 The Silenced (2015)

146

Figure 15 The Silenced (2015)

146

Figure 16 The Silenced (2015)

147

Figure 17 Flowers of War (2011)

190

Notes on Japanese, Chinese and Korean Names In accordance with Asian practices, Japanese, Chinese and Korean names have been presented with the family name preceding the personal name. The exceptions to this are when the person publically uses the Western organization of their name. Film Titles: Where possible, I have used the most commonly utilised translation and romanisation of the various film titles. For many of the older Korean films I have used the revised romanisation version provided by the Korean Film Archive. This is not always satisfactory and not to my personal choice (I still prefer the MR system) but it will hopefully allow people to search for them in the archive utilising translated titles should they so wish to.

Acknowledgements The list of people to be thanked as part of this project is numerous. First, my utmost gratitude goes to the funding agencies that supported aspects of this research. The British Council provided one of the first grants for visits to Japan and South Korea and the Great British Sasakawa Foundation funded another invaluable trip to Japan. The UK Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded me a Junior Research Fellowship Grant in 2012 and without their support I doubt this project would ever have reached fruition. I appreciate their support and their belief in the project. I wish to thank series editor Armida de la Garza for her patience and support and all the team at Bloomsbury, especially Katie Gallof and Susan Krogulski. Again, thank you for your patience. I would also like to thank the anonymous reader – your comments were very helpful and I hope I have done them justice. Zoran Sinabad at the Library of Congress was a helpful and invaluable resource as were the numerous archivists I spoke to in the process. Special thanks to those at Korean Film Archive, Hong Kong Film Archive, Chinese Taipei Film Archive, National Film Center, Japan, The British Library, National Archives of Singapore, BFI and the Film Institute Netherlands. I will also add that I hope that perhaps Gosfilmfond and the China Film Archive will, in the near future, allow a more open access policy to their collections – cinematic heritage is not always about money or nationalism. My colleagues and friends at my former place of work, Bangor University, need mentioning, not only for the period of research leave in 2012 but also for the support that many people showed me. Sheffield University welcomed me in 2015 and I would like to thank all my new colleagues who have made my transition a happy one. Other friends, family and fellow academics who need acknowledgement for their support and advice as well as their own inspiring research over the years are (in no particular order): Laura Rorato, Alison Armstrong, Colette Balmain, Chi-yun Shin, Jinhee Choi, Ming-yeh Rawnsley, Chris Berry, Paul Mullins, Ann Heylen, Marjorie Dryburgh, John Berra, Kukee Choi, Robert Hyland, Paul and Sandra Taylor, Jennifer Feeley, Louise Hoyle, Noel Anderson, Liz Jordan, Jasper Sharp, Jun-rock Seo, Jun Ichiki, Yomota Inuhiko, Danielle Hipkins, Fiona Handyside and Hiro and Yuri Kiyama. I would like to thank Kendall Heinzman, C. J. Suzuki

Acknowledgements

ix

and Kyle Ikeda and our panel chair Sharalyn Orbaugh for an inspiring panel at the Association of Asian Studies Conference, Philadelphia. Gábor Gergely, Susan Hayward, Lyle Skains and Amy Chambers deserve special mention for reading chapters at short notice at various points in the process – love you guys. Special thanks to Tom McAulay and Hugo Dobson for their amazing translation and editing skills! Professor David Desser needs special thanks for all his advice and help – thank you for your scholarly generosity. On a personal note – Amelia, Florence, Mark and Oskar – I am thrilled you four have decided to join us in the game of life! This project has taken many years for a variety of reasons, not least the fact it spans two children, one job move and numerous upheavals. I dedicate this book to my husband Nick who spent several evenings checking references and also to the memory of my father-in-law Andrew Jones, who was tragically taken from us in 2016. Some elements of Chapter 3 have previously been published under TaylorJones, K. (2013) ‘Colonial Dreaming: Japanese Imperial Cinema and Landscape’, in Graham Haper and Jonathan Rayner (eds) Film Landscapes: Cinema, Environment and Visual Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press. Reproduced with permission and thanks. Finally, while cinema may allow us to escape from the day-to-day realities of life for a short period of time, we should never forget the very real toll on human life and experience that any colonial and wartime period results in. I hope at some point the human race learns from history, although the political events of 2016 (when this book was finally finished) have left me increasingly doubtful.

x

Introduction

In the 1946 film Hurrah! For Freedom!/Jayu manse, a man hides away in a windowless room, lovingly painting an image of the Korean flag (Figure 1). The subsequent narrative follows the bravery, loyalty and commitment that the freedom fighters demonstrate in their single-minded desire to forge a Korean nation free from Japanese influence and control. Hurrah! For Freedom! was one of the first feature films made after liberation, and the film’s overt anti-Japanese rhetoric heralded the beginning of a new Korean film industry. In a reflection of the twisted and complex intersections between colonized and colonizer, Empire and the subaltern, the director of the patriotic Hurrah! For Freedom! had, only one year earlier, been making a series of propaganda features for the colonial government. Born in 1911, Choi In-kyu grew up as a citizen of Imperial Japan. In 1933 he opened up a film distribution company with his brother and, after moving to Seoul, began an apprenticeship in the Korean film industry. He worked his way up from sound engineer to director, and made his directorial debut in 1939 with the melodrama Frontier/Guk-gyeong. At the liberation of Korea, Choi quickly shifted from being a collaborator to a patriot and had made a series of liberation films, with Hurrah! For Freedom! being the most successful. Choi’s life illustrates how cinema, colonialism, nationhood and modernity became intertwined and indivisible in the real-life stories of those who resided inside the Empire. The term ‘Empire’ has experienced a renewed interest from academics in the last two decades. As Harry Harootunian notes, there has been a ‘quickening of the return of Imperialism in popular culture and an ever increasing circulation of terms like “Empire”’ (2004: 7). This return of Imperialism – the ‘return of the repressed, what had always been there but hidden in the recesses of the political and cultural unconscious, lurking nameless anonymity yet ready to explode to remind us of what we had forgotten’ (2004: 7) – has resulted in the need for ‘reconsideration of its meaning in light of an earlier historical experience and it’s relationship to the contemporary manifestation’ (2004: 16). The 70th anniversary of the Pacific War in 2015 (referred to in Japan as the Greater East

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Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy

Figure 1  A visual articulation of Korean nationalism in Hurrah! For Freedom! (1946).

Asian War/Daitōa Sensō) saw a plethora of books, magazines and news articles devoted to debating Japan’s role in the period and the legacy that the Japanese Empire has left across East Asia. For many, there is still a real need to examine the actions of Imperial Japan and to come to terms with the seemingly neverending debates that have resulted from them. The question that Newsweek Japan asked on the special edition devoted to the war perhaps summarized many people’s feelings around this period: ‘when will the postwar end?’

Aims and objectives This book is about the reconsideration and re-examination of one aspect of the Japanese Imperial Empire, namely the cinema of this period and how its legacy has been seen across the East Asian spectrum. Although the Japanese Imperial Empire, the only non-Western Empire of modern times (Myers and Peattie, 1987: 6), may have ended over seventy years ago, its legacy lives on throughout the society, culture, politics and government of East Asia. This study is heavily

Introduction

3

informed by Ann McClintock’s statement that ‘as we look back on a colonial world, we look out on a world where colonialism continues to have profound effects’ (1995: 8). As McClintock continues, Colonialism is coming back to haunt ‘new nations’ where shifting identities and precarious politics are anchored against the modern by the reinvention of forms of tradition that too often clearly betray the traces of a colonial past. Colonialism has also not vanished from former colonial powers, where debates over nationality and multiculturalism mask increasing anxiety over the categories and identities of race, language, culture and morality. (1995:8)

Although McClintock is referencing the Western colonial empires, her arguments are certainly pertinent to Japan and the nation’s former territories. Japan’s empire building began with Okinawa in 1879 and was followed by Taiwan in 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–5). The Empire rapidly expanded to include Karafuto (colonized 1905), Korea (colonized 1910), German Micronesia (colonized 1914) and Manchuria,1 also known as Manchukuo (colonized 1931). Japan’s initial success in the Pacific War would also see Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and British Malaya come under Japanese rule. Since Japan’s defeat in 1945, the legacy of the Imperial past remains across East Asia. Imperial and colonial narratives and their historical legacies can be clearly identified in the tensions inherent in sites such as the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, the South Korean War Memorial Museum, the Seodaedum prison in Seoul, the War Memorial Park in Singapore or the Yasakuni Shrine in Tokyo. Political events such as the China/Japan oil disputes or the controversial textbook reform movement/Atarashii rekishi-kyōkasho wo tsukuru kai2 can be seen as directly linking back to the pre-1945 events. Living reminders are the Japanese-speaking older generation in both Taiwan and South Korea, and the more controversial figures of the enforced army sex slaves, commonly known as comfort women.3 The continuing debates on this issue and the lives and experiences of these women are an excellent personification of the ‘inexorable tangled histories of Japan and Korea’ (Soh 2008: 242) and how the Imperial past affects the current politics of the region. Thus, a continual examination of the colonial period and its Imperial lineage is needed to fully comprehend modern politics and cultural trends in the region. While there was the initial desire to engage in the postcolonial moment following the end of formal Western colonial empires in the 1960s, there has been a recent return to a discussion and interaction with Empire as an artefact

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Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy

in its own right. While the process of reading and re-reading discourses of Imperial narratives (such as seen in subaltern studies) and a renewed interest in the bio-political manifestations of Empire have been seen across many fields of study, the focus has remained predominantly on European manifestation of Empire.4 In short, a consistent Euro-centralism has taken place in Imperial studies (Cooper 2005; Balandier 1951). As Dipesh Chakrabarty argues, ‘There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variations on a master narrative that could be called “the history of Europe”’ (1992: 27). While colonial and postcolonial studies may have marginalized the Japanese Empire, the Empire’s legacy lives on in many aspects of East Asian society, culture, politics and government and, as Chen Kuan-Shing (2010) notes, a continual examination of the colonial period is needed to fully comprehend modern politics and cultural trends in the region. In these ways notions of ‘Asia’ as an entity become a tool of political and cultural negotiation (Ge 2000). There is a need to find and explore ‘the creation of multiple frames of reference that take us beyond … the western frameworks that we are all a part of ’ (John 2010: 195) and ‘thus, the question of Asia must not merely be pursued within the framework defined by the dichotomy of East versus West, but also should be considered as dealing with internal problems in the Asian region’ (Ge 2000: 14). In short, this means seeing ‘Asia’ ‘not as an essentialist category, but rather as a contextualized position’ (Wang 2007: 321). Cinema is never divorced from the history that surrounds it. Although Imperial studies are experiencing a resurgence on the intellectual stage, Imperialism and cinema as an area of cinematic study remains somewhat neglected. Recent studies debating the effects of Imperialism on cultures, histories and memories in this resurgence of interest in Imperialism, such as Antoinette Burton’s edited edition After the Imperial Turn (2003), show an unfortunate lack of interest in placing either cinema or East Asia as part of the dialogue. Cinema has likewise been neglectful of the East Asian colonial and Imperial past. While there has been two recent (as of 2016) collected editions that to have come from a single publisher dealing with postcolonial cinema (Ponzanesi and Waller’s Postcolonial Cinema Studies (2012) and Weaver-Hightower and Hulme’s Postcolonial Film: History Empire and Resistance [2014]), neither book has a focus on East Asia as the site of a postcolonial experience. Indeed, the only reference that is mentioned in Ponzanesi and Waller is in an interview with postcolonial scholar Priya Jaikumar who acknowledges that Eurocentricism is clearly still present with regard to postcolonial studies and mentions specifically a lack of scholarship

Introduction

5

and engagement with the ‘Imperialism of Japan, of China’ (2012: 239). While area studies have seen a large amount of excellent scholarship develop in this area, Anglo-American mainstream academia frequently fails to articulate the Japanese Empire as a dynamic that, in some cases, challenges commonly held assumptions on how colonialism and Imperialism operated and continues to operate across East Asia. As Hyon Joo Yoo articulates in her study Cinema at the Crossroads (2014), the complex interplay between Japan, modernity, the West and the wider East Asian sphere results in the production of a ‘regional framework that changes the language and scope of these paradigms’ (4). The specifics of this regional cinematic framework as articulated in the postcolonial moment that Yoo considers has its basis in history and this historical antecedent is often neglected. The reasons for this lack of extensive discussion about the colonial period are related to some key factors that have to be discussed. The first is the basic problem of material access. While many films from this period were destroyed and lost either during the period itself or in the post-war moment, more material is being unearthed on a regular basis. Stored in archives around the world, the primary issue continues to be access. Time, distance and politics mean that all too often archives are reluctant to allow academics, particularly foreign ones, to view the products. This project has taken many years on account of visiting the various nations involved and the main concern, to quote an unnamed official I encountered at an archive in Japan, appears to be that people will ‘misunderstand’ the films and not ‘appreciate’ the political and cultural moment from which they were born. However, the situation is improving immeasurably. The work of the Korean Film Council (KOFIC) has been vital in making Korean film from this period available for the wider viewing public. A great deal of time and money has been spent transferring a number of films uncovered in the 1990s to highquality DVDs and making them available to individuals and archives around the world. The films from the Man’ei period in Manchuria were traditionally difficult to access via archives in the PRC (and this difficulty continues as I found out from bitter experience), but the (usually illegal) distribution via the digital space has meant that some films are available for public consumption – if one is so inclined to go searching. These poor digital copies can suddenly arrive and just as quickly vanish, which is frustrating for the researcher, and renders these products simultaneously visible (they exist in some format, in some space) but invisible (unable to access them). The copies that occasionally pop up are often

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Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy

taken from the Japanese versions that were pulled from distribution after the Chinese government raised issues about the legal ownership of the products. These DVDs are still available in some places for purchase and the Japanese Film Archive ran a special season devoted to the colonial products in 2005 that showed a large amount of previously unseen footage. Many products were taken to Soviet Russia at the end of Pacific War and it is from Russia that many previously lost films have been unearthed. The large Russian film archive Gosfilmfond may well contain many more items, but the nature of the archive’s operations means few will reach the light of day unless serious money exchanges hands. In Taiwan, remaining fragments of documentaries and newsreels are available for access, and the ‘Captured Film Collection’ at the Library of Congress in Washington remains a valuable, although poorly catalogued, resource for scholars. Across national archives and private collections, both films and the allied film ephemera from this part of the cinematic past are gradually being uncovered and a process of engagement via a myriad of lenses has begun in multiple national and global settings. Terminology and theoretical background must here be turned to. Throughout this book the terms postcolonial, Imperialism, colonialism are utilized. This is not to see them as interchangeable but rather to acknowledge that the nature of the Japanese Empire means that Imperial and colonial interact and engage in a highly fluid and mutable fashion. As noted already, the Japanese Empire was both colonial and Imperial and therefore the legacy is both post-Imperial and postcolonial. The terms themselves – Empire, Imperialism, colonial, and postcolonialism – are the ones that are culturally and historically situated and, as such, need to be evaluated from the perspective of the time and space from which they are being articulated. Territorial expansion from outside of a respective nation state and the subsequent control and influence over the economic, political and cultural life of the conquered nations has been articulated in a variety of ways: Empire, reich, Greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere and Imperium are just a few examples. However, how this control and influence manifested and developed intra and extra to a nation state is highly culturally and historically specific. Categories such as nation and culture (all the linchpins of colonial processes) are clearly not ‘internally homogeneous and externally distinctive and bounded objects’ (Stoler 2002: 23). Thus, all Imperial, colonial and postcolonial studies must engage with the difficult balance between all the composite elements that make up the colonial and Imperial process. When these historically and culturally specific experiences interact with the ideologically loaded term Imperialism and

Introduction

7

its processes (as Bush summarizes the ‘social, cultural and political relations of power between the Empire and its subordinate periphery [2006: 2]) it means that ‘much creative effort is needed to synthesize an understanding of local movements and class culture, on the one hand, and large-scale state dynamics, on the other’ (Dirks, Eley and Ortner 1994: 5). McClintock argues for the rethinking of the cultures of colonialism in the context of the circulation of notions around the sites of family, sexuality and fantasy as well as the categories of labour, money and market (1995: 8). Harald Fischer-Tiné and Susanne Gehrmann, in their discussion of recent scholarship, note that when compared to older studies ‘the former has largely abandoned a fixation on Empire’s “hard” economic, political, and military aspects in favor of a definitive turn toward “soft” issues of culture, identity, discourse, and representation’ (2009: 3). Examinations of the cultural representations of Imperial and colonial practices in varying contexts and nations over the last few decades have increasingly engaged with the visual as a site of ‘soft’ power and with the subsequent cultural impact. This has included film, art, architecture, photography and advertising. This book specifically looks at the filmic manifestation of Empire and Imperial rhetoric and focuses on the notion of ‘The Greater East Asian Film Sphere’. Linked to the Japanese Imperialist idea of ‘the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere/Daitōa Kyōeiken’, the film sphere was part of a pan-Asianist moment that was at the heart of the Japanese theorization (and justification) of their Imperial narrative. Divine Work/Seigyō was the term used by orators and writers of the period to describe the Japanese Imperial project and it is from this term that this monograph takes its title.5 The aim of this book is to examine the construction and legacy of this ‘Greater East Asian Film Sphere’. This film sphere, so imbued with the negative connotation of the Imperial past, is part of the wider subject area of colonial cinema. This book will engage with the cinema from the respective territories in this period that are clearly embroiled in Imperial narratives of subjugation and repression but simultaneously will also argue that we need to see this complex cinematic moment as a forerunner of pan-Asian cinematic development. How is the relationship of Empire configured in cinema and circulated, not only in the films of the time but also in the modern cinematic dialogues? As with all cinemas, the ability to chart every aspect and every film is clearly not within the scope of a single study. This book is focusing on specific issues such as gender, modernity and landscape. Other fields, such as politics, economics and representation of the West, are just a few of the fascinating areas that could be examined if space was infinite. As a point of accessibility, where

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Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy

possible, I have tried to use films that are more widely available (I use this term lightly as many are still hard to access) so that readers can examine the products for themselves in the closer film analysis elements. For this reason, alone, the focus tends to be on the products of Korea and China. As with many narratives of Imperialism, colonialism and Empire, there have been various trends in the examinations that have recently taken place with reference to the Japanese Empire and Imperial activities. Conceptualizations of colonialism and Imperialism are complex and multifaceted and are highly dependent on the theoretical positioning and/or political values that are being embodied. The terms have often been described as being redundant, with Ronald Hyam’s attempts to analyse the dynamics of Empire without using the ‘contentious and emotive words: Imperialism, colonialism, capitalism’ (Hyam 1990: 1) illustrating the complexity of the terms themselves. The differentiation between Imperialism and colonialism in the context of Japan is based on the country and time period that you are examining. For example, Korea, Okinawa, and Taiwan are clear examples of colonialism proper (a formal Empire), whereas the control over Manchuria and the later Chinese territories Japan occupied were more Imperial in nature. Just as empires evolve over time, Imperialism too is not static or uniform. Both Imperialism and colonialism in this sense need to be seen as ‘dynamic and shape-shifting’ processes (Mattingly 2011: 6). Fluidity and change are therefore dynamic parts of the Imperial narrative. Work by writers such as Laura Ann Stoler (1997, 2002, 2013), Frederick Cooper and Stoler (1997), David Cannadine (2002), Ella Shohat and Robert Stam (2003, 2012), Michael Robinson and Gi-wook Shin (1999) and Jung-Bong Choi (2003) have all illustrated the tensions and ruptures intrinsic in, and simultaneously informed by, the colonial process. As Sandra Wilson notes, ‘There is now much greater consciousness among historians of Japan that any colonial relationship is a twoway affair, and that this understanding should be reflected in scholarship more forcefully than was usual in the past’ (2005: 287). Cooper and Stoler (1997) point out that under Imperialism, both colonizers and colonized subjects participated in the construction and maintenance of binary identity categories. In Japan, as with all colonial narratives, the notion of a one-way narrative has to be refuted; Japan was as formed by Empire as the wider Empire was formed by Japan. In line with this approach, one of the key trends has been the examining of the various ways in which the relationship between the colonizer (Japan) and the colonized was intertwined. Earlier bodies of work tended to focus on the

Introduction

9

aims, strategies and structures of Japanese rule throughout the formal Empire.6 As Wilson (2005) notes, the focus has shifted from this approach to investigate more fully the interplay between Japan and its colonies. Andre Schmid (2000) offers the comment that ‘English-language studies of Japan have been slow to interweave the colonial experience into the history of modern Japan’; in effect, ‘divorcing’ the history of Japan’s colonies from the history of the main islands. In his vigorous criticism of earlier scholars, Schmid argues that most historical writings on Japan in English have been ‘nation-centered’, to the detriment of ‘those forces transcendent to the nation, especially when those forces have derived from Asia’. The result has been an approach to Japanese colonial history that is ‘top-down, metrocentric’, and which ‘renders colonial history tangential to the main narratives of the modern Japanese nation’. He goes on to state that academic studies on the colonies of Japan have frequently focused on two key narratives: Reproducing the division between home and abroad captured in the colonial phrases naichi (internal lands or Japan proper) and gaichi (external lands or outlying colonies). This is a style of nation-centered history where, as the primary subject of the study of the past, the nation is neatly separated from the colonies and seen as developing independently. The transnational processes in empire are truncated, reinforcing assumptions about national subjectivity and ensuring that history remains in service to the nation. (Schmid 2000: 954)

This approach has sought to challenge the separation of Japan from its colonies within academic studies. For example, Alain Delissen’s work on the Japanese settler communities in Korea highlights the paradoxical question that Japan’s approach to colonial settlement resulted in – how can a community ‘whose existence was formally denied in both ideology and law manage to exist and maintain itself vis-à-vis the Korean people’ (2000: 125–6). For Delissen the focus is not on the formal operation and the internal dynamics of this settler community but rather through the ‘various outer borders’ such as ‘Shinto rites, neighborhood associations, entertainment districts or vernacular newspapers’ (2000: 126) and the community’s interaction with the surrounding Korean community and nation. As Prasenjit Duara notes in his work on Manchuria, the previously held narratives of ‘cruelty and duplicity of Japanese rulers and the victimization of it subjects … continues to be absolutely necessary to grasp the history of Manchukuo but is no longer sufficient’ (my emphasis, 2003: 1). A development that is vital to this study is the increasing interest in themes related

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Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy

to the social history of Empire including space, gender and class rather than the political, economic and institutional aspects of the past. Over the decades there has been a series of studies written in Chinese, Japanese and English engaging with this focus, and a selection of these are listed in the bibliography.7 Further works that have recently entered the field have built upon this approach by breaking down representational notions of the binary and diametrically opposing figures of the colonizer and the colonized. Literary and narrative-based projects such as Under the Black Umbrella (Kang 2005) offer an examination of various subject positions that people in colonial Korea engaged with, and Carter Eckert’s 1991 study of the lives of brothers Kim Song-su and Kim Yon-su and their interactions with both the Japanese colonial authorities and their fellow Koreans illustrates the complex and continuing issues that existed at the time and still remain with reference to the colonial period. In a similar fashion, Gi-Wook Shin’s work on the peasant experience in colonial Korea (1996) and that of Matsumoto Takenori (1998) offer new visions of the complex power relations between Korea and Japan that were engaged with during this period on an everyday level. These approaches reject the stereotypical binary images of Koreans as either collaborators or victims and lean towards a more nuanced understanding of this period as related to specific people and places. For example, there has been a rise in the number of studies focusing on Manchuria: Louise Young’s 1998 study on the centrality of Manchuria to everyday Japanese life, Takemaro Mori’s (2003) examination of relationships between rural villages and Manchuria during the wartime period, and Wilson’s explorations of the reactions to the Manchurian crisis across Japanese society and the wider Empire. All these studies, therefore, add to the richness of contemporary understanding of this period and its complexities. There has also been an important trend in the desire to understand and chart the complexities of the interrelationship between colonialism, nationalism and modernity. Key texts such as Robinson and Shin (1999), Yun Hae-dong (2003) and Tani Barlow (1997) examine how the drive for modernity was an incredibly important and central narrative in the colonial experience. This approach has led to a series of wonderful studies such as Janet Poole’s (2015) exploration of images in colonial Korea and Yuko Kikuchi’s (2007) edited collection on modernity in colonial Taiwan. Both of these texts have taken the methodology of colonial modernity as their inspiration and it is an approach that this study also shares, as will be explored in more depth in the next chapter.

Introduction

11

This focus on modernity and the complexity of the Imperial and colonial process has resulted in a series of works that have demonstrated the problem in treating the Imperial metropole and the colonial territories as separate entities. There has been a drive to see Japan’s former colonies as an integral part of Japan and its history, and vice versa, instead of viewing the two in isolation. Studies such as Todd Henry’s work on sanitation in colonial Seoul and Hiroko Matsuda’s exploration of Okinawan migrants in colonial Korea indicate the complex interrelations between Japan and her receptive colonies. In his study on the interaction between archives and censorship, Jonathan Abel notes that censorship reports on what literature was banned circulated not only inside Japan, but to ‘far-flung prefectures and colonies’ (2012: 44). The processes by which colonial subjects were encouraged to ‘become Japanese’ (Kim 2009; Kikuchi 2007) have illustrated the complex interrelations between the state and the individual subjects of Empire. As a result, there has also been a re-visitation of the controversial topic of collaboration. This focus has seen a move from the immediate disownment and criticism of those involved in collaboration to a desire to seek and explore the complex reasons and motivations that drove individuals to collaborate in the first place.8 Rana Mitter’s work focuses on Chinese resistance to and collaboration with the Japanese and comments that, despite ‘many notable instances of resistance’ in the initial stages of Japanese aggression, in fact ‘cooperation with the Japanese became the norm’ (2000: 100) at the provincial and local levels. There has been a general idea that Japanese propaganda in this period was not successful when compared to the products emerging from other Axis states like Germany and Italy (Kushner 2006). However, recent studies such as Barack Kushner’s study The Thought War (2006) and Rana Mitter’s work on propaganda in Manchuria (2005) both agree that the previously held assumptions about the ineffectiveness of Japanese propaganda are not, in fact, fair. In line with this, the focus on propaganda and the wider visual culture of the period has seen a considerable rise in the last few years. Colonial cinema from this period has also seen a gradual rise in the amount of scholarly work conducted on it and this has focused on both the metropole of Tokyo and the respective colonies. The work of Posek Fu (1993, 2003) is especially important as his rendering and examination of the cinematic world of Shanghai provides an in-depth, nuanced examination of the interaction between Japanese and Chinese cinema producers, directors and actors. Across the Empire, film culture and Japanese Imperialism went hand

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Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy

in hand and yet in terms of seeing the cinema of the region throughout this period as interlinked has only now begun to gain traction. Thankfully, excellent English-language studies focusing on specific national visual cultures in the colonial and wartime period have been produced in the last few years. These have explored early Japanese cinema not only as a commercial and aesthetic artefact in its own right (Thornton 2008; Gerow 2010) but also as an articulation of a politicized vision of the nation (High 2003; Tansman 2009, 2009a; Dissanayake 1994). The cinema of Manchuria has, for the most part, been explored vis-à-vis the star body of Yoshiko Yamaguchi. This Chinese-speaking Japanese singer and actor has perhaps been the most debated figure from this period in both books (Yomota 2001, 2000; Buruma 2014) and shorter formats (Wang 2005; Stephenson 1999) as well as in Yamaguchi’s own biographies (1987). Film aesthetics and content outside of Yamaguchi is beginning to emerge with Li’s examination of the Manchurian railway documentaries (2014), Kirsch’s (2015) exploration of how Sino-Japanese relations have been rendered on-screen and Tamanoi’s (2005) and King, Poulton and Endō’s (2012) far-reaching studies illustrate the complex interactions between Japan and China as culturally envisioned both in the moment of occupation and in the contemporary imagination. How the Empire has been remembered in the postPacific War moment has received some more attention in the last few years. Edited collections such as Tam, Tsu and Wilson’s 2014 edition Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War and the recent Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia (Berry and Sawada 2015) are just two of the several projects that have begun to look at the interplay between cinema, colonialism, Imperialism, memory and the Cold War as related directly to East Asia. The availability of films means that Korea has become one of the most discussed and explored examples of colonial cinema in the last decade. Studies such as Min et al. (2003), Yecies and Shim (2011), Kim (2009), Chung (2013), Fujitani (2011), Zur (2015) and Kwon (2013) are just a few of the projects that have allowed us to gain new insights into this period of Korean cinema. Taiwan has received far less attention primarily due to the lack of material available from the early period, but Davies and Chen (2007), Chiu (2011) and Hong (2011) have all attempted to give some indication of how the early period could be engaged with as the founding moment of a national cinema of Taiwan. In 2008, Michael Baskett’s important study The Attractive Empire engaged specifically with the cinema of colonial Japan using a more consolidated approach and is the first real study of the Japanese colonial cinema machine

Introduction

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as a transnational entity. Baskett’s study works from three key assumptions which are shared by the present work: (1) Japan had a cinema of Empire (often unknown, ignored or unacknowledged) which merits analysis; (2) the concept of Asia was central to Japan’s collective national identity during this era; and (3) film cultures involve the participation of all levels of society and are not only top-down propaganda. This study develops and extends Baskett’s in a variety of ways. First, it will engage in more depth with the colonial citizens and the respective cinematic traditions that Imperial cinema had to engage with and subsequently develop from. This book, although it cannot cover all aspects, is keen to consider how the cinema of the Imperial moment operated for both Japan and the respective colonial citizens. As will be discussed, co-productions and working relations were far more complex than a ‘them and us’ approach. There was an engagement with local inhabitants and narratives that, although not always positive, did inform the two-way process of debate. In this way, this study also adds to cinematic history by presenting an overview of the interlinked themes and ideologies that informed multiple cinemas across East Asia during this time period. Cinematic working relationships did not always stop at the end of the Pacific War, and it is important to understand the historical antecedences of East Asian cinema as a concept, given that the idea has received serious attention as a method of production and distribution in the last fifteen years.9 The defeat of Japan and the unearthing and vocalization of countless abuses and destruction the Empire had inflicted on its colonies resulted in this cinema being marginalized and ignored for many years, but via the Empire, pan-Asian cinema has been an intrinsic part, often very controversially, of East Asian cinema since its inception in the early twentieth century. As Yau states, ‘Movies of “Greater East Asia”, conceptualized by Japanese film-makers during wartime, were one of the origins of the present East Asian Film networks’ (2009: 111) and this is something this book will also explore.

Chapter outlines This study is divided into two main sections; the first section entitled ‘Colonial Cinema and the Imperial Machine’ offers an in-depth and focused examination of the cinema of colonial Japan. Chapters 1 and 2 offer a broad overview of the Imperial Project and its aims and objectives and how these translated into everyday cinematic processes and realities. How to do this in such a short space

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Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy

is of course complex. These chapters serve to establish a framework from which the later chapters can work and space dictates they cannot cover all the myriad aspects of the cinema of this period. With this in mind, I direct interested readers to the many fine studies that exist on the individual national cinemas that are out there in a multitude of languages.10 Likewise, I cannot provide a full and detailed history of Japan’s empire and I direct people to the studies listed in the bibliography. These obvious shortcomings aside, the broad aims of the first two chapters are to explore how cinema developed inside the Japanese Empire. I aim to show the practicalities as well as the ideological tensions that existed in the face of Japanese aggression and control. To this end, Chapters 1 and 2 will examine how colonial and Imperial cinema vicariously constructed, interacted with, and stymied, local film production and culture. Chapter 1 will chart the cinemas of the two longest standing colonies – Korea and Taiwan.11 It will explore the similarities and the differences between the two nations and the various contradictory narratives that Japan aimed to impart to her colonial citizens. Chapter 2 will then examine other areas of the later Empire including China, Hong Kong and the various South East Asian conquered nations with a specific focus on the Philippines. The later territorial acquisitions operated differently inside the Imperial cinema machine, not least since many of the areas, such as the cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong, already had established cinematic traditions and they, therefore, illustrated the scope and breadth of the Imperial cinematic machine. The Japanese Empire was marked by two key (and often conflicting) discourses (Saaler and Koschmann 2007). The first focused on the cultural and historical ‘sameness’ of those residing in Asia and presented pan-Asian unity as a positive and necessary process to defend against Western Imperialism. The ‘Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere/Daitōa Kyōeiken’ as proposed by various influential Japanese writers and politicians, would, in theory, unite all Asians (evoked through the notion of hakko ichiu or ‘Eight corners of the world under one roof ’) with Japan leading ‘less developed’ Asian nations towards a bright and ultra-modern future under Japanese rule (Robinson and Shin 1999). Cinema would aid this drive for Asian collectivity and would help educate and encourage the millions that resided in the Japanese Empire. This vision of the Empire of Japan as the site of modernity and liberation was counterbalanced by an oft-frequent engagement with the landscape and cultures of their colonial territories as places of undeveloped cultures and economies. Conceptual landscape transformations (whether ideological, discursive or symbolic) have

Introduction

15

been intricately linked to the narratives of colonialism and to the subsequent postcolonial or neocolonial moment as constructed on a local, and then a global, space.12 Chapter 3, ‘Landscape and the Exotic Space of the Colonial Moment’, will examine how visions of the landscape were cinematically presented in Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria. Via film, respective colonial cultures’ desires and aims (whether real or ever actualized) can be clearly illustrated. Chapter 3 engages with the display of Imperialism and Imperial narratives that Japan offered via her cinematic products and how this display impacted local film cultures during this period. Colonial structures are highly complex and the colonial machine did not see the colonies as monolithic entities. There were clear differences between the regions and between Imperial Japanese ambitions for them in the schema of the overall Imperial outlook, and colonial cinema reflects this. The various territories were not presented and engaged with in the same way, and this can be no more clearly seen than in the series of army recruitment films produced specifically for the Korean audience. The recruitment drive for the Japanese army was an ideal way to focus on the narratives that were being told to the local (in this case Korean) population about their relationship to Japan and the Empire. The swathes of China that the Japanese military elite hoped to conquer, occupy and then control and exploit were proving far more difficult than they had first assumed and by 1937 the Sino-Japanese way was beginning to take its toll. Japan’s bellicose approach to East Asia led to increasing conflict with the Western powers and it was becoming clear that Japan needed more boots on the ground to achieve all her aims and ambitions. She would turn to the colony of Korea as the potential source of manpower to feed the military machine. Chapter 4 will explore how the recruitment films attempted to construct a narrative of masculinity that would see Korean men desire to serve in the Japanese army. I will conclude that the very films that were designed to bring the two nations together actually served to highlight the intrinsic inequalities of Empire and therefore operated as disruptive texts in the colonial moment. The Japanese Empire promulgated clear roles for both genders, and women, whether Japanese or non-Japanese, were not expected to enter the armed forces and earn their place in the Empire via military service. Chapter 5 ‘“Good Wife, Wise Mother” Articulations of Womanhood’ examines how the Empire hoped to (re)construct its female citizens. While men would march to sacrificial glory on the battlefield, the focus on women as ‘good wives and wise mothers’/ryōsai kenbo would ensure that they would serve the Empire in a different way.

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Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy

The  Empire was concerned with the lives of more than five million girls and women in the various territories Japan ruled and alternative narratives of womanhood would also have to be found. These needed to promote narratives of inclusion and equality while simultaneously allowing Japanese notions of superiority and traditional gender hierarchies to be maintained. This challenging process would often lead to the figure of women being a complicated rupture in the Imperial vision. The second part of this book Contemporary Manifestations and the Legacy of Empire will focus on the legacy of the Japanese Imperial project in the modernday East Asian film industry. This section will illustrate how the narratives which were articulated in the previous section have influenced, and continue to impact upon, in a variety of ways, the contemporary period. Chapter 6 ‘Remembering the Empire,’ focuses on how the Empire has sought to represent this part of the past. Films that deal directly with the Imperial past have become more common across Asia since 1980 with examples found across the Asian spectrum from Taiwan to Thailand. This is while often simultaneously attempting to keep Japan as a cultural and economic export market – a tension this chapter will discuss. This chapter will explore the various trends in the representation of this period and how both political and audience desires have heavily informed the remembrance of colonial and Imperial pasts. Chapter 7 ‘Japan Remembers, Japan Forgets’, examines how the colonizing nation has chosen to remember its Imperial past. Japan’s continual refusal to officially accept and acknowledge their actions during the colonial period engenders tension between Japan and the surrounding nations. This chapter will focus on the two main trends that have been seen: films that glorify Japan’s military activities and refute any wrongdoing on Japan’s part and films that have focused on telling the events from the viewpoint of ‘ordinary Japanese citizens’ who are constructed as victims just as much as other East Asian subjects. Chapter 8 will explore a specific case study – the filmic representation of the Nanjing massacre. On 13 December 1937, Japanese troops arrived at the Chinese city of Nanjing situated in the Eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu. What happened in the proceeding weeks has become a matter of international debate, consideration, condemnation and questioning. It is an issue that continues to cause division and anger on national and international levels and will forever mark Sino-Japanese relations. This chapter will examine how film has become the primary method of international cultural engagement with Nanjing and

Introduction

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will illustrate how, via their various narrative and visual engagements, the films engage with wide political purposes and ideologies. The concluding chapter develops and extends the key notion that Japan engaged with cinema as an important aspect of the construction of its Empire as a transnational13 unit (High 2003; Baskett 2008; Kushner 2007). This transAsian Empire’s vision of an Asian identity was embedded in the Imperial rhetoric of Japan. In terms of film, the desire may often have been economic-based, but many film-makers, producers and stars during this period understood the need to appeal to and engage with the local markets. In Shanghai, for instance, a popular and influential cinematic arena, Japanese production companies aimed to ‘exploit the established relationship between Shanghai cinema and Asian audiences (including overseas Chinese) so as to establish the basis of “movies of the Greater Asia” and provide a springboard for Japanese films to enter the Asian world’ (Yau 2009: 29). The concluding section will examine how the legacy of pan-Asian rhetoric has survived and been (re)articulated in the modern era. It will show how East Asian production companies have sought to compete with Hollywood, and the strategies that they have used to forge a successful inter-East Asian market. For cinematic products to succeed economically, there needed to be a much wider East Asian market for the film product. Just as the Japanese Empire needed to create Imperial subjects via their visions of the ‘Attractive Empire’ (Baskett 2008), so too does pan-Asian cinema need to find an audience that moves beyond national or linguistic boundaries in order to compete with the Hollywood products which have proven so successful at international border crossing.

Notes 1 The very name Manchuria is a translation of the Japanese term Manshū, and those residing inside the territory have never used this term to refer to themselves or the land around them. Scholars have debated the usage of the term over the years, with several noting that it clearly develops and circulates as a result of Imperialism and therefore should be used cautiously. While I agree with the sentiment of caution, I will continue to use it in this situation as representative of the Imperial period I am talking about. 2 The textbook controversy was part of a process via which negative images of Japan were removed from school children’s history texts books. These included reference

18

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8   9 10

11

12 13

Divine Work, Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy to the military sex slaves (see note 3) and the Nanjing massacre. See Shin and Sneider (2011) for more details. This term is problematic as it is broadly used to hide the uncomfortable and the socially negative sexual and abusive side of the process – therefore I will use the term sexual slave in lieu. For example, Heath’s (2010) work on the British Empire, Staum (2003), Singer and Landon’s (2004) and Hargreaves (2005) respective work on the French Empire and Hochschild’s 1999 study of the Belgium genocide in Africa. This idea is based on the ‘divine origins’ of the Japanese nation, and was seen in various places as a method to describe the project of the development of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere/Daitōa Kyōeiken (see Cho Pyongsang (1940) ‘Shiganhei wo ko ni mochite/My son the volunteer soldier’, Chōsen, March, 61–63). Key works have included those by Hilary Conroy (1960), W. G. Beasley (1987), Ramon Myers and Mark Peattie (1987), Peter Duus (1998), Andrew Nahm (1973) and Patricia Tsurumi (1977). See Tam Yue-him (1985), Lee Yong ki (2009, 2104). Sanetō Keishū (1960), Itagaki Ryuta (2008), Kong Jae-wook and Jung Keunsik (2006). Akira Iriye (1992, 2002, 2009), Myers and Peattie (1987), Joshua Fogel (1984, 1994), Douglas Reynolds (1993), Douglas Howland (1996) and Lincoln Li (1996). See Koen De Custer (2002), Kyu Hyun Kim (2005), Henry Em (1993, 1999, 2001) and Leo Ching (2000). See Stephen Teo (2013), Eva Tsai (2005) and Darrell William Davis and Emily Yueh-yu Yeh (2008) for more details on this idea. I recommend the following books to serve this purpose for each individual nation: Japan – Gerow (2010, 2009), High (1995), Korea – Fujitani (2007), Yecies and Shim (2011), China – Fu (1993, 2003) and Taiwan – Hong (2011). I am not discussing Okinawa. Not because I believe that Okinawa was not colonized but because no native Okinawan film industry was present at the time and, as far as we know, the films shown in Okinawa were all from mainland Japan. See Sluyter 2002, Casid 2005, Hicks et al. 2007, Croucher and Weiss 2011 and Mitchell 2002. Seeing the Japanese cinema of this period as transnational in its conception is an alternative idea to the predominant construction of Japanese cinemas as a discrete and specific national entity. See the work of Stringer (2011), Philips and Stringer (2007) and Baskett (2008) for further reading on this.

Part One

Colonial Cinema and the Imperial Machine

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1

Constructing the Cinematic Japanese Empire: Taiwan and Korea

Our great national abilities can advance the Korean culture; they can also raise the achievement of Korean development. By creating a harmonious balance between intellectual and moral education, within 50–100 years that which is known to be Japanese-Korean will cease to exist, and we shall see on the Asian continent an intermarriage assimilation (tsūkon dōka) of perfect harmony among the peoples of the greater Japanese race. The above 1925 statement by Aoyagi Tsunatarō, a highly influential rightwing newspaper editor, succinctly summarizes Japan’s vision of Empire. This was an Empire that was intimately intertwined with narratives of modernity, development and collectivity and yet, at the same time, was one that was heavily marked by racism and aggression. This chapter charts the processes by which Japan sought to control and convert her two biggest colonial territories: Taiwan and Korea. I will explore how the cinema of the respective nations was formed in the colonial moment and the impact this had on both production and film content. I will chart how the process of colonial modernity that Japan enacted inside her colonies was bound with an ambiguity related to her own status in global politics. Japan was caught between two conflicting ideas – her own racial superiority and the narrative of pan-Asianism that was her battle cry for Imperial expansion. Like all ideas, pan-Asianism during this period of Japanese development was a multifaceted and ever-changing discourse. Takeuchi Yoshimi (1963) notes that terms such as ‘pan-Asia/Han Ajiashugi’, ‘greater Asia/Dai Ajiashugi’ and ‘All-Asianism/Zen Ajiashugi’ were often used alongside more aggressive terms such as expansion/bōchōshugi and aggression/shinryaku. In the mid-1800s the focus was on the more modern Japan ‘helping’ its ‘less developed’ neighbours to achieve enlightenment. This paternalistic vision of Japan leading East Asia to a

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bright future was, however, in contrast to the strongly held Imperial discourse that offered a clear notion of Japanese superiority, and therefore, different from the rest of Asia. This approach became the fundamental national discourse from the 1890s onwards, and ideas of Asian solidarity (hosha shinshi (J)/poch’a sonch’I (kr)/fuche chunchi (ch))1 were, by the mid-Meiji era, ignored in favour of a more bellicose idea of Asia under Japan. The far-right ideologues became the voice of mainstream politics and their desire to increase and defend Japan’s newly acquired territorial powers resulted in state militarism (gunkokushugi) becoming the dominant discourse. This conflict between the ideals of a pan-Asia and the focus on Japan as different and superior resulted in continual conflict between the colonizing government and the local population. China’s defeat in the first Sino-Japanese war had resulted in Taiwan been ceded to Japan in 1895. The make-up of Taiwan was varied with a population of three million at the time of annexation with approximately 94 per cent of the citizens being from Han Chinese descent and 6 per cent of indigenous aboriginal heritage. Neither group was pleased to be ruled by Japan.2 Korea may have been geographically and culturally closer to Japan but was likewise unimpressed by Japanese ambitions. Japan and Korea had engaged in some form of trade and cultural exchange for centuries but Japanese ambitions in the Meiji era had seen her force Korea to become a protectorate in 1905 before she was fully annexed in 1910. As with Taiwan, any attempts to defy Japanese rule were quickly and brutally quashed by the colonial authorities. For Taiwan, colonialism and cinema came inside the same decade. The question of when cinema came to Taiwan is, as Hong (2011) notes, a complex one. Initially, it was widely believed that cinema did not enter Taiwan until 1901, a date that would place Taiwan behind nations such as Korea, China and Japan. However, archival research conducted by scholar Lee Daw-Ming (2012) would appear to support the idea that cinema arrived in Taiwan in August 1896. That means cinema arrived in Taiwan ahead of the first Japanese commercial screening in Kobe (November 1896). The idea that, in fact, the ‘backward’ colony would beat Japan in the first cinematic screening refutes the commonly held perceptions about Taiwan’s backward cinema culture. While it is clear that a fully independent domestic film industry did not flourish until several decades later, this does not necessarily mean that Taiwanese cinema culture did not exist. The case of Taiwan raises the wide issue that this book engages with: How can you define colonial cinema? Cinema made under occupation is often dismissed as ‘other’ to the national cinema discourse and yet, to dismiss forty years of film in Taiwan or Korea

Constructing the Cinematic Japanese Empire: Taiwan and Korea

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as ‘other’ to the nation’s national cinema, is to clearly limit the discourse. By refusing to see colonial cinemas as part of a national cinema, one ignores the process of influence, training, stardom and receivership that develops and grows during these colonial periods which spills over, heavily influences and indeed operates as a founding construct of the postcolonial cinematic moment.

The colonial modern Japan was determined to modernize her colonies, and from 1910 both Korea and Taiwan experienced a series of radical infrastructural and cultural shifts. Landownership, legal systems, rail, water and road networks, public development and taxation systems were all altered and then enforced rigorously by the military and civil police. New roads, irrigation and railway systems were built; modern production and distribution methods were enforced and there was a mass building of banks, public parks, schools, hospitals, museums and impressive government buildings that remain in situ today. The analytical framework of colonial modernity is one that articulates a series of interlinked processes that are here pertinent.3 The first is that colonialism and modernity are both clear expressions of capitalist expansion. We see ‘the history of capitalist expansion’ as part and parcel of the colonial process and ‘it could make visible how globalizing colonial or imperial capital inhabited and reconfigured space, all space; not just some spaces’ (Barlow 2012: 624). Colonial hegemony far from being a monolith was rather ‘a historical process continuously negotiated, contested, defended, renewed, recreated and altered, by challenges from within and without’ (Robinson and Shin 1999: 9). If colonialism and modernity were inescapably entwined then nation, tradition, culture, civilization and other such categories, therefore, become inextricably interrelated to modernity and therefore colonialism. The final dynamic was one dependent on the interplay and interdependence of European/American and non-European modern cultures. Modernity in the colonies, therefore, was imported from and articulated via Japanese colonization but this modernity, in turn, had been appropriated from the West and was not a one-way process. As Todd Henry notes in his writings on early colonial Seoul, what needs to be recognized is the many ways in which ‘Japanese ideologies and projects intersected and interacted with pre-existing institutions and practices in the colony itself ’ (2005: 641). As Laura Ann Stoler

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states the colonial moment when examined in retrospect is the site of ‘the expectant and conjured – about dreams of comforting futures and forebodings of future failures’ (2010: 1). This sense of expectant futures is something that colonial Japanese cinema was heavily engaged in and yet, alongside this, in the tension-ridden process of Imperialism, the foreboding sense of potential failure was never far behind. For Homi Bhabha, colonial structures are founded on ambivalence and any examination of the cinema of this period cannot escape the conflicting pulls of cinema as entertainment and cinema as a political tool. In short, cinema, as both Imperial and therefore external to the locality, was simultaneously situated inside and integrated into the local environs. As Baskett writes the Japanese cinematic empire was built on notions of ‘attraction’. This cinema of attractions was not only hoping to appeal the citizens of Japan but also to hold cultural power in the territories in which it was simultaneously created, exported and imported. Herein lie the idiosyncrasies of colonial power: the need to appeal to, and embrace, the very subjects whom you hold to be inferior. Colonial studies, therefore, by their very nature transcend national and geographical boundaries. They are founded on a cross-cultural flow that, although at its heart unequal, nevertheless allows for cultures, histories and national desires and constructs to collide. The cinematic development of each of the states Japan came to rule would be varied and dependent on a multiplicity of factors. From colonial modernity, Kikuchi states, the theoretical notion of ‘refraction’ has arisen (2007: 9). Refraction results in a process, where, as Bakhtin suggests with relation to the written word, ‘the prose writer makes use of words that are already populated with the social intentions of others and compels them to serve his new intentions, to serve a second master’ (2009: 508). Refraction allows the potential of outside influences being shifted and reinterpreted to become meaningful in the local context. Japan itself took what it needed and desired from the Western modernity and transformed it into its own national developmental narrative. Japan created her own vision of the ‘orient’ and it was one where she was the elite player among ‘lesser’ Asian nations, who required her help and support. This vision of modernity was the one imported to Taiwan, Korea and the other colonies. Therefore, the process of modernity that Japan’s colonies would undergo were part and parcel of the colonial experience. The interlacing of the modern, the colonial and the national results in the necessity of grounding any examination of this period in a transnational

Constructing the Cinematic Japanese Empire: Taiwan and Korea

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framework: in short, to allow us to enter into the complex process whereby ‘national cultures … [are] rearticulated within the new global framework of colonial modernity’ (Baxendale quoted in Jones 2001: 21). The development of cinema in Korea and Taiwan both share common factors in that cinema was from the outset established as a transnational idea. In Korea, the early cinematic stage was dominated by a variety of interested parties who were mainly in Korea for economic potential and had the ability to spot a burgeoning market. Yecies and Shim (2011) note that the early magic lantern and cinematic projection companies oscillated around the various interested parties of Japanese and American film entrepreneurs who saw a way to make their mark on a new market. US missionaries intended to use magic lantern slides of the life of Christ to convert Korea to the path of Christianity, and a series of photographers, travelogue producers and documentary makers wanted to capture a vision of Korean life to export to their respective countries. Local influences were initially limited as Korea became an exhibition site where American, European and Japanese products vied for box-office success. Taiwan’s history was a complex mix of colonialism, invasion and occupation,4 and this varied background meant that from its inception Taiwanese cinema was a mixture of ‘colonial government propaganda; Japanese, Taiwanese, and later Mainland Chinese entrepreneurs; commercial exhibitions and infrequent filmmaking; and numerous imports from Japan, Hollywood, Europe and China’ (Hong 2011: 19). Taiwanese cinema was a reflection of the various intricacies of a colonial nation where economics, culture, popular desire for entertainment and politics all vied for attention. It is perhaps an irony of Imperialism that Japan in many ways opened up the idea of the Taiwanese nation as a bounded entity. Japan constructed an exotic and exciting Taiwan for her own entertainment and this was enhanced by a focus on ‘traditional’ Taiwanese artefacts. The anthropological studies Japan undertook in the territory were the first to have taken place in the nation and they continue to inform the engagement with indigenous Taiwanese today. Taiwanese crafts, art and paintings were distributed into the Japanese mainland fuelling a fascination with the island, and in turn, they also allowed Taiwanese nationals to develop an internal sense of self. It would be Japanese business innovator Takamatsu Toyojirō5 who sparked the beginning of Taiwanese cinema. Takamatsu was strongly connected to the colonial government and his 1903 tour of newsreels from Japan and Europe was extraordinarily successful. The show visited numerous cities to vicariously

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entertain Japanese émigrés and provide ‘education’ for the native Taiwanese on the Japanese way of life. In 1907 Takamatsu was commissioned by the governor general’s office to make a film about life in Taiwan. Entitled Introduction to the Actual Conditions in Taiwan/Taiwan jikkō shōkai, the film’s purpose was to showcase the colony to both the citizens of Japan and the colony itself. For the people in Taiwan, the film not only focused on demonstrating the benefits that the Empire had brought them but also attempted to garner more popular support for the colonial enterprise. The aim was to present to the Taiwanese audience a new citizen identity that would make them a modern colonial citizen. For Japan, the transportation of the colony into the theatre of the metropole brought home the success of her Empire and confirmed to her own citizens her role as the great ‘moderniser’ of Asia. Modern Japan envisioned herself as an outward-looking nation and films and newsreels charting her colonial success supported this vision of herself as equal, if not superior, to the Western nations. As Baskett writes, for Japanese audiences, Taiwan ‘elicited lurid images of malaria-infested swamps teeming with murderous natives’ (2008: 14). This was about presenting a backward but exotic colony for the citizens of Japan to enjoy as part of her Imperial right as the ‘modernising saviour’ of Asia. In keeping with this, the first narrative feature film to be shot in the colony was directed by Tanaka Kinishi, who was based at the Tanaka Picture company in Tokyo. Buddha’s Eyes/Buddha no hitomi (1924) focuses on the tale of a miscarriage of justice and, despite the location of Taiwan and the usage of local extras in the production, there’s no evidence that I could locate that would indicate it was ever shown in the colony itself. The Taiwanese governor general Goto Shimpei was keen to utilize cinema to promote this new identity. The aim was to ensure that the Taiwanese people were eventually assimilated into seeing themselves as an ‘extension’ of Japan. Film as the tool of colonial education (rather than as a mode of entertainment) became the focus of Japan’s colonial government leading to the development of the filmic infrastructures of the region. The Taiwan Education Society established a motion picture unit in 1915 and began screening educational films around Taiwan. In 1916 there were 39 screenings, but by 1917 the number rose to 52, with the audience numbers jumping from 24,000 to 96,000. Takamatsu’s departure meant that the unit needed to make their own products and hired a Japanese cameraman Hagiya Kenzō to continue production. How we understand the term ‘educational features’ is important here. Education for the Japanese mind was related to ensuring that the Taiwanese citizens were moulded into the ideal image

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of the correct colonial subject: loyal, devoted to the Empire and in keeping with the ways and ideologies of modern Japan. At this stage, the aim was not to make them Japanese per se, but rather integrate them (dōka) into the Japanese mode of life. There were hardly any opportunities to make cinema in Taiwan if you were a Taiwanese national and only a handful of products had a Taiwanese cast and crew actively involved beyond background acting. In April 1925, Liu Xiyang together with his Japanese friend Kishimoto Satoru launched a modest filmmaking association known as the Taiwan Cinema Study Association/Taiwan Eiga kenkyū kai. The group’s charter stated that the aims were to ‘study advanced theories and practices of filmmaking’. This statement of bold intention indicates that cinema as an art form became established in the hearts and minds of a variety of individuals inside Taiwan. Ordering 8,000 feet of stock from Kodak, the group set to work to produce, direct and present the first Taiwanese-made feature film. Whose Mistake is it/Dare no kashitsu/Shui zhi guo (1925), a seven-reel actionromance set in various locations around Taipei, was, unfortunately, a box-office failure. The reasons for this are hard to chart as the film received limited reviews (or at least those that are still in existence). As the first ostensibly Taiwanese film, one would assume a reasonable degree of interest from local audiences, but this was not the case. My own opinion is that the amateur film probably compared miserably to the better-produced Mainland Chinese and Japanese features. A lack of budget to promote the film also played a role. Nearly all the main Japanese studios had established offices in Taiwan and small independent productions could not compete against the much better-funded infrastructures. The Taiwan Cinema Association did not survive this box-office failure and disbanded soon after the opening, but two members, Zhang Sunqu and Li Shu, rallied and founded Baida Film Productions in 1929. Their first product was an action-romance entitled Blood Stains/Xie hen (1930) and, although the film was basic in its filming style, it managed to attract public attention. This success seemed to herald the possibility of a Taiwanese cinema and Zhang and Li dreamt of more features and even the possibility of exporting films to China and South East Asia (Lee 2012: 57). However, the company failed to compete both financially or technically with the advanced products and budgets of Japanese and Chinese imports and Baida finally folded in 1934 with only one film in its catalogue. While Taiwanese film production was faltering, film culture was rapidly developing. Across Taiwan, cinema, clubs and cinema journals were appearing

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at a remarkable rate. The Taipei Cinema League/Taihoku was established in 1931 and had more than 1,000 members by 1932. The All Taiwan Film Research Association/Zen Taiwan eiga kenkyū kai was founded in 1935 and held a series of cultural events devoted to the discussion of cinema. Production may have languished but these clubs and journals show that film culture was clearly present in Taiwan. The dismissal that is often claimed that Taiwan had no indigenous cinema culture in this period is, therefore, problematic. While actual Taiwanese productions were limited, people were discussing and evaluating the film products they were seeing and these discussions, and the training the staff and actors received in the Japanese films produced in Taiwan, would have an impact on the postcolonial period. Hong identifies three main elements from this period that can be illustrative of the development of a cinematic consciousness that would have a serious impact on the postcolonial period. He notes that ‘the role of the benzi (commentators of silent films), traveling exhibitions and imported films (from China, especially Shanghai, as well as from elsewhere around the globe)’ (2011: 20) are areas that warrant further attention. The role of the benzi as cultural commentator offered a Taiwanese overlay and interpretation on the non-Taiwanese films. The silent period in Taiwan continued until 1934 and, as such, the benzi maintained their hold on the cinema audience longer than other nations. Local benzi were popular and influential figures in their own right and until 1937 were able to present in Taiwanese and other local dialects. This linguistic ability allowed the benzi a degree of freedom to exercise political opinion in the narratives they were ascribing to the film products. There were a series of cases where benzi used the podium to talk and critique colonial rule in various direct or indirect means. Thus, although they were not overtly or consistently discussed, politics was not completely removed from the cinema screens and ‘they carved out a place, if only for an instance of mutual acknowledgment with that audience, that allowed a Taiwanese consciousness to emerge’ (Hong 2011: 22). Travelling exhibitions also had a similar potential. They did not allow for an overt discussion of colonial policy but rather sought to situate Taiwan as part of a global cinematic network. From 1910 to the 1920s, static cinemas were limited and the travelling exhibition units allowed products from Europe, United States and China to enter into the cultural milieu of both urban and rural Taiwan. Taiwan in this way was witness to wider cultural dialogues that reached beyond the borders of the Japanese Empire. Despite their desire to make Asia Japanese or at least Japanfriendly, the breadth and size of the Empire and the networks of communication

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Japan herself established between her various colonies ensured that outside forces were always present, potentially subverting the Imperial messages. The most popular films shown in Taiwanese cinema until 1937 were from China and Hong Kong. Chinese products could enter the Taiwanese market via three main methods. The first would be to purchase current releases from Shanghai directly or via the cinematic agency branches situated in Taipei; the second was recycling the older film prints that were present via the South East Asian circuit; and the third was the importing of older Chinese films that were present in Xiamen/Amoy, the coastal city directly across the Taiwanese straits. The list of Chinese films that made it into Taiwan and were seen across the island is, given the colonial censorship requirements, quite remarkable. A variety of genres were seen, from wuxia martial arts films including Burning of the Red Lotus Temple/Huoshao honglian (1928) and Mulan joins the Army/Mulan congjun (1928); melodramas such as Orphan Rescues Grandfather/Gu’er jiuzu (1923) and the award-winning The Song of the Fisherman/Yu guang qu (1934) through to socially conscious and highly leftist features such as The Goddess/Shennü (1934), Toys/Ziao wanyi (1933) and blockbusters such as Street Angels/Malu tianshi (1937). Japanese government officials were not blind to the potentially disruptive influence these films could have on the colony. The threat came overtly via the film’s political content and, perhaps more importantly, they threatened to dislodge Japan as the main cultural influence in Taiwan, thus threatening the policy of assimilation. There was a concerted effort to control film distribution and ensure that the market was saturated with Japanese products. Japanese studios, which had realized by the late 1920s that Taiwan was a market that could be exploited, made efforts to galvanize the distribution of their products to the island colony. However, the basic fact remained that Taiwanese audiences massively preferred Chinese films. This preference would ultimately threaten the entire Japanese integration project since Chinese clothes, language, food and music were ever-present in the Taiwanese cultural sphere. This would become even more worrying after the 1931 Manchurian Incident, as the films from Shanghai became increasingly anti-Japanese. The government endlessly tried to block projects via tightened censorship and higher import duties on imported films.They targeted companies and individuals that imported films for ‘education’ as part of series of censorship ‘raids’, and finally, if a Chinese film did manage to make it into the market, the government banned all promotion for the film. Despite this, films did trickle into Taiwan until 1937 when the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War saw Chinese film imports totally end.

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From 1937 onwards cinematic production was shut down and the only films screened were Japanese national policy features, including those made by the Manchurian studio Man’ei. Newsreels were a very popular form of entertainment with many featuring the battlefront in China and other stories of Empire. In 1937, 12,000 viewers were reported to have attended newsreel screenings in Taipei daily. Newsreel-only theatres were established to engage with this boom and there were touring units that were sent around Taiwan, all aiming to enhance the process of kōminka. The censorship continued with renewed vigour, and efforts were made to control all aspects of production and distribution of cinema in Taiwan. The National Mobilization Law/Kokka sōdōin hō was passed in April 1938 and aimed to bring all trade associations under one governmentcontrolled unit. The Taiwan Film Association/Taiwan eiga kyōkai aka Tan’ei, was established in 1941 and controlled all production, distribution and exhibition of non-fiction film across Taiwan. Tan’ei exerted its control at the local level via its co-option of all film organizations on the island, and with this the colonial government was able to control cinema at the grass-roots level across Taiwan. Tan’ei continued making newsreels and documentaries until 1944 when filmmaking finally ceased for a year until Japan’s defeat in 1945.

Korea, censorship and language Censorship and colonialism went hand in hand. In the case of Korea, cultural control had been seen even before formal annexation with the Newspaper Law of 1907, the Newspaper Regulations of 1908 and the Publication Law of 1909. These censorship laws were clear in their aims and ambitions of ensuring that any criticism of Japanese rule or implication that the relationship between Japan and Korea was less than harmonious was to be quickly stamped out. The Korean Security Law of 1907 ensured that any acts of incitement to ‘political dissent’ could and would be vigorously prosecuted (Lee 1999: 43). Over the next couple of decades, more regulations would be instituted to ensure that colonial governmentality was thoroughly integrated into every layer and aspect of colonial life. After 1919 the Japanese authorities moved from the earlier governmental approach to Korea, that of military rule (budan seiji), to instituting a process of cultural rule (bunka seiji). The aims of cultural rule were, as Robinson comments, to ‘lessen Korean resistance and co-opt Korean elites by encouraging active participation in the cultural and political affairs of the colony’ (1999: 54).

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The aims of the Japanese approach to colonial rule was to maintain the peace as Korean citizens were gradually assimilated into the Japanese way of life. Inside Korea cinema had begun to grow as a popular form of entertainment from 1910 onwards.6 By 1916 there were at least fifteen purpose-built cinemas in the urban areas that showed a mixture of films screenings, magic lantern shows and live performances (Yecies and Shim 2011: 45). The growth in audience size, in turn, led to ever-larger cinematic spaces; this, in turn, led to a debate on the ‘moral’ implications of the cinematic experience.7 The authorities gradually began to introduce measures to counter these concerns, including gendersegregation in some urban cinemas, the banning of children under age eleven and a greater focus on considerations of health and safety. These edicts also operated to infuse all aspects of life with the structures and beliefs of the colonial government. Attending the cinema was also a process of citizen creation as the cinema became both a site of repression and resistance. An important factor to consider in this period is that many cinemas were divided along racial lines, with the ever-increasing Japanese expatriate community preferring to attend Japanese films and the Korean audiences focusing on more international products from Europe and the United States. Thus, cinema became a site of potential resistance to the colonial experience inside the very space that sought to control and repress it. In short, a ‘space that offered audiences an opportunity to escape from the realities of colonization awaiting them in the world outside the cinema’ (Yecies and Shim 2011: 63). Film magazines were likewise divided along racial rules with products imported from Japan such as Kinema Junpō, Eiga Hyōron, Nihon Eiga and Eiga Junpō catering to the Japanese market while entertainment magazines such as Samsheolli, Yeonghwa Sida, Daejung Yeonghwa and Nokseong aimed at the Korean audience. The silent era meant that a live narrator/beyonsa accompanied all films. In a similar fashion to Taiwan, colonial authorities became concerned about the potential disruptive political influence of the beyonsa and their unscripted performances. Censorship and monitoring of cinemas and their staff became more common and new laws began to ensure that all aspects of cinematic production, distribution and exhibition were under colonial control. Throughout the government newsreels and print media in this period there was a focus on the cultural proximity of Japan and Korea and the positive benefits that Japan was bringing to Korea. As in Taiwan, a Korean Colonial Cinema Unit/ Chosen sotofuku kinema was established with the aims to both ‘capture Korea on film’ for the edification of people back in Japan and to ensure that ‘the mother

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country is familiar to Koreans’ (1938). These educational features were screened widely across the colony, including in rural areas. In this way, we can see a reflection of the travelling circuit seen in Taiwan in the 1920s. Touring cinema could both consolidate the Empire and threaten it. In the case of Korea, the KCCU was determined to ensure it would be the former, and in 1934 a law was passed to mandate the compulsory screening of KCCU films as part of all film programme (Baskett 2008: 23: KCCU 1938). However, despite the censorship and control in this earlier colonial period, Korean cinema was developing an individual sense of cinematic nationhood that often did not align with Japanese desires. From 1923 to 1935 there were a series of silent Korean films that proved popular at the box office. The Border/Guggyeong (1923), Promise under the moon/Wolha ui maengso (1923) When the Sun rises/Meondong-i teul ttae (1927), Vagabond/Yu-rang (1928), Farewell/Jal issgeola (1927) are just a few of the Korean-made features that entered the cinema circuits. Mostly melodramas, the films delighted the Korean audiences and many proved to be box-office success stories. One of the biggest stars of this early silent period was Na woon–gyu. Na was hailed as the biggest star of Korean cinema at the time having starred in a series of films that defined early Korean cinema. He is most famous for his lead turn in the Korean blockbuster Arirang (1926), which has become one of the most debated early Korean films. The film is lost but various reports state the film was the melodramatic tale of a student who goes mad (for reasons that are never made clear) and the tragedy that ensues back in his village when he returns home. Contemporary reports indicate that several byeonsa’s linked his madness to imprisonment due to his participation in the 1 March 1919 protest against Japanese colonial rule, and thus the film began to garner a reputation as anti-colonial. However, the film’s anti-colonial sentiment was clearly not intrinsic in the film text as the film actually toured Japan – something very unusual for Korean films of this period. This would support the idea that the beyonsa and the audiences themselves were the main sites of the alternative readings. People are far from passive recipients and the Korean audience clearly wanted to see a film about resistance and hence read Arirang according to their desires. Arirang was based on folk laments that are found throughout Korea. Arirang’s use of a traditional Korean folk art to tell the tragic tale of an abused colonial citizen, therefore, worked on several levels. The first was to cinematically visualize a Korean nation with its own history and traditions. This in itself

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was against what the Japanese rulers were hoping to achieve in their desires to position Korean culture as dependent on, and inferior to, Japan. The second was to lament her colonial status via the melodramatic imagining of the madness caused by colonial rule in one of her citizens. Na himself had been imprisoned for anti-Japanese activities prior to his film career, so this film in many ways was a case of art imitating life. Na, therefore as the film’s lead character, became both the embodiment of Korean nationalism and a living symbol of the hardship that Korea was experiencing under colonial rule. Finally, the film offered a Korean ‘film star’ that the audience could identify with. Numerous film and popular magazines ran features on Na, postcards of him were available for his fans to carry around with them and his films performed well at the box office and received good reviews in film magazines. In many ways he would come to personify the ‘golden age’ of Korean silent cinema,8 that fleeting period where Korea managed to present a cinema that showed an oblique narrative of Korean nationhood despite the colonial context. This silent golden age would not continue. In many ways, Na’s death coincided with a shift in the colonial power relations. While there had been an unsuccessful foray in sound production in 1930 with Secret Story/Malmot-hal Sajung (Yecies and Shim 2011: 14), the first successful Korean film to engage with sound was The Story of Chunhyang/Chunhyang-jeon (1935). This film based on a traditional Korean tale of a loyal wife had obvious links to early Korean culture and history and this, together with the novelty of sound, made the film a huge hit. However, this film cannot be totally considered a ‘nationalist’ product. The Story of Chunhyang may have been a Korean production but the funders were Japanese and this method of co-production become the common model in Korean cinema from the early 1930s. The use of Japanese investors may have been a ploy to get past the censors but this fact aside, the film’s content was clearly not so radical that the censors, had any unease. As with Arirang, perhaps audience desires clearly played a part in hoping to find alternative narratives inside film texts regardless of actual content. Co-production and cooperation between Korean and Japanese directors, producers and companies became the norm. In film magazine Eiga hyōron (1941), Japanese visitor Nishiki Motosada notes that co-production between Japanese and Korean film-makers were well established. KOFA’s extensive work on silent and early Korean cinema reveals a series of production units as well as individuals crossed between the Japanese and the Korean film industries. What does this tell us? First, this highlights that for those who had been born and

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raised under the colonial period, collaborating with Japan to succeed in your chosen field was a natural process. Secondly, many Korean film-makers studied film-making in Japan and it was this generation that kept the film industry going through the dark days of the late 1930s until 1945 (and of course it was this generation that was at the forefront of the post-1945 cinema production). The films are pro-Japanese in many ways, such as content, narrative and production methods. Yet this does not make them Japanese. These peninsular films did not  just aim to gain success in Korea; they also wanted to be seen in Japan. To do that they needed to provide content that was different from mainstream Japanese cinema. As more and more films have been discovered, it is easy to focus on the attempt to find traces of a distinctive Korean cinematic voice. Although many silent productions are still lost, we now have more films in our possession than ever, and in several of the products we see camera angles, cross-cutting and changes of perspective that are not in step with dominant film codes of the period. The danger here is that potentially poor cinematography can be read as a deliberate choice. An example may be found in Military Train/Gun-yong-yeolcha (1938) where the breaking of the 180-degree rule gives an odd perspective on a conversation. From a focus on the female face, the camera cuts to the men she is addressing in a fairly formulaic conversation style. This is then challenged when she emerges in the shot to the left of the men implying she has walked through the camera to emerge into the shot (Figures 2, 3 and 4). In Fisherman’s Fire/Eohwa we see a similar process whereby a conversation seems to take place in multiple places simultaneously (more on this in Chapter 5). Whether the breaking of the 180-degree rule was due to ignorance in filming and/or editing or was, in fact, a deliberate stylistic choice we will never know but it does mean that films from this period are often distinctive from their Japanese counterparts. While cinematography is perhaps a reflection of accident rather than specific purpose, sound could be another matter. Korean cinema would initially suffer from the lack of implementation of sound as studios lagged behind in the technological ability needed to make the change from silent film production. Sound, therefore, offered a potential for a Korean cinema that aesthetics perhaps did not. We see a series of films experiment with sound in a variety of ways. Sweet Dream/Mimong (1936) was the first film to record daily sounds of the Seoul urban landscape. The simultaneous recording of natural sound and speech (although in parts of the film you can barely hear anything as a result) gave the film a sense of authenticity that was lacking from other products in the period. This notion of authenticity would

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Figures 2, 3 and 4  The shots of Military Train (1938) breaking the 180-degree rule making it appear that the female protagonists walks through the camera.

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be continued in the 1941 film Angels on the Streets/Chib-eobneun cheonsa. Angels on the Street utilized real locations and amateur actors to explore the harsh world of orphans in Seoul. The film, therefore, offers an originality and sense of ‘truth’ that find resonance with the later classics of European cinematic realism (Yecies and Shim 2011: 126). Angels on the Streets fell afoul of the initial censors for the extended sequences featuring Korean language and Korean dress. The film was the most popular Korean film shown in Japan and received special praise as a ‘Ministry of Education recommended film’ (Yecies and Shim 2011; High 1995), and yet when the realization that a vast percentage of the film was in a banned language, edits were forced and the Korean language scenes were dubbed into Japanese or cut completely. As High notes, the film’s promotion became somewhat of a farce – revoking the recommendation smacked of incompetence so the original version was labelled as the ‘revised version’ and was disinherited, while the revised version was promoted as the ‘original’ (1995: 307–8). This complex relationship between original and copy was at the heart of the clear issues related to the language policies that Japan implemented in Korea and in Taiwan. The late colonial period would be more restrictive than before as the colonial government shifted gears, to a state more reminiscent of the fascist territories of Germany and Italy. Marilyn Ivy’s definition of fascism as a process that sees the erasure of ‘class divisions by appealing to the nation as an organic community that transcends these divisions while keeping in place existing property relations’ (2010: viii) is here pertinent in the Korean state. Korea was actively encouraged to forget such divisions as a nation and simply accept her role as an integral part of Japan. From the mid-1930s, there would be a radical shift in the approach that the colonial government decided to take with regard to Taiwan and Korea. Assimilation/dōka was no longer the focus; now Japan wanted to see full integration of her colonies via the far more aggressive focus on a policy of kōminka. Taiwan and Korea were to become part of Japan and citizens of the two nations were to undergo a full process of kōminka or ‘imperialization’ to ensure their full cooperation. People were forced to change their names to Japanese ones and the Japanese language became the only lingua franca allowed in all aspects of public life. Even in the few sound films that were recorded in Korean, a linguistic hierarchy was established where Japanese was the perceived normative mode through which people could converse and operate. This was further consolidated by the frequent addition of Japanese terms and phrases that had become integrated into the Korean language over the period

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of colonization. Personal indicators (aite, koibito) and words such as karuma (car), kao (face), ijimeru (to bully), kaimono (to shop) are heard throughout the other films from this period. This was accompanied by the transference of many Japanese grammar rules and lexicons (nouns, verbs, idioms) into the Korean syntax (Taylor-Jones 2016). Thus, the language of the cinema became highly reflective of the colonial moment. The year 1938 saw Korea, like Taiwan, move officially from a bilingual policy to a monolingual one and this included ending all mother-tongue education. In line with this shift, the film laws demanded that all productions be conducted in the ‘national language’ of Japanese. The use of ‘national language’ (kokugo) rather than simply the ‘Japanese language’ (Nihongo) implied a vision of a united nationhood rather than an enforced shift to a second or foreign language. A linguistic hierarchy was established where Japanese, as the national language of Korea, was the only viable form of modern communication. Assimilation entailed embracing Japanese as Korea’s ‘national language’ rather than seeing it as a foreign language. However, many Koreans were far from fluent in Japanese, with many older or less educated people unable to operate at all in the language. In several films of the later period, a linguistic interplay between the spoken Japanese and the unspoken Korean actually served to undermine the colonial narratives of togetherness. This can be clearly seen in the articulation of kōminka or ‘Imperialization’. This forced assimilation process was aimed at transforming all aspects of colonial life, and will be discussed in greater detail in the forthcoming chapters. In terms of the wider cultural imagination, it resulted in a mass of contradictions, which cinema would have attempted to negotiate on the silver screen. It is helpful here to consider briefly the issue of colonial mimicry, as it is relevant to the cinemas of Korea and Taiwan. For Bhabha, mimicry is simultaneously one of the most ‘effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge’ (1994: 122) and also it is most ‘elusive’ and complex to read. Mimicry envisions the colonized taking on the traits, mannerisms, language and culture of the colonizer, while at the same time representing the colonizer’s need and desire for a reformed and recognizable ‘other’, ‘as a subject of difference that is almost the same but not quite’ (1994: 123). Therefore, the act of mimicry is both the colonized subject’s desire to integrate fully into the master narratives that colonialism offers while, at the same time, it is a logic by which the colonizers, desire to prevent full assimilation is articulated. Bhabha cites British India and notes that ‘the aim of that practice was to produce Indians schooled in English manners who, nevertheless, could only ever be thought of as imitating the

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English.’ He notes, ‘mimicry is like camouflage not a harmonization of repression of difference, but a form of resemblance’ (1994: 128). In short, the mimic will never entirely integrate no matter how fully they copy the colonizer, since the colonial body is indelibly inscribed as the site of the originating culture and, therefore, a site of lack. In the context of Imperial Japan, we see that, ironically, it was in itself the site of colonial power and the site of imitation of the colonial empires of the West. As Choi Chungmoo summarizes: Japanese imperialism reproduced the fictionality of the European colonial discourse. It was a pastiche of the European Enlightenment. Japanese imperialism simulated and reproduced this grand but empty narrative, in yet another form of colonialism, not with any Enlightenment pretense but through a pastiche of colonization. (1997:14)

As Japan attempted to present a modern mode of Empire to the ‘lesser’ cultures she occupied, she was, at the same time, mimicking the West. The Japanese colonial experience is therefore haunted by a double act of mimicry: Japan’s desire to be a modern nation on par with the Western Imperialists paralleled the act of mimicry Japan was asking of her Imperial citizens. As Peter Duus asks, How can the framework be transported to the Japanese Empire where ‘Imperialism, like so many other aspects of Meiji development, was an act of mimesis’? Oguma Eiji notes that this idiosyncrasy means that Imperial Japanese identity was fractured and ambivalent vis-à-vis her comparison to her Western Imperial counterparts (Oguma 1998: 662). With relation to cinema, Gerow comments that throughout this period, Japanese cinema was in flux. As he notes: Such conflicts over the cinematic articulation of the nation reveal that the struggle in wartime Japan was not simply over how to use the cinema to represent the nation, but over what nation the cinema should represent, and how to place Japan in the oppositions between universal and particular, East and West, and tradition and modernity. (2009: 198)

In short, if Japan was not a finite category in her own mind, the narratives that were imported to her colonies were also mired in ambiguity. Ambiguity in some form can be found throughout products from this period and perhaps, as Bhabha notes, ambiguity in this sense is the marker of the cinematic Imperial. As Bhabha continues ‘mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference’. Exploring this idea, Bill Ashcroft et al. note that the result of the mimicry is not perfect, ‘rather, the result is a “blurred copy” of the colonizer that can be quite threatening’ (2013: 155). This copy, therefore ‘is never very

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far from mockery, since it can appear to parody whatever it mimics. Mimicry, therefore, locates a crack in the certainty of colonial dominance, an uncertainty in its control of the behavior of the colonized’ (2013: 155). Ambiguity, therefore, marks colonial cinema, and as will be explored in the subsequent chapters, opens up the space for the undermining of colonial narratives. The colonial subject is only copying or mimicking the language and the culture of the colonizer, and as previously been discussed in this chapter, this very act questions the colonial power structures by revealing their very artifice. As Janet Poole states, this is not just cultural assimilation but rather ‘assimilation to the fantasy of fascism and its production of the fantasy of something called “Japanese culture,” a process that also has the effect of realigning and reinforcing ideas of something called “Korean culture” ’ (Poole 2015: 8). Academic theorization aside, the day-to-day life under colonial Japan was not pleasant for many people. In her work on the literature of the period, Poole articulates four common narratives that writers and artists could engage with (2015: 3). The first was capitulation. The ‘dark period’ (amhukki), as the time between 1930 and 1945 has become known, saw the increasing imposition of brutal suppression and control of all aspect of daily life. The shift to assimilation resulted in the serious consideration that Korean language and culture would struggle to survive if the process was allowed to continue uninterrupted. Japan’s defeat in 1945 would result in the survival of Korea, but in the 1930s the future did indeed look bleak. Newsreels found in the Gosfilmfond archive, such as In the Rear of Chosun/Chong Hu ui Joseon (1937), Patriots Day in Chosen/Joseon ui aegugil (1939) and Chosun, Our Rear Base/Joseon, uri ui hubang (1940), are all similar in that Korea and the Korean citizens are featured as integral parts of the Empire and the notion of nationhood is subsumed inside a collective fantasy of loyalty and fidelity to Empire. This is not assimilation in that people are becoming Japanese, rather the past, present and future are conflated to refuse the option that any other narrative ever existed in the first place. In short, there has never been anything outside Empire. Those who believed that Japan would fall had the second option – to just ride out the storm and wait until the end of colonialism, a strategy that carried weight, as it became clear from late 1944 onwards that Japan was likely to lose. The immediate aftermath of defeat saw those who had cooperated with the Japanese quickly defend or seek to hide their actions. This would be quickly enhanced by the development of a narrative of a war of resistance to occupation that the post-war Korean government was happy to promote as part of the post-occupation political dialogue.

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Conclusion When you compare Korea and Taiwan, both colonies of similar duration, you can see marked differences in the respective film industries. Both nations shared a process of compressed modernity and a decided shift in tone between the first two (1895–1925) and last two (1925–45) decades of Japanese rule (Kikuchi 2007: 3). However, between 1910 and 1945 around 140–150 features films were estimated to have been made in Korea, many made by Korean film-makers; in Taiwan, there were only 16 films made during this period, with only two to three having even a claim to being Taiwanese productions. Taiwanese cinema culture was a mixture of Chinese, Western and Japanese influences together with a developing sense of a national self that, although stymied in the colonial period, was still present. Korean cinema struggled under the Japanese but did manage to create and present products even if they were heavily censored. In the post-1945 period both Taiwan and Korea would grow to become successful cinematic nations in their own right, and this process did not just start suddenly in 1945. The cinematic roots of both nations, despite the complexities and the issues of the Imperial experience, are not ‘other’ to the postcolonial cinematic development but an integral part of it.

Notes 1 As Saaler and Szpilman note this phrase implies ‘“mutual dependence” or, literally, “a relationship as close as that between the lips and the teeth or between the chassis and the wheels of a cart”.’ This image implied a high degree of interdependence, but, in contrast to the potentially hierarchical Kōa, it presumed equal relations among Asian nations. Its origin also indicates the influence of Chinese classical scholarship on early pan-Asianism (2011:14). 2 A short-lived, four-day Taiwanese Republic was set up in protest at the occupation and, from landing on the shores of Taiwan, it took over five months for the Japanese to seize Taipei and then Tainan. The aboriginal population in particular resented the Japanese presence, and from 1895 to 1945 there were a series of revolts, with the most notorious being the 1930 Wushu uprising. 3 Although this approach has its detractors (see Bickers and Herriot 2000), this study holds that it still offers valuable insights into the dynamics of Imperial Japan.

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4 Taiwan had been ruled by the Dutch from 1624 to 1662, and then by the fascinating figure of Koxinga/Zheng Chenggong, a warlord of apparently mixed ancestry (Japanese and Chinese) who established the Kingdom of Tungning (1662–83). The Qing dynasty then annexed Taiwan, but after defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing Empire was forced to pass control over to the Japanese. 5 Takamatsu’s company Taiwan Douzinsha/Dōjinsha both created and distributed films, making him the first film producer and the owner of a cinema chain in Taiwan. However, Takamatsu’s amazing ability to find opportunities did not extend to running a successful business, and after a rapid decline into bankruptcy, he returned to Japan in 1917. 6 See Yecies and Shim’s comprehensive study on early Korean cinema which carefully unpicks the processes by which the cinema of Korea developed and changed over the long period of colonization. 7 This was a pattern which had also been seen in Japan (Gerow 2010) and Taiwan. 8 Na has been remembered as the father of Korean cinema after his tragic death in 1937, aged only thirty-four.

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Nations in Harmony: Imperial Cinema

On 16 March 2015, politician and former celebrity, Mihara Junko, approached the stand to ask a question during the House of Councillor’s budget committee session. While Mihara’s focus was on repudiating corporate tax avoidance, she chooses to frame her point using a phrase that had not been widely heard inside Japan since 1945 – hakkō ichiu. Literally meaning ‘eight corners of the world under one roof ’, hakkō ichiu was first coined by the Japanese nationalist orator and writer Tanaka Chigaku, and it became a key phrase of Japanese empire building, and had particular resonance across China, whose memories of this period are particularly traumatic. The previous chapter explored the cinemas of Taiwan and Korea but this chapter will explore the cinema of those Imperial territories that came under Japan’s control. The approach that Japan took with Taiwan and Korea would not be duplicated in the wider Empire for a variety of logistical and political reasons. It is important that the analysis of any scopic colonial regime is seen as part of a historically situated and culturally sutured narrative. This approach requires us to pay attention to the specifics of the colonial experience and not to collapse ‘the very real distinctions of location within the hierarchy of power established by Japanese Imperialism’ (Christy 1997: 163). I will first discuss the dynamics seen in occupied Manchuria and then move on to the other regions of China, namely the city of Shanghai and the territory of Hong Kong. I will finish with an examination of South East Asia with a specific focus on the Philippines.

Manchuria and images of harmonious living ‘Manchuria’, the vast area of North east China, was for all intents and purposes an imagined state. This area had long fought to be separate from Imperial China, but over the centuries the north-eastern states had been undeniably influenced by Han Chinese language, customs and politics. By the end of the Qing dynasty,

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there was a sense that the region should be integrated into China proper but this sentiment was not shared by other nations, since France, United States and Russia also had a keen interest in controlling the territory. Thus as Duara suggests, Manchuria was a transnational phenomenon, in that it was a site where several Imperial powers nourished ambitions for a political hegemony, and the territory played an important role in the development of the whole East Asian infrastructure. The Russo-Japanese War and the Sino-Japanese War resulted in Japan gaining territorial rights and, after various political manoeuverings in March 1932, saw the founding of the Republic of Manchukuo. Despite its own emperor and flag, Manchuria was nothing more than a heavily controlled puppet state. The reasons why Manchuria operated as a separate entity were multiple, and clearly linked to international politics rather than ideology. A key reason was that an independent Manchuria was ‘a fig leaf designed to mollify the League of Nations and fend off Chinese nationalist charges’ (Duara 2003: 61). This highly practical motive was clearly not the only reason that Japan kept up the fiction of independence long after Japan and the League of Nations had parted company. Duara sees two other important factors at play. The first was expedience – the Japanese army needed to develop alliances with groups inside Manchuria in order to best control her resources and the nod towards independence was politically compelling. The second was a ‘strategic autarky and “economic bloc”’ (2003: 61) that directly engaged with Japan’s pan-Asian rhetoric. Various terms were utilized over the years to try to capture this desire for togetherness that Japan was, in many ways, trying to imply she was offering her East Asian neighbours. The East Asian League/Tōa renmei and the East Asian Community/Tōa kyōdōtai were gradually formed into the well promoted, if not unlikely, ideology of the Daitōa Kyōeiken/Greater East Asian Co-prosperity sphere. This notion of co-prosperity meant that Manchuria offered an ideal opportunity to allow Japan to frame her engagement with Manchuria as part of the pan-Asian ideology. Louisa Young articulates Manchuria as a total empire in that ‘total Empire was made on the home front’. It ‘entailed mass and multidimensional mobilisation of domestic society: cultural military, political and economic … the process of empire building in Manchuria touched the lives of most Japanese in the 1930s in one way or another’ (1998: 13). Manchuria played a unique position in that it was simultaneously internal and external to Japan’s Empire. The mainstream approach in Manchuria was the integration (not assimilation) of the Chinese community, with Japan controlling

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the vast land and potential resources of Manchuria; in short, obedient citizens rather than necessarily loyal ones. The very ideological concept of Gozuku kyōwa (five ethnic groups living in harmony) that was widely expounded inside Manchuria indicates at once the ideology being conveyed and the problems inherent in it. Duara notes that ‘culture, as produced in the new nationalism, represented an important and novel form of knowledge to address problems generated by the divergence of imperialism and nationalism’ (Duara 2003: 17). The culture that was envisioned, and then promoted, was a construction of the cultural sphere as a hierarchy with Japan at the top. This was a harmony that was based on a sense of superiority and was perhaps almost certainly doomed to fail. The cinema of Imperial Manchuria continues to fascinate. Man’ei was a modern vertically integrated dream factory whose roots had just as much in common with the Hollywood studios and European ones such as Gaumont and UFA as the Japanese film industry. Its inception was a curious one since it was founded on an equal basis between the Manchurian government and the South Manchuria Railway Company/minami manshū tetsudō kabushikigaisha. While this may seem an odd mix for a film company, it is worth noting that the railway had been a central part of the Japanese development and control of the region since her initial engagement in North east China. Known under the abbreviation Mantetsu, the company also owned flour and sugar mills, glass, oil and ceramic companies and electrical power plants. Mantetsu was thus at the very heart of the Japanese ambitions in the region and her involvement in cinema can also be seen as just another element of Young’s notion of total Empire. Man’ei ran a series of joint projects with Japanese studios like Toho and Shochiku, and a group of Japanese directors and stars worked with the studio throughout its lifespan. Founded in Changchun on 1 August 1937, Man’ei was the favourite child of Amakasu Masahiko who became head of Man’ei in 1937. Amakasu may have been a heartless murderer,1 but he did not want Man’ei to be little more than a subsidiary propaganda unit. He was ruthless in his desire to present a thoroughly modern, developed and independent film production unit that was capable of making films for both Chinese and the Japanese markets and, if possible, for export outside these spheres. At its height Man’ei had over 1874 staff members: 1,075 were Japanese, 731 were Chinese and 51 were Korean. This diverse mix could not be found in any other cinema unit of the time and is another fact that makes Man’ei a fascinating case study in cinematic cooperation. Despite his extreme far right opinions, Amakasu did allow Man’ei to become a refuge for left-leaning directors who had to flee the Japanese mainland. Uchida Tomu

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had made a series of films with a serious leftist slant back in Japan and he joined Man’ei in 1941 after quitting Nikkatsu. Film critic and producer Iwasaki Ikira, who had been a founding member of the prokino film movement and who had been imprisoned for his anti-war activity, worked in the Tokyo office of Man’ei. Tadahito Mochinaga, one of the early pioneers of stock animation, would also spend time in the studio and would continue to work in China after Japan’s defeat. The very presence of such individuals indicates that Man’ei was a complex mix of ideology, economics and creativity. It was certainly a productive cinema unit. Despite issues in gaining film stock between 1938 and 1945, there were one hundred features made in Man’ei and, quite remarkably, almost half had Chinese directors. Despite these unique factors, Man’ei’s films were not generally popular. The obvious reason for this can be found when you look at the content. Man’ei could not, despite its aims, seem to escape its desire to ‘educate’ and convert people to the aims and objectives of Imperial Japan. It was focused on promoting an idea of a Manchurian nation but this was an envisioning of a Manchuria that did not align itself with the common opinion on the issue. One factor in the difference between the cinema in Shanghai, the main competitor, and the cinema in Manchuria was that, despite the large percentage of Chinese staff, the products produced did not in any way inspire the Chinese audiences. Shanghai had a long cinematic tradition and expertise to build on, Manchuria did not. Therefore, any cinema implemented by the Japanese would have the element of being foreign and not aligned with any pre-existing cinematic tradition that may have helped to encourage audiences. The cinema from Shanghai was still far more popular than the cinema of Man’ei, that failed to attract audience attention and any semblance of popularity, despite increasing attempts to offer a diverse range of genres, including musicals, melodramas, martial arts features and traditional costume dramas. Man’ei was keen to promote and establish ideas of a Manchurian nation, one that worked in cooperation and harmony with Japan, but again, failed to ignite any nationalistic sentiment in the audience. What the cinema of Man’ei did do, as Sato Tadao (1985) and Baskett (2005, 2008) both clearly articulate, was to inspire a sense of Manchurian nationhood for the Japanese audience who, via these works, could convince themselves that Manchuria was pro-Japanese. Language once again is important. The very ideological concept of Gozuku kyōwa would fail if no common method of communication could be established. Language would become a site of tension as Japanese actors often poorly rendered Chinese, and in return, the Japanese audiences struggled to fully understand the

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phonetic pronunciation offered by Chinese cast. While in Korea and Taiwan the aim was the replacement of the local languages with Japanese, in Manchuria, this approach was not readily employed. Although the need for citizens to learn from their Japanese counterparts would be seen in films such as Journey to the East/Dong you ji? (1939) and Modern Japan/Xiandai Riben (1940) (whose synopses indicate the films’ focus on Manchurian citizens visiting Tokyo), few citizens of Manchuria bothered to learn Japanese and even fewer Japanese inhabitants tried to learn Chinese. The inability of the composite parts of Empire to communicate with each other opened up a rift in the dominant ideology that film struggled to paper over. Take, for example, Vow in the Desert/Nessa no chikai (1940), here the inability of the two Japanese brothers, Ichiro and Kenji, to communicate with the Chinese workers who are building the road is seen as a serious impediment to Imperial success. When Ichiro is killed by rebels, Kenji comments, ‘If only I could speak their language, I could make myself understood.’ The road is saved by the figure of Ho-ran, a bilingual subject, who manages to successfully communicate Kenji and Ichiro’s message of ‘peace’ and their desire to develop China into a modern nation by the film’s conclusion. Albert Memmi’s argument that the colonizer is as equally trapped as the colonized has resonance here – the inability to function inside a multilingual environment is shown as a logistical and ideological problem for the Imperial subject. The problematic positioning of Japanese citizens in China would find echoes in other areas. Take, for example, the infamous sequence on China Nights/Shina no Yoru (1940), when the hero Hase slaps the young Chinese woman he has ‘adopted’ as she refused to convert to the ideology of Empire. Suddenly shocked by his own anger, he apologizes and comments that he ‘trusted too much in my own ability. I was an arrogant fool’ and tells her to leave. She is transformed into a passionate supporter of Empire via this violence and they subsequently marry. While this scene provoked anger and shame in China and continues to be debated in countless texts as a sample of an Imperial cinema that seriously misunderstood its intended audience, what is important here is the tremendous sense of ambivalence that marks the scene. Hase, in his acknowledgement of his arrogant overreaching, would seem to offer a glimpse into the future of the Japanese Empire that can only be read in retrospect,2 but even for the time is an interesting inclusion. The narratives of superiority that so marked the Japanese ‘right’ and ‘need’ to be in Manchuria resulted in a limited desire to learn and adapt to China. This, in

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turn, led to increased conflict between Japanese and Manchurian citizens. The cinema of this period, despite the attempts to cover the cracks in the Imperial narratives, would struggle to place a positive spin on the reality that everyone in Manchuria was all too aware of – that people generally despised Japan.

Bright lights and city spaces: Shanghai and Hong Kong While Manchuria would pose several problems to the Imperial rule, Shanghai, which came under Imperial control in 1937, would offer further challenges. This vibrant city scape offers an insight into the complicated Japanese Imperial imagination that would need to balance box office and popular demand with the desire to export a political ideology that few inhabitants were interested in really hearing. Shanghai was an important territory to the development of cinema in the East Asian regions during the period of colonial expansion and consolidation. The city fell to the Japanese on 26 November 1937 after over three months of vicious fighting. The battle for Shanghai was the first in the Second Sino-Japanese War and set the tone for what would become a bloody and brutal war. Shanghai was not just another Chinese city; it was a multicultural hub of trade, culture and commerce and had long been a site of fascination for many Japanese intellectuals, artists, writers and composers. Cinema in Shanghai was a big and booming industry, known as the Hollywood of the East; cinema in the region was ‘part and parcel of the modern way of life’ (Lee quoted in Fu 2003: 1). This was a transnational cinema that stretched across the East Asian continent and was a regular presence at many cinema screens in the region. Cinema in Shanghai and its engagement with Japan can be broadly divided into two periods: The Orphan Island period (1937–41) – the period when those areas of Shanghai designated as foreign concessions were left alone and operated as an island in the midst of Japanese occupation – and the period when cinema took place in an era of full occupation (1942–5). During the Orphan Island period many studios aimed to keep the sentiment of national consciousness alive and, although the foreign concession would not allow the screening of any film that was blatantly anti-Japanese for fear of antagonizing their aggressive neighbours, cinema was attempting to articulate an indirect opposition to Japanese occupation and activities. Films such as Fei Mu’s Sons and Daughters of the World/Söhne und Töchter der Welt (1941), a co-production with a Jewish couple Jacob and Luisa Fleck, focused on a couple leaving Shanghai to join the resistance.

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There was a general lack of cooperation with the Japanese despite the potential profits to be made, and under the Japanese the two largest film companies (Mingxing and Linghua) closed, and Xinhua was left as the leading studio in the Orphan Island period. This period was surprisingly offered some lucrative rewards. Cinema-going was a popular activity and the fifty-plus cinemas in Shanghai were full most nights. The heavily overpopulated foreign concessions meant many people ran to entertainment venues to escape the day-to-day worries of life in occupied Shanghai. The year 1939 saw 24 films produced by Xinhua and her subsidiaries – not an inconsiderable amount given the circumstances. The films from this period were designed to entertain, and costume dramas such as Mulan Joins the Army and Diaochan (1938) were distributed to other Japaneseoccupied territories, including Manchuria, despite the potentially controversial subject material. This approach to keeping cinema alive has meant that the Orphan Island cinema period has been dismissed by many Chinese critics as an embarrassing flirtation with collaboration for profit and therefore not to be seriously debated as part of Chinese national cinema. This, of course, denies an important part of Chinese cinematic development. As Posek Fu notes, the cinema in Shanghai was a complex system that was ‘both within and outside the state apparatus of the occupying power, and both (unwittingly) supported and subverted the occupation’ (Fu 2003: 132). Thus, Shanghai illustrated both the power of Imperial rule and its fallibility. Japan could control some aspects of production and distribution but ultimately not all of them, and this tension highlighted the weakness of the Empire in the moment in which they wished to be seen as invincible. This worry about the ability to control the cinema of Shanghai means that cinema under Japanese occupation proper would take on a very different tone. The Japanese controlled the film stock and therefore the film industry. Zhonglian studio bought Xinhua, Yihua, Guohua and Jinxing and became the only studio in Shanghai and, in 1943, the Japanese merged Zhonglian, the China Film Company Limited and the Shanghai Film Exhibition Company to create Huaying. Thus, via Huaying, the Japanese controlled all aspects of the film industry in Shanghai. From this point onwards cinema took a similar approach to what had been seen in Manchuria. Film was to be utilized as a tool of education and, as an article in Film Pictorial indicated, the new goal was to create a ‘Greater East Asian cinema’. For cinema, the aim was to ‘envision a new and great spirit of East Asia’.

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The occupation unit brought in the highly interesting figure of Kawakita Nagamasa as central to this process. Kawakita had been the producer on two earlier films, The New Earth/Atarashi tsuchi (1937) (a co-production with Germany) and Road to Peace in the Orient/Toyo heiwa no michi (1938). Both of these films had failed to inspire or connect with the Chinese audiences but Kawakita was keen to develop a cinema in Shanghai that could appeal to the local audience. Kawakita himself was unusual in that he was well versed in Chinese culture and, by all accounts, also the language. He was active in protecting Chinese and Jewish citizens in Shanghai from German and Japanese forces and tried, where possible, to keep the film industry separate from Imperial politics. He was keen to allow Chinese film-makers to present Chinese products to the local audiences despite the potential for anti-Japanese sentiment. Fu argues very convincingly that many of the films made in this period under Kawakita’s watch made great efforts to weaken the propaganda message the Japanese authorities hoped to convey. A key example is Eternity/Wanshi liufang that tells the story of the Opium War. Following the tortuous tale of a young woman desperate to save her fiancé from the perils of opium addiction, Eternity was clear to point out to the audience that the film was drawn not from fact but from ‘sources gathered from folk stories and popular history’ (Fu 2003: 113). This placement of the film as popular entertainment resulted in an undermining of the anti-British sentiment the Japanese propaganda units hoped such a film could inspire. As Fu notes, the placement of the narrative’s focus on the melodramatic story of the lead female character ensures a focus on romance and sentimentality over military aggression. This resulted in a film that clearly in no way endangered or criticized the Japanese standpoint but failed to achieve the desired response of igniting and reallocating Chinese antagonism onto Britain and the United States. The film, therefore, offered fluidity to the audiences, subject positioning and ensured that the story of repression could be read in multiple ways – many were counter to the aims and ambitions of the occupation authorities. Shanghai had a huge impact on the cinema of the other regions either occupied or under threat by Japan. There was a mass migration of actors and film-makers from Shanghai to Hong Kong and a cinematic distribution network that connected the two nations. Throughout the 1940s, several Shanghai studios opened offices in Hong Kong and these included the two majors, Xinhua and Guohua, who aimed to distribute their products to the island nation. While the British rulers in Hong Kong were worried about having too many films with

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a clear anti-Japanese rhetoric due to concerns over Japanese retaliation, films did slip through into the Hong Kong market. Political and highly nationalistic films such as March of the Guerrillas/Youji jinxing qu (1938) and Blood Splashes on Baoshan Fortress/Xie jian bao shan cheng (1938) were widely seen in Hong Kong and bolstered the anti-Japanese sentiment. Hong Kong had its own successful cinema, but when it fell to the Japanese on 25 December 1941, the industry was placed into stasis with many people fleeing to unoccupied areas of China or resigning themselves to working in other professions. Under Japanese occupation, only one co-production feature film would make the screen. Documentaries, such as Hong Kong Reborn/Shinsei no Honkon (1942) and Hong Kong/Honkon (1942) and the now-lost feature film Attack on Hong Kong/Honkon kōryaku Eikoku kuzururu no hi (1942), were made to impart the positive benefits that Japan had wrought after releasing Hong Kong from colonial British rule. What is clear is that in comparison to the cinema of Korea and Taiwan Japan was not intending to integrate the Chinese citizens into Japan. The cinematic units established were about censorship and control with the few films produced aiming to visualize an image of Japan and China united in the face of Western aggression. The Imperial cinema was hoping to balance finance and ideology as Man’ei, in particular, had interest beyond the production of simple propaganda features. The lack of success of Japanese films in the region indicates the very tenuous cultural hold Japan had on the region. In many ways the cinema of Korea and Taiwan had been Japan’s; to mould the massive and established Chinese markets would prove far more complicated and, in the end, impenetrable. The relationship between Japanese cinema and the cinema of Hong Kong and Shanghai would continue after the war in the small-scale collaborative relationships that had been established during the period of conflict. The war and respective occupations had heralded a mass movement of cinematic personnel across the various territories and this movement would inform and alter the cinematic landscape of East Asia for decades to come.

South East Asia For the most part, South East Asia has received very little scholarship in relation to the Japanese Empire. Although studies such as Tarling (2001) and Goto (2003) have explored the region’s position in the Japanese cultural imagination, little has been produced on its cinema. This is mainly due to a lack of material,

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and yet, South East Asia played an important part in the production of the vision of Empire that was to be sold back in Japan. As Baskett comments, for the most part, South East Asia was reduced to a series of exotic and often erotic images in the Japanese cultural imagination. For example, in The Adventures of Dankichi/Bōken Dankichi,3 Dankichi goes through a series of adventures, while stranded on an exotic island filled with dark-skinned savages. The South East Asian territories are nothing more than those indistinguishable beach terrains for a series of melodramas and comedies. However, the cinemas of the regions offered a unique challenge to the process of Imperial cinema. Take the Philippines – this collection of thousands of islands, was, in many ways the most Westernized of the territories that Japan entered. Three hundred and fifty years of Spanish occupation had left its mark, and the US rule that took over in 1889 had done a great deal to establish the Philippines as a thoroughly Westernized, if not completely modernized, colony. English was taught at all schools and the American way of life was heavily promoted. What made the Philippines valuable was its location as a base to fight the United States. Japanese commanders attempted to pursue an ambitious programme of cultural assimilation, where the Filipino people would be turned away from the United States and their Westernized past towards Japan. In February 1942 the military administration presented a redesigned educational focus in order to promote the needs of Imperial Japan. The desire was for the Filipino population to learn Japanese and eventually cease speaking English. This desire, alongside developing a ‘Japanese’ work ethic that rejected materialism and a cultural matrix that no longer looked to the West for inspiration, was central to the ‘education’ of the locals with the intention that it would, to quote a 1942 military administration educational briefing, ‘foster a New Filipino culture based on “self-consciousness of the people as Orientals” (quoted in Jose 2003: 255). Most importantly, Japanese Imperialists wanted to ensure that the Philippines understood her place in the New Order of Asia. While it could have been assumed that the Japanese narratives of ‘Asia for the Asians’ would find support in the Philippines, the behaviour of the Japanese troops made most Filipinos reluctant to engage with their new rulers, and resistance was high. The power of media was harnessed and then aided by strict censorship that banned all material, print, visual or aural creative outputs that did not conform to the official policies. Film was once again used as a method to try and win hearts and minds. Japanese films were widely shown and the movie distribution company or Eiga Haikyūsha was established to ensure that no rogue films made

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it through for public viewing. As well as a series of newsreels that presented the occupation in a positive light and attempted to develop a ‘Greater East Asian’ sentiment in the local population, two feature-length films were produced in the Philippines during this period in an attempt to disseminate their message. The documentary Victory Song of the Orient/Tōyō no Gaika (1942) glamorized the conflict and framed the Japanese forces as liberators of the Filipino people. The focus was on the Japanese triumphs in the battles of Bataan and Corregidor and it is clear that these victories would be a new and positive rebirth of the Philippines as part of the new East Asian power block. The second was a Japanese-Filipino co-production that involved Japanese director Abe Yutaka and Filipino director Gerardo de Leon.4 Dawn of Freedom aka Fire on the Flag/Ano hata o ute (1944), follows the American defeat and subsequent ‘abandonment’ of their Filipino subjects. We see a group of soldiers – Lt Gomez, Lt Garcia and Captain Reyes – join the American forces; however, once they are part of the US army they are seriously mistreated. The Japanese in comparison treat them with fairness, consideration and care. While Gomez joins the Japanese army, the Americans, via a mixture of betrayal and cowardice, kill Reyes and Garcia. Back in Manila when Tony, Gomez’s younger brother, is knocked over by a speeding American car, he is taken to the hospital by Japanese national Ikejima, and receives kind treatment at the hands of Japanese medical staff. The film’s ending is not particularly subtle with Gomez handing his younger brother an ‘enemy’ helmet that of course sports the American flag. Dawn of Freedom resonates with many propaganda films made in the period but also engages with the complexities that Imperial cinema faced. Most of the film is in English, the very language that the Japanese hoped to ban. The basic reality was that hardly any Filipinos knew even basic Japanese and, therefore, in order to get their message across, English was a necessary evil. Although Japanese was made compulsory in the school system, the indigenous population refused to engage with the process since, as Ricardo Jose notes, they never believed that Japan would win the Pacific War and therefore ‘the occupation was temporary, its impositions were also seen as temporary’ (2003: 263). The Japanese tried to encourage Tagalog as a national language in order to try to move the nation away from America, but by all accounts, the local population used the Japanese lack of knowledge about this language to make jokes and satire at the expense of the Japanese.5 There was a vague attempt to encourage a Filipino cinema that was not based on the Hollywood model. Sawamura Tsutomu was selected to try to focus on

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the development of the Filipino film industry. He wrote an adaptation of a Jose Esperanza Cruz novel, entitled Tatlong Maria (1944), about three sisters and the tension between rural and urban modes of living (to be discussed further in Chapter 5). The film was finished and released a few weeks before Japan’s defeat and its re-release in the post-occupation era, despite the change of name, was marred with controversy related to its production background. Movie magazines such as Linwayway indicate that Japanese films were shown widely in the Philippines. These ranged from Currents of Youth/Seishun no kiryū (1942) to battlefield products such as Navy/Kaigun (1940). What is particularly interesting is that products from the Manchurian studios such as China Nights were also shown, creating links not only between Japan and the Philippines but also with the wider Empire. Axis-allies’ products such as the German film, Uncle Kruger/Ohm Krüge (1941) focusing on the destruction of the British in the Boer War would also feature. In Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia the pattern would be similar, with a clear focus on imparting the need for East Asian cooperation and heralding Japan as the liberator of East Asia to the local population. Terms such as ‘holy war’, ‘sacred war’, ‘cooperation under the leadership of Dai Nippon’, ‘the family sphere of greater East Asia’ fill these newsreels. Officially Japan was highly supportive of Indonesian impendence from Western rule, but in reality, this was nothing more than lip service. While Japan had an interest in the Philippines for natural resources, the main interest in Indonesia and Malaysia was manpower and the regime here was especially brutal. Thousands were conscripted into forced labour and some figures suggest that the death toll for workers was as high as 80 per cent. Japan as a liberator would be far removed from the experiences of most people, although hardship under occupation did depend on social class and ethnic origin.

Conclusion Chapman and Cull comment that ‘from its outset cinema has been a vehicle for disseminating images and ideologies of Empire’ (2009: 1) and for Imperial Japan, film was seen as both a method of communication and, hopefully, conversion. Japan would attempt to use cinema as a political tool in all her territories but, as has been explored, these attempts were less successful than they would have wished. Cinema culture of the respective territories did continue to develop

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outside Japanese colonial discourses. This was either via local productions, or, where this was not possible, via foreign imports and the growth of cinema discussion groups and cinema fan cultures. While in Taiwan and Korea, Japan had a much firmer hold on the cinematic industries, in the Imperial territories it was far more complicated. Units like Man’ei aimed to make a ‘Hollywood in the East’, but ultimately failed, as they were unable to attract local audiences. The power and influence of America in South East Asian cinema would also fail to be challenged despite Japan’s effort.

Notes 1 As a young man, Amakatsu had murdered anarchist Osugi Sakeo, fellow anarchist and feminist, Itō Noe and Ōsugi’s six-year-old nephew in prison a few days after the Great Kanto Earthquake. He would receive a ten-year sentence for the murders but would only serve three. His proclamations that he had only committed the brutal crimes out of patriotism would go a long way towards ensuring leniency. 2 I have to thank Professor Chia-ning Chang at UC Davis for alerting me to this possible reading. 3 Serialized in the Boys Club Magazine/Shōnen Kurabu from 1933 to 1939. 4 The co-director was initially arrested and would serve jail time as a Japanese collaborator, but he would later be released when it was revealed he was simultaneously aiding the resistance. He would go on to become one of the main figures in the development of the cinema of the Philippines. 5 A children’s textbook from the Philippines on the occupation even alleges that ‘instead of greeting Prime Minster Tōjō with “Banzai,” they lustily cheered “bangkay” (corpse)’ (2007: 225).

3

Landscape and the Space of the Colonial Moment

Imperialism, after all, is an act of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control. For the native, the history of colonial servitude is inaugurated by the loss of the locality to the outsider; its geographical identity must thereafter be searched for and somehow restored. (Said 1990: 77) The landscape is simultaneously the space, place, spectacle and metaphor of Empire. Both as the literal territory of occupation and the space by which the Empire is defined, the landscape also operates as the site of the dramatic production and spectacular environment of the colonial imagination (Lukinbeal 2005: 5). Colonial encounters and Imperial ideologies are, in their most basic formation, founded on the literal as well as the metaphorical re-definitions of territory. Lefebvre comments that ‘landscape is a multifaceted and pluridisciplinary object whose meanings and representations extend from real life environments to art … . Furthermore, it is relevant in aesthetics as well as in economic and political debate over land development and exploitation, tourism and national identity and sovereignty’ (2006: xiii). Therefore, landscape in both the literal and the figurative sense becomes not only the site of the political discourses of a specific period but also the cultural milieu via which they are created and disseminated. This chapter will explore how the landscape of both the colonial (Korea, Taiwan) and the Imperial (Manchuria), were represented in the cinema of the period. Throughout the many films made as part of the Japanese Imperial process (including fiction films, documentaries, anthropological films and newsreels), we can see an almost unfettered re-imagining of a wider East Asian geography. Numerous newsreels and information films open with maps of Asia’s countries,

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regions, rivers, cities, lakes and other geographical features, and their roles and importance inside the Empire. As will be explored, the landscape was employed for very specific cultural and political reasons. This chapter will discuss how Taiwanese aborigines were interlinked with the landscape in the Japanese cinema of the period, and why the aborigines were an ideal site for Japanese narratives of nation-building. I will then debate on the interplay between the cinematic landscape of rural and urban Korea and the tension found therein. The role that trains and the railroad played in the mapping of Empire will then be looked at before this chapter concludes with an exploration of how Manchuria came to function as the dreamscape of Imperial ambitions. Colonial fantasy is at the heart of landscape representation. Desire is always shaped by fantasy and fantasy is always shaped by desire. The need to position the colonial subject and the colonial landscape into a defining and recognizable narrative becomes a key goal of any colonial or Imperial structure. Thus self-positioning is very important. The notion of conflict through space as opposed to conflict over space is vital to see how Japanese Imperialist cultural and political narratives interacted and informed their logistical manifestations of territory control. The landscape of the controlled territories was defined not only in terms of occupation but as part of a complex, and often contradictory palimpsest that revolved around what uses the space should have for the Imperial imagination in both a literal and figurative sense; who should have access to, and control over the space; and finally, how to manage the interplay between the local inhabitants and the Japanese aims and ambitions. A good example is the fact the very name Manchukuo/Manchuria was a contemporary creation. Manchukuo was a translation of the Japanese word Manshū and would be seen as so loaded with symbolism that it would be rejected inside China after the decline of the Japanese Empire.1 Asia, therefore, was to become ‘an exotic Japanese space for adventure’, and this approach allowed for, and indeed demanded, the ‘creation of an imperial Japanese worldview in which Japanese audiences situated themselves at the top of a hierarchy of East Asian co-prosperity’ (Baskett 2008: 5). William Gardner (1999) notes that the Japanese regional view has been markedly ambiguous even to the present day, with its ‘conceptual cartography varying from that of an “Asia” including and centered in Imperial Japan (or the greater East Asian co-prosperity sphere), to a map in which the Japanese place themselves outside of Asia or rather Asia outside of Japan.’ Paradoxically, the landscape of the colonial territories was conceived of in ways that vicariously sought to separate the colonial space from Japan proper, and at the same time, sought to merge the two into an Imperial whole. Landscape became a

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dual process of knowing and un-knowing: creating the exotic and foreign spaces that fuelled the Imperial imagination, while desiring complete knowledge and control over the strange environment. As Dirks notes, ‘Colonial knowledge both enabled colonial conquest and was produced by it’ (Dirks 1992: 402). Therefore, both the colonial societies and the colonizer are (re)constructed, (re)formed and transformed ‘by and through’ this colonial knowledge. Tracking history via filmic space becomes an exercise in ‘taking the films textual affiliations to the dominant dialogues of its period’ (Jaikumar 2014: 48). Terms such as East Asian League/Tōa renmei, East Asian Community/Tōa kyōdōtai, Greater East Asian Co-prosperity sphere/Daitōa Kyōeiken, Five Ethnic Groups Living in Harmony/gozuku kyōwa and, of course, hakkō ichiu, all engaged with a new mapping of East Asian relations along the lines of collaboration and interplay. These ideas would be consistently and, often passionately, articulated inside Japan and her Imperial territories, and yet conversely, as previously examined, Japanese narratives of superiority co-existed in the very same space, epitomizing the conflicts inherent in the narratives being propagated. Via the renaming of site and place, the contemporary history was imposed upon an imaginary map of Asia that was being reconstructed to suit Imperial Japan’s ideologies and aims. Seoul, Taipei and many other large cities that came under the colonial rule were reconfigured to support Imperial needs. Palaces were torn down to make way for new colonial buildings, streets were redesigned, new railways and road networks were implemented and whole urban areas were rapidly transformed. Rural areas were not exempt, as Japanese land reforms and immigration policies across their Empire caused widespread change and often highly negative disruption for the local inhabitants (Townsend 2015; Chowdury and Islam 1997). Therefore, with relation to landscape, the question is not to ask ‘how film represents a colonial space, but how a colonial place was multiply (commercially, administratively, socially, culturally) produced as space at a particular historical time, and what role the visual played within this dynamic’ (Jaikumar 2014: 51). Landscape was a vital part of the earliest cinematic experience. Actualities, travelogues and scenic films dominated pre-Nickelodeon productions and offered a chance to experience the foreign and exotic, often with the guidance of an ‘expert’ narrator to explain and make the foreign territories ‘knowable’. There was also an element of reconsideration, as people were able to see familiar sites from new vantage points. Landscape and spectacle became intertwined from the outset, and ‘it was undoubtedly scenes of foreign lands that provided the cinématographe [Lumière Bros] with its chief attraction’ (Musser 1990: 145).

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Such spectacle can become loaded with cultural weight and, for W. J. T. Mitchell, ‘landscape might be seen more profitably as something like the dreamwork of imperialism’ (1994: 10). Lynne Peterson notes that ‘landscape representation  … engage[s] questions of territory, nationalism, and political power’ (Peterson 2013: 6). Slyuter’s modification of Hulme’s ‘colonial triangle’ apportions significance to native, non-native, and landscape factors (2002) in any reading of the Imperial moment. While Slyuter’s dynamics of colonial landscape (which is based exclusively on the ‘West’ and the ‘non-West’ (European colonizer, native landscape) as the essential relationship elements involved in colonial landscape transformation) cannot be utilized in direct application to the East Asian context, his notion of ‘landscape is doubly essential, to indicate conflict over space and conflict through space’ (2002: 11 my emphasis) is important. Both physical and conceptual landscape transformations (whether ideological, discursive or symbolic) are intricately linked to the narratives of colonialism and the subsequent postcolonial or neo-colonial moment as constructed on a local and then a global space.2 Therefore, the role of landscape in the colonial imagination is twofold. The first is to memorialize the homeland which the colonizers have left (in this case Japan), and the second is to ensure that a distance is maintained between the colonizer and the people and landscape that has been colonized.

Natural, original and primitive Taiwan occupied a special place in the Japanese colonial imagination. The climate, the wildernesses and the ‘savage natives’ made Taiwan a figure of intense exoticism and wonder throughout the Empire. Japan’s engagement with the landscape of Taiwan was unique when compared to other colonies, since it was heavily interlinked with the approach to the aboriginal population. The narratives of Taiwan, especially the inner island territories, were very much aligned with environmental determinism. Japanese occupation saw the aboriginal population divided into three distinct categories that were based on degrees of their ‘evolution’ and relationship to the Japanese state. Terms such as ‘raw aborigines’ (seiban) were used to describe those who maintained a traditional lifestyle and had limited engagement with Imperial Japan or modern life, to distinguish them from those who had fully embraced the modern lifestyle (jukuban or ripe aborigines) and from the mid-range or kaban (acculturated

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aborigines) who passed between the two. Conceptualizations of Taiwan as a nation of cannibals, cave dwellers and head hunters informed popular stories in Japanese culture and the possibility of a Japanese citizen disappearing down a heart of darkness pathway was referenced in more than one sensationalist novella of the period (Tierney 2012: 64). From 1889 to 1905 the Japanese embarked on an enormous land inspection designed to survey the whole island, to estimate the produce, to make maps, ledgers and land registers (Takekoshi 1907, quoted in Yao 2006). This process of categorizing the land and the people living on it was a key process in the Imperial need to control the territory to which it was laying claim: in short, to allow Japan to ‘claim monopoly status over the land of the colonized’ (Yao 2006: 43). Although colonization had taken place in 1895, the Japanese colonial forces did not really seek to engage with the aboriginal elements until 1903, when special police forces were organized to help protect subjects from hostile tribes (Kono 2006: 88). The year 1910 saw the establishment of the riban jigyō, a five-year plan to confine and control the agricultural and economic activities of the aborigines. They were forcibly relocated to ‘protected’ areas in the mountains and closely monitored. Clear linkages were alleged to exist between the indigenous people and the landscape, underpinning Imperialist discourses that claimed that since they belonged to the earth ‘the natives were therefore linked into the non-human’ (Slyuter 2002: 12). A policy of terra nullius was therefore established that saw the Taiwanese landscape as a virtually empty environment to be conquered and civilized. This can be seen clearly in the newsreel Japanese Police Officers’ Taiwan Village Inspection/Nihonjin keikan no bansha (1935). The ‘backward’ and underdeveloped everyday lives of the aboriginal population are mediated via the controlling gaze of the colonial authorities. The visual image here serves three intertwined purposes. The first is to present a vision of Taiwan and the Taiwanese aborigines as part of a narrative of custom and tradition. Secondly, the presentation of them as an ethnic type rather than historical subject exemplifies their part within an enlightenment discourse that posits the Empire as developing and bringing new modes of modern living to the uncivilized. Thirdly, the images in this feature are offering a clear indication of colonial power. There is a repeated focus on the weaponry of the soldiers; we see them perform drills and they offer an image of perpetual surveillance on the native population. In one image we have a group of heavily armed officers standing beside the village well. The ability of the colonial power to restrict access to the most basic of needs is a stark reminder of who holds power and control.

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As Leo Ching notes, the relationship between the aborigines and the Japanese was based on the two poles of ‘savagery’ and ‘civility’, with the culture and civilization of the Japanese set against the natural savagery of the aboriginals (2000a). While newsreels and documentaries charted the development and modernization of Taipei/Taihoku and other larger urban areas such as Tainan, there was a clear distinction drawn between the urban and the rural space. The notion of uplands (kōzan banjin) and plains (heichi banjin) was strongly dependent on the notion of acculturation. Uplands were seen as more likely to embrace the modern lifestyle while the plains (where the aboriginals were primarily located) were seen as heavily linked to raw nature. Landscape, therefore, acts as ‘a visual vehicle of subtle and gradual inculcation … to make what is patently cultural appear as if it were natural’ (Duncan 1990: 19). The role of the police, as we learn from the newsreel and contemporary sources, was not only to control but also to impart knowledge to the local inhabitants. The aims were to encourage the aborigines to ‘switch from firearms to peaceful agricultural implements’ (Chen 1987: 229). The process of cultural adaptations filmically rendered had two key aims, the first to provide the spectacle of the ‘other’ for the citizens of Japan and the second to inform those residents in Taiwan of the process of nationhood that they were been expected to undergo in the name of becoming a modern and successful nation. This approach can be seen in the anthropological films made in the period. A panel of Japanese anthropologists and cultural scholars went to Taiwan to film and study the local customs and behaviours. Anthropologist Miyamoro Nobuhito presented two films focused on the Paiwan ceremonial customs: Paiwan (1928) and Kacedas and Subon (1932). Both the films centred on the filming of specific ceremonies and cultural specifics of various Paiwan tribes. By the late 1920s, the camera was not a new thing to the tribes of the region. As part of the control mechanisms many had already had their images taken by the colonial authorities and films had been screened in native villages from some years as a process of education about modernization and the Japanese Empire (Chen 2009). There were also a substantial number of photographs taken from this period of the indigenous inhabitants both in their natural environment and accompanied by the symbols of colonial power such as police, colonial government officers and the anthropologists themselves. The Japanese films, therefore, are engaging with a colonial subject who is willingly submitting and contributing to the colonizing strategy. The anthropological

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study was part and parcel of the colonial setting and was clearly informed by its dialogues. This can be seen in some juxtaposition to Western ethnographic films, such as Albert Kahn’s Archives de la planète (1909–31), where his collection of all early anthropological films and travelogues projected a French Imperial imagining of the world and its development. These films are aiming to depict what Said (1994) calls the ‘pleasures of Imperialism’, showing the colonial territories and the internal lands of Taiwan as simultaneously wild and uncontained, and yet, controlled and available for the Imperial viewing pleasure consolidated Imperial viewing patterns. This was concurrent with a booming tourism industry where, for a fee, the wild landscape would become manageable and highly ‘knowable’ for the average Imperial citizen. In Sketch of Taiwanese Natives/Tansagozoku o egaku (1939), we see the tribal women in traditional garb perform a dance for the anthropologist’s camera. The cinematic vision of landscape presented in the cinema of this period offered not only ‘images of power’ but also the ‘power of images’ to create and promote meaning in the hearts and minds of both occupiers and the occupied (Zarobell 2009: 2). In the Taiwanese context, Pratt’s discussion of the demarcation between the main ethnographic narrative and the work of representation proper is pertinent. The ethnographic films, colonial newsreels and the fictional films are all remarkably similar, and they serve to tell us more about the vision of colonial Empire the Japanese held rather than any meaningful debate on the state of Taiwan. For example, Song of Sadness/Ai no kyoku (1919) was one of the first Japanese fictional films to maintain a limited focus on the aboriginal community. Now believed lost, this film was an example of the pure film movement that came out of Japan in this period (Bernardi 2001: 306) and reflected the conceptualization of Taiwan as the site of melodramatic excitement and romantic fervour. This was an attempt not to present a true and accurate image, but to explore new cinematic trends in a space that, for many in Japan, offered a sense of excitement and a vision of the new. Pratt’s idea about strategies of innocence is useful to apply in this context. The ‘strategies of representation whereby European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment they assert European hegemony’ (1992: 6), can also be seen in the colonial products that issue from this period of occupation. The act of travel and exploration of the local community by travellers, ethnographers and filmmakers in this early period is seen as a process by which they try to disown the violent and complex pathway to the acquisition of Taiwan in favour of

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an articulation of love and admiration for the natural landscape and its local inhabitants. Unlike Korea, Taiwan at this stage was not seen as a bounded nation with a national ideology, which facilitated the rationalization of Japan’s occupation. This would be especially seen in colonial literature from this period, but film also exhibited this influence. As Harper and Rayner comment, film landscape is composed of frames of reference as well as frames of composition (2010: 17). These images are always directly related to the augmentation of colonial power. This is either via the visible presence of Imperial power structures, such as the police, army, government general buildings, or via the rewriting and rearticulation of existing narratives into the colonial process as part of a naturalizing of the colonial moment. In terms of the rewriting of an already existing narrative to meet the colonial ideologies, the Righteous Go Hō/Gijin Gohō aka The Story of Wu Fong (1932) is one of the few films to have survived from this period which offers some insight into how this was achieved. The film focuses on the headhunting practices of the aboriginal tribe and the attempt made by the local Han Chinese doctor Go Hō to stop the practice. The film aligns the Chinese population as sharing the same desire to modernize and ‘save’ the aboriginal people as the Japanese colonizers. Go Hō achieves status and influence in the aboriginal community by using modern medicine to save a sick child but a famine forty years later makes the tribe state their wish to return to headhunting. Go Hō finally succeeds in stopping the tradition of headhunting by sacrificing himself, and the shock of the realization that they have killed their beloved doctor results in their renouncing the practice and building a shrine to the honourable man. The film, therefore, is keen to encourage a sense of nationhood within the Chinese population that aligns them with Japan rather than to the indigenous aboriginal population. Tierney (2010: 54–3) notes that the Japanese film-makers grafted a new narrative (that served the colonial powers) onto an already existing Chinese narrative. Rather than keeping the Taoist ideology that was present in the original Chinese version of the story, the Japanese version added a clear emphasis on self-sacrifice and rejection of aboriginal superstition in all its forms. As a result, Go Hō was rewritten to become a hybrid product of Chinese heritage and Japanese spirit that clearly suited the colonial conquest period. The construction of an enemy or alien aboriginal population was an attempt to bond the Chinese and the Japanese together under the banner of the genteel and educated civilization against the wild headhunters. The cinematic landscape merged the

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representation of wide and untamed uplands with the positive civilizing potential which Japan’s influence, together with the efforts of her Chinese subjects, could enact upon it. In reality, hegemonic constructions of modernity, racial profiling and basic greed for the interior’s rural resources were soon undermining any pretence of sympathy for the indigenous population. The initially muted resistance  of the indigenous population soon developed into a violent reaction to the marginalization and occupation that they suffered. The Wushe incident that took place in 1930 had clearly tarnished the idealized vision of ‘controlling’ the aborigines, and shifted the focus from military and almost ‘separate’ maintenance to education and eventual assimilation (Kono 2006: 91). The civilizing potential of the Japanese nation would be shown in newsreels such as Taiwanese from Taizhong Tour the Homeland/Taichūshū tansagozoku no naichi kankō (1936) where the native Taiwanese sightseers are shown visiting Japan as part of a sightseeing trip. They are organized, clean and while clearly ‘other’ both in manner and ethnicity, they have been suitably enculturated, if not fully assimilated, into the Japanese way of life. This process of cultural adaptation would be most clearly demonstrated in the changes that took place with regard to Japanese engagement with the Taiwanese landscape. We can see the creation of a landscape that appealed to colonial narratives in the selection of national parks inside Taiwan. After much debate, all the national parks that were chosen between 1934 and 1936 were in mountainous regions. Given the characteristics of the Taiwanese landscape, the omission of tropical landscapes was surprising. However, the construction of the colonial landscape was intended to provide national parks that were to train the minds and bodies of colonial Taiwanese subjects: in short to homogenize and control. Koji Kanada (2003) makes the very persuasive argument that the tropical exotic landscapes which evoked notions of ‘other’ associated with the imaginative geographies and exoticism of an earlier period were no longer desired by the 1930s, and the alternative was to create a space of Imperial Japan that fitted the colonial ideals. Mountains (yama), for example, were (and are) a Japanese national obsession and thus the Taiwanese national landscape would be fitted around this matrix (despite the beaches and tropical environments that for many people would identifiably be the most remarkable and unique element of the Taiwanese landscape). The making of Taiwan into the Japanese image reflects this desire to construct the ideal colony and cinema would also operate to support this ideal. In her work on British India, Priya Jaikumar makes a clear statement that ‘colonial

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cityscapes and architectures were driven by the dual imperatives to maintain a nostalgic memorialisation of the colonisers’ homeland and to perpetuate a physical/psychic segregation between occupiers and the occupied’ (Jaikumar 2014: 52). In the 1936 short newsreel, Famous Scenic Sights of Taiwan/Taiwan fūkō meishō, the focus is on the mountains rather than the beach since that is what appealed to the Japanese audience of the time. Such a nostalgic remembrance of the Japanese landscape, while comforting to the Japanese citizens overseas, did not operate in the same way for the colonial citizens who had no nostalgic attachment to Japan. Even if the citizens could not share the colonizers’ heartfelt relationship of Japan, the need for willing and ‘usable’ colonial subjects became important as the various wars in which Japan had become embroiled grew in size. As Leo Ching notes, as the war progressed, maintaining the dichotomy between the ‘savages’ and the ‘civilized’ was a problem, since more colonial subjects needed to be mobilized for the war effort. Although Taiwan, unlike Korea, was never seen as the site for the recruitment of colonial soldiers (see Chapter 4 for more on this), the land and people were to be mobilized for warfare in any way possible. It was in 1943 that Shimizu Hiroshi made Sayon’s Bell/Sayon no Kane, which in many ways exemplified this shift in attitude. The film is based on the apparently true story of a seventeen-year-old Atayal girl called Sayun Hayun who went missing in 1938 and was assumed to have drowned during a storm while helping carry the luggage of her teacher. As a result of her sacrifice, the governor general in Taipei presented her home area with a bell inscribed with her name and the story was circulated around the Empire as an exemplar of loyalty among the Japanese colonies. Throughout the film, the young Sayon (played by Yamaguchi Yoshiko) is frequently linked to a pure and unaffected type of nature. We see her care for a group of small children and help foster a pig, while singing to flowers and the surrounding mountains. The aboriginals are seen as having very little to do with the Japanese colonial officers who, for the most part, are stiff, reserved and engage little with the surrounding local idyll. There is one exception in the form of a local police officer/teacher towards whom Sayon has developed a deeply platonic love. For her, he personifies all that is good, brave and impressive about the Japanese Empire and, inspired by his patriotism, she offers to carry his luggage through the jungle when he is drafted. When a storm comes, she is drowned crossing a river, and the film duly ends with her bell ringing out across the countryside as a calling to all patriotic Imperial citizens to also aim for the same level of self-sacrifice. The scenery here is dramatic, lush and undoubtedly

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foreign to those living in Japan.3 When compared to earlier films where the aborigines were, for the most part, isolated from the Imperial structures, Sayon’s Bell indicates that all people have a place under the Imperial flag. The location is telling. The film was shot in Wushe where the uprising had taken place over a decade before. The film’s juxtaposition of the landscape where the Seediq tribe had fought and lost against Japan with the tale of a young girl willing to sacrifice herself for the Empire showed that the colonization process was presented as so successful that even those who had fought against Japan now volunteered to die for it. Sayon’s Bell indicated that Japan was willing to forgive all and embrace them as part of the Empire.

Modern city and rural Korea All but one [parks] are in the areas where the Japanese live. There is Namsan Park, Jangchungdan Park, Hyochangwon Park in Yongsan. In the west, there is Sajik Park, and in the center of the city is a palm-size Pagoda Park – the only one frequented by Koreans. Where most Koreans live in the northern part of the city, there is nothing that even resembles a park. – Quote from Korean newspaper Gaebyeok 1926 Both the colonizer and the colonized took part in the modernizing process. The modern colonial city became the site of a multitude of often-conflicting narratives related to race, gender and nationhood as well as socio-economics, class and social mobility. Korea was formally annexed in 1910 but there had been a process of two-way settlement activities that had taken place even before then. By 1910 the number of Japanese settlers in Korea reached over 170,000, creating the largest overseas Japanese community in the world at the time. This vast influx into a national state that, unlike Taiwan, had a long-standing established national identity was a process that left its mark throughout the Korean peninsula, and in turn, Japan. The development of the urban space was, on one hand, an ideal example of the power and prestige of colonial Japan, but by the same token, for the Korean subject, it came to represent an enforced modernity that, though controlled, was not without benefits. In his work on the modernity of colonial power, David Scott engages with the key idea that many colonial subjects were not volunteers for modernity (in that the process of choice was not able to be exercised),

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but can rather be seen as conscripts to modernity (2004: 19). This process of conscription places new emphasis on the debates of colonial enlightenment and as he summarizes, The tragedy of colonial enlightenment … is not to be perceived in terms of a flaw to be erased or overcome, but rather in terms of a permanent legacy that has set the conditions in which we make of ourselves what we make and which therefore demands constant renegotiation and readjustment. (Scott 2004: 21)

In the short story Kannaai, the main protagonist is a young Japanese boy living in Seoul. His impressions of Seoul give a clear indication of the levels of inequality that existed between the Japanese and Korean citizens in the urban environment: Ryūji had never before taken in such awesome, luxurious scenery. The Korean houses he saw from the window of the train when he first came to the colonies were really small, like the piles of direct used for burial mounds … because of that lasting impression he never imagined that there would be such splendid mansions in Korea. (Yusasa 2005: 49)

Ryūji gradually comes to witness and understand the harsh repressive nature of colonial rule, and the urban environment becomes a perilous place when his lover Kannaii is eventually murdered on the eve of Korean independence. The attempt to integrate Koreans and Japanese would always be a struggle in the face of the everyday violence and discrimination that many suffered. This was enforced modernity as articulated by Scott. The initial lip service to the policies of cooperation and engagement which had been articulated during the 1920s (Caprio 2009: 81) changed into clear policies of cultural eradication and the complete subsuming of Korea into Japan. Cinema engaged less with Korean cultural narratives and images (as seen throughout the 1920s in films such as the Story of Chunhyang, The Promise under the Moon and Arirang) and more with narratives of sameness and cultural homogenization. This cultural eradication would be presented as a positive move towards ‘harmony and understanding’ in the official rhetoric (regardless of the local inhabitants real opinion). Almost all of the films made in Korea between 1936 and 1945 were devoted to the promotion of the ideology of naisen ittai/naeseon ilche, that is, ‘Japan and Korea as one body’ (Yiecies and Shim 2011). However, this official rhetoric was counter to the experiences of everyday Koreans who were under no illusions that they operated as second-class citizens in their own nation. The terms naiji

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(metropole) and gaiji (colonial periphery) are important here. These terms clearly indicate the divisions that imbued the colonial society. The notion of ‘one body’ would be undermined by the simultaneous articulation of difference and inferiority. Benedict Anderson’s writings on the ‘specter of comparison’ are relevant to this state of double-consciousness, where it is impossible to consider the Imperial centre without considering the colonial outside (1998: 229). In the linguistical and cultural construction of naiji and gaiji, the mandating of comparative perspectives has actively been enforced. Colonial societies were transformed by Imperial expansion as modern forms were introduced though the import of capital, culture, language and military and civilian personnel. The ‘one body’ narrative had to be balanced with the Imperial desire to make clear that the Koreans ‘relied’ on Japan for the ‘modernization’ and ‘development’ of their land and culture (Robinson and Shin 1999). Thus in Spring of the Korean Peninsula/Bando-ui bom (1941), according to the protagonist, the modern cinematic techniques of filming can only be acquired in Japan along with the best of modern literature. In Sweet Dreams the highest quality consumer products come from Tokyo and it is to Japan that the protagonists in Dear Soldier/Byeong jeongnim (1944), Volunteer/Jiwonbyeong (1940) and You and I/Kimi to boku (1941), to name just a few, look for modern knowledge. The much-discussed Suicide Troops on the Watchtower/Bōrō no Kesshitai (1943) was an ideal example of how the pro-Japanese propaganda tried to balance these two narratives, and how the Korean landscape was transformed to fulfil Imperial desires. The film focuses on a small village based around a military watchtower on the Chinese border in Northern Korea. The village is happy and works efficiently; both Japanese and Korean citizens are seen as living in harmony in a landscape to which both have adapted. As the seasons change we see the landscape alter from meadows of summer flowers into harsh and unforgiving winters, but still, the small community functions well. The land, as constructed vis-à-vis the Empire, provides succour and success for those who are willing to work and engage with it in an appropriate ‘positive and productive’ fashion. However, this happy idyll is threatened by a group of Chinese bandits. As the men fight to the last bullet, the women and children of the settlement prepare to commit mass suicide rather than face capture but are rescued at the last minute by the Japanese military. The narrative is clear: Japan would support and provide for their loyal and devoted subjects and this would often be via controlling a fruitful and well managed landscape.

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In this way, films such as Suicide Troops on the Watchtower are highly constructed to suit the aims and objectives of the Imperial rulers. Inside the film, various Japanese rather than Korean traditions are clearly lauded and promoted. Committing mass suicide on defeat is not a Korean tradition but a very notable Japanese one (Yecies and Shim 2011)]. We are shown the absolute adoption of Japanese cultural norms and mores (seen in the film via language, song, dance, dress and attitudes towards the emperor and the Imperial Army) and even more intimately, the managing of the family environment where even Korean familial relations and the living environment of the family are based on the Japanese model rather than according to Korean traditions. In this way, the managed people on managed landscapes say little about Korea but everything about Japan and her objectives. In short, as Baskett notes, the film reinforced to Japanese viewers their own safety and security (2008: 93) rather than offering the Korean viewers any real place in the Imperial stage that did not involve their own cultural subjugation. As Miriam Silverberg notes, Korea was not defined as a ‘comparable culture’ and as ‘cultural assimilation did not extend to cultural equality’. It resulted only in the fact that ‘a Korea united with Japan could only be a Korea without national or ethnic identity’ (1993:34). As colonial edicts banning language and forcing the adoption of Japanese surnames were implemented by 1940, ‘Korea was a place of lost family names and lost public language’ (Mayo and Rimer 2001: 5). The Korean landscape, in the same way as her people, would be utilized and (re)constructed according to the needs of the Imperial state, and this reconstruction would often involve the eradication of the very place it was purporting to present. These films all seek to present a landscape that will be at peace and support those living on it provided the status quo or ‘natural order’ is accepted. This natural order was clearly articulated by the Imperial powers and many of these films (as well as providing entertainment) replicated the Imperial power structures as couched in terms of the natural. The landscape therefore vicariously offers a vision of essential Korean-ness or the ideal image of the integrated colonial body. Korea in this sense, and in other products from the period, is presented as innately rural. This is rural in the aesthetic sense, but we also see a construction of Korean as rural in the sense of culturally backward. In the desire to present a natural and unaffected Korea, ‘colonial de-territorialization’ was constantly ‘shadowed by images’ of the Imperial centre and vice versa and this tension is present throughout the films from this period. This conflict can be seen in the various ways in which Seoul is referred to in Spring of Korean Peninsula. A railroad official announces Seoul as

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‘Keijō’, and yet in the same film, the characters, and various signs refer to Seoul by the commonly used Korean name of Sŏul, rather than Kyŏngsŏng or Keijō. This interplay of Korean and Japanese negotiation and engagement with place name only indicates how local film crews and actors had an influence on the official features being produced under a restricted system. Also, more importantly, we can also see how constant reminders of a failure to assimilate and the desire to reclaim a sense of Korean subjecthood are found in the smallest places. This idea of the countryside as a site of a Korean home can be clearly seen in Fisherman’s Fire, when the return home is the main way to expedite a sense of value and worth in the abused and misled heroine. The key landscape marker in Fisherman’s Fire is the sea. The sea plays a vital role in this melodramatic exploration of the tumultuous existence of the young heroine In-soon. In Fisherman’s Fire, the film opens with the scene of the heroine sitting by the seashore. In-soon’s father is a fisherman, and in his desire to eradicate his mounting debts, he attempts to fish beyond the means of his small boat and drowns at sea. In-soon is then thrown into peril as Mr Jang, her father’s main creditor, attempts to force her to become his concubine. In-soon loves the lowly Chun-seok but is led astray by Mr Jang’s wayward son Cheol-soo who takes her to Seoul and seduces her. The harsh, unrelenting and seedy streets of Seoul replace the pure and innocent sea of her coastal village. I will discuss the role gender plays in this film in greater detail in Chapter 4, but what I am interested in here is how the urban/rural divide is articulated in regard to modernity. The modern city scape is neither welcoming nor safe. Although In-soon’s good friend Ok-Boon has a job as a ticket collector on the bus, we are shown that the hours are long and the pay is poor. In-soon eventually becomes so desperate and so upset at her loss of virtue at the hands of Cheol-soo that she takes up a job working as a kisaeng in a bar. Cheol-soo is eventually fired from his job due to his behaviour and Ok-Boon and Chun-seok discover that In-soon has attempted suicide. The film ends with In-soon and Chun-seok sitting happily in front of a peaceful sea back in the village. We see In-soon move from being a corrupted and rejected member of society to an integrated part of the wider social group. The lack of community in the urban space is placed in direct comparison to the supportive, if very traditional, seaside community. Home here plays a key role. The modern urban space is filled with dangers and degradation, while the milieu of her rural village allows In-soon a cleansing of her urban sins and rebirth. In his examination of Angels on the Street as representative of the bildung­ sroman genre, Dafna Zur (2015) notes that the role of the home is a key element.

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In this case, the hard cityscape cannot provide the succour and safety and the rural space is the idealized space of ‘home’, in short, the countryside is a physical and spiritual home that facilitates their full integration as citizens. This movement from the space of the city to the country has been read in different ways; as a sign of the absolute effect of colonial power, or alternatively, the development and maintenance of a Korean consciousness. The film ends on a beach, once again the seascape been used as an emblem of unity and togetherness. The film had, in fact, spent most of the narrative critiquing the harsh existence of orphans on the streets of colonial Seoul, so the ending is curious. While some who saw the ending as ‘tacked on’ to ensure that the film passed the censors, the script and production records indicate that the film has always intended to have this ending. The ‘villains’ are Korean nationals (since any hint that they were Japanese nationals would have resulted in immediate banning); however, despite the lack of negative Japanese images, the collective nature of the colonial state that is emphasized throughout the film opens up a clear rupture. If Korea and Japan are one body, and if the Korean is beloved of Japan as we are told in the countless patriotic pronouncements, why is poverty, deprivation and inequality found throughout the Empire? The end of Angels on the Street, when they salute the flag by the seashore, highlights Japan’s control and, therefore, responsibility for the state of Korea. The sea here can be read as offering simultaneously a symbol of the colonial present as well as harkening back to the pre-colonial past and, with that, a possibility of a postcolonial future.4 The sea in Korea is both a separation from Japan, offering Korea a notion of a bounded national entity, and the means via which Japan can exert pressure. Pressure comes in the form of a heavily armed navy, but also via the economic and cultural pressures that saw thousands of Korean migrants, both forced and voluntary, leave to work in Japan. The sea in the case of Fisherman’s Fire and Angels on the Street operates as a highly complex space that both supports and simultaneously undermines a narrative of oneness and connectivity.

Mapping the greater Empire: Trains in the colonial imaginary The military state’s railway progressed through the frozen desert planting numberless teeth, numberless teeth that sprouted spikes.

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The railway will only be completed with pain to human beings. Human arms change shape beneath the railroad ties. More readily than a rotting leaf separating from a tree, The completion of the railway is the extinction of the town. Instantly, the flock of humans scatters. The desert returns to a desert. Leaving a long scab that touches the stars. In the end, the military state, wearing away this one scab, extends its arm. Towards ruin – The Railway of Annihilation, Kitagawa Fuyuhiko Writing in 1929, Dalian-based poet Kitagawa offered a damning criticism of the South Manchuria Railway, Mantetsu, which, as discussed previously, was a core element of the Japanese colonial enterprise on the Asian continent. While the aims were to link the region across the Empire, the railway could act as a doubleedged sword in many of the films. On the one hand, it offered the chance of mobility, travel and the ability to become a modern national state; on the other hand, it was a clear indication of colonial status. The railway lines crossing the country also acted as the means and method of colonial control via frequent checkpoints, troop and police movement, the trafficking of often enforced labour to the areas that Japan desired and, not least, the literal renaming of many towns and cities. The railway was a common element that could be found in the Imperial cinemas. In Taiwan, there are several surviving newsreels that pay testament to the important role that the train played in the cultural imagination. Both From the Window of a Train (1942) and Pleasure Trip/Tanoshii tabiji (1943) use the train to give a dynamic vision of modern and developed colonial nation. Pleasure Trip, in particular, highlights the importance, even in the midst of war, for light entertainment as we see the tourists make a short movie of their sightseeing for their own enjoyment. The using of a train as a cinematic focus in Imperial cinema allows for the articulation of Japanese Imperialism as a normative part of the landscape narratives. The image serves to present a very real physical object in testament to the power of the modernizing Imperial machine, and at the same time, indicates the wider stretching and unassailable nature of the Imperial hand. The visual culture of the train is ingrained as integral to the colonial making. The visual object of the train and the railroad is part of power narrative that exceeds the visual field.

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The power of the train is emphasized in the 1938 Korean film Military Train (1938). In Military Train, once the main cast has been introduced, the camera and the train become one in a series of shots, illustrating the dramatic passage of the train on the railroads of Korea. The shots move from under the train to tracking the trails from a low vantage point to a position in the front of the train so that we can experience the excitement as the scene takes us through the Korean countryside. The stations are busy and diverse places where Japanese and Korean military and civilian personnel all move about in the urban space. The interplay between modern Korea as based on Japan and traditional Korea and Korean culture as backward and restrictive is quickly narratively established. We learn that the hero’s sister had become a kiseang to pay for his education and in return he desires to get her married prior to his own marriage. It is her position inside traditional structures of servitude, and the debts she owes the brothel madam that she runs the risk of been sold into marriage before her brother has the chance to repay her debt. Her true love Won-jin’s horror at this leads him to fall victim to the approaches of a Chinese spy and saboteur who wishes to misuse his knowledge of military train. The positioning of the ‘natural’ and ‘unmodernized’ Korean bodies in a colonial landscape is something the film does on several occasions. In one scene we have a Korean theatre performance suddenly transferred from the theatre onto the outside environment. As soon as the song is over, the dancer and her accompanying musicians are once more transported into the bar where they were performing (Figures 5 and 6). When Young-Shim is asked to perform a haunting pansori lament of abused womanhood, her singing is overlaid onto a schoolyard scene of children playing and singing nursery rhymes. The modern education that Korean citizens residing under Empire and the traditional structures that are ruining the lives of Young-Shim and her lover are here positioned as a natural process of development. The life of Young-Shim will not be the one these children undergo thanks to the modernization Korea has undergone at Japan’s hands. Young-Shim is transported to a hillside as she signs her song before being deposited back into the bar where she is working. The landscape of Korea and her traditional arts are clearly located as feminine in comparison with the masculine (and therefore superior) Japanese-led world of the train yard. The dancer, the musician and the singer are all women and their removal from the contemporary setting into a liminal landscape that is not discernable or bounded by time and space results in them aligning to a vision of the past rather than the future.

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Figures 5 and 6  The dancer and drummers are placed inside the landscape while Young-Shim can be seen sitting to the left-hand side of the frame singing. As soon as this is over, she is returned to the bar space of Seoul (Military Train (1938)).

The future is found in the characters of Jeom-yong, the young train driver and Soon-hee’s brother and his girlfriend Soon-hee. They are both modern in dress, speech and interests, and are posited as the future of the nation state. Soonhee is placed in stark comparison to Young-Shim. She is positioned inside the railway yard, in the train’s dining car, and on a leisure boat ride with Jeom-yong and Won-jin – all modern spaces that are in stark contrast to the melancholic rural landscape that Young-Shim is aligned with.

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The drivers are encouraged to be loyal to the Empire and work to their full capacity and Jeom-yong has assimilated this idea absolutely. He is a fervent supporter of the Imperial order and is prepared to sacrifice his sister rather than betray Japan, and this sits uncomfortably with the melodramatic film structures and Korean cultural emphasis on the importance of family. The brother should support his sister in return for her sacrifice for him and the film manages to successfully solve this tension by the sudden arrival of another brother. We learn that the siblings have an elder brother coming back from Manchuria and his arrival would appear to herald the redemption of Young-Shim. The fact that he is returning from another part of the Empire and, as his clothing would imply, achieved a fair degree of economic success functions not only to resolve the familial tension the film has set up but also references a notion of a wider transnational Empire that Korea is just a small part of. The film would appear to indicate that the Empire offers a wealth of opportunities to those who integrate into her culture. We are told numerous times that the rail lines run into China and serve to connect the whole of Asia to Japan as the Imperial hub. Military Train’s focus is very much outward looking as against the local focus of Fisherman’s Fire and Angels on the Street. In Military Train the aim is to posit a Korea that is a transnational state via her position in the Empire. The modern Empire is all about movement and scale rather than of a sense of individual positioning. The film ends once again with the train speeding along the tracks but tragedy strikes when Won-jin jumps in front of the troop train. His suicide note references his desire to have his soul guard the railroad as the only way he can truly atone for his betrayal and to actively promote ‘peace in Asia’. Yet, for the Korean audience, the suicide of Won-jin is perhaps more symbolic, as we see a Korean body die under the wheels of the Japanese military machine. The Korean landscape is therefore transformed into a space that is haunted by Korean ghosts sacrificed for the Japanese nation. The speech the station manager gives in Japanese to the drivers gives a clear indication of the main ideas that audience was to take away from the film alongside the more melodramatic elements. ‘Show the Spirit of the Empire through doing your duty’ and ‘Be one body and do your best not to disappoint the Chosun Railway Company’ are repeated more than once. They are told, ‘You do not belong to yourself, you belong to the Japanese people’, ‘Our future depends on you’ and this statement opens up a curious question inside the film text. The building of the Japanese Empire on not just the hearts and minds but the more

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literal bodies of the Korean population would not have been lost to those in the audience. The film offers the statement at one point, ‘We don’t know what the future will hold’, and the end scene of the train moving into the unknown landscape of the northern frontier and the borders of the Empire leaves a sense of possibility that can be read, if you are so inclined, as a potential counternarrative where the inability to read and predict the future implies a landscape of possibility that can circumvent the closed loop of colonial subjugation.

Manchurian dreamscapes With our young lives We are Japan’s advanced guard onto the soil. Our emotion burns bright; We come gripping hoes So we will open up the land – The great land of Manchuria – Japanese ‘Patriotic Youth Brigade Song’ The ability to seize land and property at will was an integral part of Japanese Imperial expansion. The Manchurian landscape was seen as a unique and valuable commodity of China that could only be managed/controlled effectively by Japan. As Louise Young notes, ‘The truly radical and novel fact of Manchurian development lay in plans for heavy industrialization and hoped to make Manchukuo the advance guard for Japanese Industrial capitalism’ (1998: 240). It was the literal land of Manchuria therefore that Japan was primarily interested in and the inhabitants were seen more as a problem to be overcome than a group to be incorporated. While in everyday reality Manchuria was less than pleasant for a lot of people, on film Manchuria operated as an ‘on-screen no-mans-landlike landscape’ that ‘Imperial subjects could project their imperial fantasies onto’ (Baskett 2008: 28). There were two main narratives that were important in the representation of Manchuria (and China more broadly) as seen via Japan that links directly into the representation of the landscape. These were that the Manchurian/Chinese territory and people were in need of Japan’s protection against encroaching Western colonialism, and those cultural traditions of the nation (those perceived as important to Japan) were in need of Japanese conservation. Both these assertions shored up Japan’s claim to modern nation

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status, as the first necessitated a strong Japanese military and the second, an advanced Japan as the conservator of China’s, and by extension Asia’s, ancient cultural heritage (Christ 2000: 682). The ability of the Japanese occupation to manage the landscape for the benefit of all citizens is made clear in Yellow River/Huanghe (1942). The film’s desire to promote Japan as the real protector of Chinese land, people, and by extension, nationhood is articulated via the comparison between the Japanese troops and the Chinese nationalists. Infighting between nationalist factions results in the breaching the banks of the Yellow River. This, in turn, results in massive floods that destroy Chinese farms and local communities. The nationalists are shown as having no care for the ordinary Chinese citizens and abandoning them to their fate. It is the Japanese troops who come to aid the Manchurian citizens by rescuing the civilians and mending the breached riverbanks. Japan’s ability to correctly manage and defend the land and the inhabitants was a key narrative in the films that emerged from Man’ei and Japan proper. Vow in the Desert opens with the central character Sugiyama musing on the ‘extraordinary power of man’ while viewing the Great Wall of China. Turning around he then proclaims (indicating a military highway being built by Japanese engineers), ‘We’ll build a new Great Wall at the foot of that mountain.’ This military highway becomes the symbol of Japanese desire to transform and greatly improve the Chinese landscape. This notion of Japan as transformer and developer of the Manchurian landscape is present through all the films coming from this region. Trains, buildings, new irrigation systems are all important motifs through the cinema from this period. Like in the cinema of Taiwan and Korea, the means via which the Japanese infrastructures are transporting her modern vision of Empire is key. While Vow in the Desert focuses on the road network, The Green Earth/Midori no daichi (1942) examines building a canal through the countryside. Chinese ignorance is placed in opposition to Japanese ingenuity and desire to ‘improve’ the region. The Japanese demarcation and development of the land away from traditional patterns lead to tension in one Chinese family as the father states that he embraces ‘Japanese investment and technology, precisely because I want China to prosper’, while his son continues to voice his opinion against the developments. The canal is seen as a site of modernization, and the subsequent success and building of the canal into the Manchurian landscape is key in the Japanese narrative of development and settlement. In her discussion of the Man’ei documentaries, Jie Li notes that two of the documentaries from this period, Locomotive Pashiha/kikansha Pashiha (1939) and Construction

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Work/Kensetsu kōji (1939), both feature a clear contrast between the Chinese workers on the railway lines and the Japanese ones. The Chinese workers in Construction Work are nothing more than a mass collective, ‘mere extensions of machinery’ (2014: 338), and in Locomotive Pashiha they are seen as slow and unable to grasp the modern building techniques as quickly and as efficiently as their Japanese counterparts. What both films share is that the Japanese field of vision is given a privileged subjectivity. They are afforded point-of-view shots that place the individual inside the wider landscape of Manchuria, while their Chinese counterparts are nothing more than undifferentiated worker bees. In the case of Locomotive Pashiha, the intercutting between man and machinery illustrates the need for the individuals to work in unity to achieve the Imperial aims. The need to reform and recast the landscape via the implementation of mass infrastructural projects is seen as imperative to the Imperial construction of nationhood as the military activities. Newsreels before and during film shows featured military victory updates, and this stream of propaganda both served to legitimize Japanese occupation via the representation of Japan as a stronger and advanced nation, and also to promote the ideology that Manchurian nationhood can only be articulated via Japan. Here the landscape is constructed to act as ‘a visual vehicle of subtle and gradual inculcation … to make what is patently cultural appear as if it were natural’ (Duncan 1990: 19). The Manchurian citizens, via various visual and narrative inclusions, are shown as belonging to the land rather than the land belonging to them. This subtle but important definition supported the Japanese policies in the region. In this way, the myth of Manchuria as an unoccupied wilderness would be enshrined in law. In the same way that the Western myth of emptiness (Said 1979; Wolf 1982; Adas 1989) became instrumental in the territorial acquisition and development in United States and Australia, Japan’s continual illusion that Manchuria was a wide empty space was crucial to its exploitation and representation. Japanese migration was a key factor here. The Manchurian Settlement Policy was created in 1939 and was followed by a series of laws to enforce it, which would then operate to enhance this vision. Based on notions of the Japanese need for ‘living space’, the Settlement Policy was seen in several areas (Young 1998; Duara 2003) and held the clear ethos that the pre-existing inhabitants were ‘part and parcel’ of the land, and therefore could be used in whichever way it suited the Japanese Imperial ambitions. The myth of emptiness was just that, and ‘Imperial privilege allowed Japanese settlers to take prime lands away from Chinese farmers’ as well as facilitating the ‘exploitation of the labor power of many of the

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people they had just displaced’ (Young 1998: 403). Hence, the labouring Chinese bodies that we see throughout the films of this period. The mass media was a vital tool in this procedure – radio, film, dailies, newsreels and magazines all supported the narratives being produced. Glossy reports presented Manchuria as the land of opportunity, and while they were ostensibly aimed at the middle class, this state-led propaganda drew vast numbers of poor migrants in search of a better life. This inability of the Manchurians to organize and benefit from their own land (and thereby remove their ‘right to it,) was clearly articulated in the German–Japanese production. Here the film’s ending sees the young Japanese couple, Teruo and Mitsuko, farm the fertile soil of Manchuria as their baby plays in the furrows of the earth under the benevolent eyes of a Japanese soldier. Earlier in the film, Teruo had told his German ‘fiancée’ (the exact nature of their relationship is unclear) Gelda that Manchuria ‘had plenty of land, more than enough to support a large population … that is if it is properly cultivated. But first, we must bring peace and order to the land. That is Japan’s intention. Japan will construct a nation on this land.’ The undertone is clear: if the Chinese cannot embrace and understand the need for development, then Japan has no choice but to force/persuade them to conform to the Japanese plans. The various edits of this film have received close attention since meaning alternates between the German (ironically the more successful film) and the Japanese. As Janine Hansen notes, the German version pays close attention to the soldier while the Japanese version places the soldier as more of a background entity (1997: 191). The removal of the soldier from the front of the frame in the Japanese version can be seen as part of a narrative that was seeking to downplay the anti-Japanese sentiment in the region. Farming under armed guard was not perhaps the best way to sell migration to a territory and the Japanese version is far more encouraging in the idea of migration as a natural and less militaristic process than the German one that clearly links Japanese presence in Manchuria to military might.5 Selling Manchuria as an idealized image was key to the migration drive. In Ōhinata Village/Ōhinata Mura (1940), a cramped, overpopulated mountain village is encouraging to move to the wide open plains of Manchuria. The village in Japan is small and dark with narrow houses and streets, whereas the shots of Manchuria offer wide open skies and miles of untouched land. The Manchurian landscape, therefore, offers new opportunities and a positive environment to grow and develop. Fictional representations were supported by

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a series of documentaries that promoted emigration. Pioneering Troops/Kaitaku totsugekitai follows the first year of settlement, Light of the Spade: Building Greater East Asia/Suki no hikari – daitōa no kensetsu e (1937), Winter Migration/fuyu no ijūchi (1937) likewise all chart the hard work, tribulations but ultimate success of the communities moving to this new land of opportunity. Endless Expanse of Fertile Soil/Yokudo banri (1940) focuses on a village of settlers struggling against the elements in Manchuria to create wet rice paddies. Their success will come from hard work and a strong ‘team spirit’, but what is perhaps interesting is the way the landscape is presented as both a site of tremendous opportunity and a site of potential disaster. Wet paddy farming was, in fact, a skill of Korean farmers, and via this link we see landscape management as not just posited between Japan and Manchuria but also as an interplay between the whole Imperial nation. Koreans were a large immigrant group to Manchuria and their farming negatively affected the farming rights and processes of the Chinese community (Delissen 2000: 116).6 The literal as well as cultural co-opting of space in a conquered territory is an obvious means by which colonialism annexes and inscribes ownership of the land. Such Imperial (re)ordering of land and its inhabitants is often a violent and turbulent period (Slyuter 2002), and the resultant divide between colonizer and colonized that urban and rural land management inevitably creates, ironically, can cause disruption and anger that it hopes to avoid (Mitchell 2002). Man’ei produced a series of anthropological and ethnographic films, charting the traditional cultures of the minority people in Manchuria who were part of a policy that saw the desire to preserve ‘their original culture’ (Duara 2013: 180–2), while enacting policies that were ensuring that Japan could closely control all the communities and the land on which they sat. Although Man’ei made a series of documentary films that explored the lives of minority subjects living in Manchuria, including Mongolians, white Russian and Tibetans, these ethnographic images did little to disrupt the Chinese/Japanese binary.7 For the local populations, these films were hardly representative of their day-to-day lives and served to present a nation where ‘five nations in harmony’ was usually reduced to the binary between Japan and ‘China’ as a broadly defined category. The establishment of a ‘them and us’ narrative can be found throughout the cinema of this area. The films inevitably have to construct a minority dissenting voice rather than honestly show a land where few, if any, of the native citizens were supporters of the Empire but the ‘other’ is always resoundingly Chinese.

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Films such as Vow in the Desert, Road to Peace in the Orient and The Green Earth feature Chinese bandits, evil communists and groups of ignorant feudal villagers who are all intent on destroying the new Japanese infrastructure and the resultant developing farming heartland. Dawn Light/Reimie kokyo, (1940) sees a Japanese police captain try to engage the bandits who are threatening the local inhabitants. He seeks to impress on them the need to establish and develop Manchuria as a nation, as well as create peace in Asia. As he states, the way to peace will be via cooperation with Japan. He is killed by the bandits, but, in direct contrast to real events taking place in Manchuria, Japan is seen as the peacemaker and the victim of extreme Chinese nationalism rather than the aggressor. The role of Japanese citizen as a victim sacrificing him or herself to save China is a theme that occurred in several features from this period. Vow in the Desert sees one of the brothers killed in his attempt to build a great road that will benefit the ‘whole’ nation. China Nights has the hero Hase prepared to die (or actually die dependent on the version you are watching) to defend the Chinese territory and both the Chinese and Japanese citizens who reside inside it. In Song of White Orchid/Byakuran no uta (1939), a Chinese woman will die be side of her Japanese lover. Their deaths allow for the completion of the longed-for railway. The film concludes with documentary footage of the manetsu railway as the film once again articulates power relations that exceeded the cinematic frame. The real-life footage of the emblem of Imperial power and development integrated into a fictional product results in Song of White Orchid being simultaneously a request for Imperial cooperation and an active representation of its irrefutable might. There is, however, an eternal disjuncture between dream and reality. Social privation and even starvation were rife in the colonial settler camps; there were aggressive and often violent relations with their Chinese neighbours and the harsh winter weather prematurely ended the lives of many colonists (Young 1998; Dura 2003). The young were especially vulnerable and the new generation of pioneers were far from the strong as the healthy images presented in the films, and infant mortality rates were abysmally high. Realities aside, the Imperial imagination needed Manchuria to operate as the symbol of opportunity in the wider Empire and therefore the fictional landscape of Manchuria (and all its wealth of opportunities) was needed to keep the very idea of Empire going in Japan but also in the other colonies such as Korea and Taiwan. Throughout the 1930s the flow of finance and workers to Manchuria seems to support the idealized rhetoric of Imperial nation-

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building. Manchuria became a site of utopian dreams set on a dramatic and infinite landscape of possibility.

Conclusion The multifarious landscape of her Imperial territories fascinated Japanese filmmakers and audiences alike. For the inhabitants of the territories, the presentation of them and their landscape was often reductive and frequently insulting. For the indigenous film-makers, working under the constrains of Imperial edicts and censors meant that the ability to voice dissent was limited, but their landscape was ultimately a place where their national cultures and characters could also be presented. The cinematic landscape was, therefore, a space where the ‘dreamwork of imperialism’ could be played out. Landscape operated as simultaneously a frame of reference that allowed for the socio-economic realities of the Imperial moment to be played out and the site where national desires of the respective nations could offer a whispered and muted presence.

Notes 1 See Chapter 2, Note 1. 2 See Introduction, Note 2. 3 In a version of this chapter presented at a conference, Jasper Sharp commented that these aesthetics of scenery are also present in Shimizu Hiroshi’s other films. While the motifs of nature, children and sacrifice are also present in Shimizu’s other films, the colonial literature of the period also contains these common descriptive elements, therefore, a palimpsest between the colonial moment and auteurial voice is created. 4 The name of the sea is here important; the water between Japan and Korea had, until the later 1880s, been called the Sea of Joseon and the Sea of Japan. Colonial occupation resulted in the Sea of Joseon vanishing from both European and Asian maps. To date, South Korea refers to the water as East Sea, but many nations, including Japan, still use the term Sea of Japan. 5 These differences are just a few of the filmic elements that indicate the clear tensions between the Axis-allies. Germany’s racial structures meant that Japan was always an ambivalent ally. 6 The fate of the Korean citizens left in China at the end of the war is a sad reflection of Japan’s treatment of her former colonial subjects. During the occupation of

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Manchuria they received indifferent protection from the Japanese military in the face of Chinese aggression, and at Japan’s defeat, they were completely abandoned and many never made it back to Korea. 7 These films were all released between 1939 and 1944 and include The Sons of Shōhachi Osomura: Manchurian Christ/Manshū no kirisutokyōson: shōhachikashi; Festival of the Pole Starlight/Bokutō Orasai, Pleasures of Mongolia/Mōko no kanki, Romanovka Village/Romanovka mura, and White Russian Wanderer in Northern Mongolia/Hokuman no Hakkei Rojin, Part 1: Scenes from Eastern Mongolia/Higashi Mōko fūbutsu hen, Part 2: Shrines of Eastern Mongolian Lamaism/Higashi Mōko ramabyō hen, New Mongolian Paradise/Rakudo shinmōko and Mongolian Horseback Hunters/Mōko ryōki.

4

Army Recruitment Films

Chun-ho: The annexation is complete now but young Koreans should serve the Empire at war too. Even if we want to, we are not allowed to do so. We are not eligible. How can we really work in unity like this? Chang-sik: If such time comes are you willing to step forward? Chun-ho: Don’t you know me yet? When we were kids we swore we would walk the same path. If you become a driver in Seoul, you should serve at the front. We have our duty. – Volunteer, 1941. By 1937 the Sino-Japanese war was beginning to take its toll. The swathes of China that Japan hoped to conquer, occupy and then control and exploit were proving to be far more difficult to achieve than they had first assumed, and Japan literally needed more bodies on the ground. This chapter will examine a series of films made between 1940 and 1945 devoted to recruiting Korean men for the Japanese army. The aims of the volunteer films were ostensibly to recruit and are an ideal case study of the narratives told to the Korean (male) population while, simultaneously, serving as a marker of the tensions that were present in that narrative. Thus, the conflicts of the culture of the Empire, as it directly relates to Korea, can be seen played out vis-à-vis this cinema genre. This chapter will focus on how the volunteer films constructed Korean masculinity, and I will explore how, via the representation of the male offered, the films actually can be read as undermining and destabilizing the very codes they were hoping to consolidate. Inside the film world, the volunteer films sought to establish a code of masculinity that could link Japanese and Korean men under the banner of military brotherhood. As I will explore, the very act of doing this actually highlighted the very real inequalities that existed. The volunteer films, therefore, function as powerfully elucidating texts that, despite their attempts to unite Japan and Korea, actually positions Korean masculinity as a subordinate

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masculinity. This positioning, rather than supporting the colonial codes, actually undermines their very existence by unveiling their innate truth to the audience. From 1940 to 1945 we know of at least eight feature-length fiction films that were made with recruitment specifically in mind: Volunteer, You and I/Kimi to boku (1941), Portrait of Youth/Wakaki sugata (1943), Straits of Chosun/Joseon Haehyup (1943), Look Up at the Blue Sky/Uleuleola changgong (1943) I Will Go!/Naneun ganda (1942), Dear Soldier and Love of Vow/Sa-rang-uimaeng-seo (1945). These films were supplemented by newsreels and a publicity campaign that was promoted across Korea and Japan and they were released at same time as he documentaries such as Victory Garden/Seungi ui tdeul (1940), The Nineteenth Year of Showa/Showa jūkyūnen (1943) and Day of Glory/Eikō no hi (1943) which were all designed to celebrate the joining of Japan and Korea in military action. The recruitment films were made alongside other fiction films, such as Children of the Sun/Tae-yang-ui a-ideul (1944) and Suicide Troops on the Watchtower that focused on promoting and encouraging military cooperation between Japan and Korea. What makes the volunteer films slightly different from these other very similar products is the very specific objective of male recruitment rather than broader ideas of collaboration. The main aims of the films were to initially encourage men to volunteer, and then later, when compulsory conscription came in, to win colonial hearts and minds in the process. These are distinct from the ‘battlefield films’ that were seen in Japan at the same time. As Peter B. High notes, the ‘blood and soil rhetoric’ of Nazi Germany had begun to have a serious impact on the Japanese propaganda of the time (High 1995: 223). Battlefield features such as Five Scouts/Gonin no sekkōhei (1938), The Legend of Tank Commander Nishizumi/Nishizumi Senshachō Den (1940) and Earth and Soldiers/Tsruhi to Heitai (1939) served to present the realities of war to the Japanese audiences. A realistic vision of warfare would clearly not operate very successfully to encourage the Korean populace to volunteer for the Imperial Army and the volunteer films all maintain a common sense of romantic optimism with a key focus on the celebration of the colonial experience and the benefits it offers to the colonial citizen. The question of mobilization for the armed forces engages closely with the controversial and complex notions of the various approaches Korean citizens could take when confronted with the situation at hand. Options clearly ranged from active cooperation through to passive resistance and/or quiet acquiescence down to forced coercion and that rarity, active resistance. Examples of all of these approaches can be found across the Korean colonial spectrum, and

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all indicate that ‘structures of domination may be understood as expressions of negotiation’ (Stewart 2001: 48). In other words, domination (in this case colonial governmentality) is not a static and unchanging entity; rather, it alters according to ongoing development, needs and political manifestations of the place and space it is operating within. Duara’s ‘cultural nexus of power’ (1988) that he describes as operating in North east China offers insight into the Korean power structures that surrounded the question of troop mobilization. He comments that ‘consideration of status, prestige, honour and social responsibly, quite aside from the material profit they may have intertwined, were important motives for leadership with the nexus’ (Duara 1988: 5). Thus, we can see how the mechanisms of power operated on a multitude of levels inside the colonial Korean state. Financial inducements, cultural pressure and notions of honour could all be utilized to encourage the youth to join the Imperial Army. The average age of recruits here needs to be taken into consideration. Many, not all, would have been born and raised under the Japanese flag and educated via the colonial system. It is not such a huge leap to suppose that many held very complex, and not necessarily negative, views about the world they lived in and their relationship with Japan. Many of the recruitment films themselves were ideal examples of interregional cinematic cooperation. Several of the films were made as collaborative ventures between the Korean Motion Picture Production Corporation1 and various Japanese companies. Suicide Troops on the Watchtower and Vow of Love were both made with Toho; Portrait of Youth was a multi-unit collaboration between the KMPC Toho, Daiei and Shochiku. The films themselves have a multinational cast and crew and were filmed in various locations across China, Korea and Japan. As a well-documented case study of cooperative working practices, You and I made in 1941 had at its helm Hinatsu Eitarō/Heo Yeoung, a native Korean who had worked in the Japanese film industry for over nine years prior to making You and I. In their excellent autobiography of Hinatsu, Utsumi Akiko and Murai Yoshinori chart the complex processes that a Korean man needed to go through to finally take the director’s seat on the film. The film’s narrative content will be discussed later, but the pathway to cinematic release was far from straightforward. Hinatsu was an ideal image of the indoctrinated citizen. He was a passionate supporter of the Japanese Empire and was completely assimilated in to the Japanese way of life including marriage to a Japanese citizen. Hinatsu approached a series of companies about funding the film with no success. The main concern appears to be the film’s lack of box-office appeal but undeterred,

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Hinatsu secured support (although not funds) from the Korean governor general and the colonial army and eventually secured the means to make the film. He also managed to attract several well-known Japanese and Korean stars including Kosugi Isamu, Kawazu Kiyosaburō, Miyake Kuniko, Mum Ye-bong, Kim Sin-jae and Yamaguchi Yoshiko. A variety of studios gave technical support including Shochiku, Toho and Shinko Kinema. Officially, notable director Tasaka Tomotake was penned as the directorial advisor and Iijima Tadashi as script advisor.2 The film was the largest ever Korean-directed feature to be made in this period. Shot on location in Seoul it presents some impressive set pieces with the parade sequences involving hundreds of extras and vast areas of the city. The film was simultaneously released in Japan and Korea with Shochiku in charge of the Japan-based screenings and publicity. Backed, as it was, by the colonial government and the army, the film was vigorously promoted, with the governor general’s office financing its promotional materials and subsidizing its distribution costs (Yecies and Shim 2011: 123). The film was seen as so important to the official narratives of Japanese-Korean cooperation that all middle and high school students were instructed to see it and were offered free screenings to ensure they attended. The presence of notable film stars helped to attract audiences regardless of the reservations they had about the content and the film was widely praised in film circles for its politically correct content (although many made some remarks about the poor directing and lack of aesthetic quality). Given the official government backing, one carefully constructed review noted: We see cinema attempting to respond directly to specific propaganda needs … in such films artistic merit is a bonus. The central criterion for evaluating should focus on how effectively it conveys its message. (Huzumi 1941: 63)

The collaborative working patterns resulted in the fact that, regardless of content, the volunteer films were not just working to provide propagandistic rhetoric but were a developing part of the Korean and Japanese film industries, as co-productions and cross-national collaboration become a small but encouraged element of the wider film world of this time and space. Military recruitment films such as You and I, were a smaller, although more visible, part of a much wider campaign for Korean soldiers in the Japanese army which, on the face of it, was highly successful. The Korean Special Volunteer Soldier system was implemented in 1938 in direct response to the Second

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Sino-Japanese War. This system operated between 1938 and 1943 until it was changed to a compulsory military conscription system from 1944. Higuchi Yuichi has estimated that a total of some 213,723 Koreans served in the Japanese army and navy from 1938 to 1945. These included roughly 190,000 conscripts, 16,830 army volunteers, 3,893 student volunteers and 3,000 navy volunteers (quoted in Fujitani 2007: 36). The official figures for applicants ranged from 2,946 in 1938 to 144,743 in 1941 to a huge 303,294 in 1943. Given the Korean population in 1940 was estimated at 23,547,465, the figure of 303,294 is not a small percentage and once again illustrates that the nationalistic myth of the Korean population rejecting Japanese rule wholesale is not necessarily founded on day-to-day reality. Notions of coercion here are important to consider. As examined in Chapter 1, it is relatively recently that studies have begun to look beyond the ‘official narratives’ of Korean resistance and Japanese aggression and these figures would tend to support the fact that people’s engagement was based not so much on ideology but rather on a practical need to survive and hopefully succeed in the world that surrounded them. The large number of potential recruits aside, the pathway to allowing Korean citizens into the Japanese army had been a long and complex process and was deeply marked with racial overtones. Of those who applied as volunteers (not enforced conscription), only a limited number were accepted (406 in 1938, 3208 in 1941 and 6300 in 1943 entered the army (Hanil 1995: 79)). The reasons for rejection are hard to find. Brandon Palmer comments that unwilling applicants were rejected in favour of those who had demonstrated clear patriotism and a real willingness to join (Palmer 2013: 70–1). There is also the factor that the army offered financial incentives and, therefore, those from the poorer end of the economic spectrum would be more likely to apply. However, as a result of their socio-economic background, they potentially suffered from ill helath, thus leading to a higher rate of rejection. Rather obviously, the later soldiers who came from conscription tended to be far less ‘satisfactory’ than the volunteer brothers. Often lacking Japanese language skills and in poorer physical health than the previous Korean volunteer recruits (Utsumi 2005: 85), many performed badly. Many tried to desert and those caught would usually be executed as a warning to others with similar ideas. The rank and file life of a Japanese army soldier was very hard indeed, and for a Korean conscript, the existence was doubly difficult. Relations between Japanese and Koreans soldiers were certainly not as successful as the films present. Unlike in the colonial armies of Great Britain, France or Italy, the colonial troops were not established in their own

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separate divisions under the command of a few non-native officers (such as in the British Indian Army regiments or the French West and Central African regiments). Instead, the Korean troops were distributed inside the Japanese army alongside (and heavily outnumbered by) Japanese troops. The discourses of discrimination against Koreans were deeply embedded in the Japanese cultural and historical dialogues of the time and many Korean volunteers and conscripts were badly bullied, given the worst roles and had the highest death rates. Outside of the army, although the official rhetoric supported Korean recruitment, many Japanese citizens were very concerned about leaving their national defence in the hands of ‘peninsulars’ (hantōjin) (Palmer 2013: 48–50). How cinema could represent and engage with the complexities of the ‘volunteer’ system needs careful assessment. The content of the films themselves is an ideal case study of a key deep-seated issue at the heart of the colonial narratives being told in Korea. The wartime mobilization of Koreans who would actually fight and defend the Empire also implies that they were a population worthy of Japanese’s respect, defence and equality inside the state that they were being asked to defend. In short, their constitution was an Imperial subject, not an Imperial object. As Fujitani notes, ‘Before they could be asked to die in order to defend society, they had to be welcomed into the nation and enticed to enjoy the benefits of their inclusion’ (Fujitani 2007: 33). Film would be an ideal means with which to articulate and present this inclusion, although as will be examined, film would also be the means via which the idealized narratives could be undermined. The first of the films, Volunteer, made in 1938 (released 1940), was produced right at the beginning of the actual military recruitment programme (both enlisted and conscripted). The film follows the life of Chun-ho, a patriotic individual who dreams of joining the Japanese army. The film is set just before Koreans were allowed to enlist and the film follows Chun-ho as he laments on how he is unable to fulfil his patriotic duty and suffers from (fairly homoerotic) imaginations of rows of marching soldiers parading across the military parade ground. Baskett’s notion of an ‘Attractive Empire’ here pays dividends. The film is suffused with the desire that Chun-ho has for the military life and the Empire in general. Japan, and more specifically, the need to join Japan as a member of her armed forces functions as Chun-ho’s object of desire. His true love denied to him, Chun-ho refuses to make a firm commitment to his fiancée Bun-ok and struggles to financially support his mother and younger sister. Finally, his dreams are realized and he can enlist. Admiring of his ‘patriotic

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spirit’ his previously unsympathetic landlord agrees to help support his mother and sister, and Chun-ho leaves via a large bedecked troop train as the loving Bun-ok and his Japanese mentor wave him off. Volunteer is made in Korean, something that was in stark contrast to films which would later be made from 1943 onwards, and this overt propaganda piece offers a very positive spin on the collaboration and integration of Korea and Japan via military recruitment. For Chun-ho, the ability to join the military offers him the chance to demonstrate his intense love for the Empire and commitment to the aims and objectives of the colonial government. The film was seen as so important to the recruitment that the colonial Korean government distributed the film across Korea four months before conscription was due to begin (Yecies and Shim 2011: 121). With the average number of cinema-goers in 1940 reaching more than twenty million, the power and effectiveness of cinematic propaganda should not be overlooked. The narratives of the films are all relatively similar, although many of the later films take the recruits into the battlefield, while the earlier films tend to conclude in the barrack setting. Volunteer, You and I, Portrait of Youth, Look up at the blue sky and I Will Go!, all conclude with the recruits either entering the army or about to go off to war while Straits of Chosun, and Vow of Love all have actual fighting sequences. Portrait of Youth focuses on the difference between the traditional ambitions of a parent and the Imperial ‘desire’ of a youth that was willing to sacrifice itself on the altar of war. Nakayama’s Korean father wants him to become a doctor but Nakayama wishes to join the army to ‘fully’ become Japanese. As the film unfolds, Nakayama gets his wish and the film is littered with references to Japan and Korea as one nation and the emperor’s love and care for all his subjects regardless of race. The film’s focus on education is important since the teenage boys are all expected to prove their ability, courage and strength via a series of emotional and physical tests that the film throws at them. We see a student marching on a bloody foot (his shoe has worn through) since he believes that the ‘true’ Japanese spirit never gives up in the face of any challenge. The climax occurs when the teenagers are stranded in a mountainous region and have to be rescued by the local Japanese military unit. At the film’s conclusion, we see callow youth being transformed into the ideal material to enter the Japanese military irrespective of their national background. Although believed to be lost, the scant information available on the missing volunteer films state that Look up the blue sky focused on recruitment into the Japanese air force and I Will Go! offers a narrative juxtaposition between a brave volunteer

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and his cowardly friend who hides to escape recruitment. Dear Soldier will be examined in more detail later, but the basic plot follows a group of conscripts as they navigate their way through basic training until they are able to march proudly towards the Chinese front. You and I focuses on Korean youth Eisuke, who via his friendship with Japanese soldier Kenzo manages to not only join the army but also gain a Japanese bride in the process. Thus, he transitions successfully from his Korean heritage to a proud citizen of the Japanese Empire via the military experience. In Vow of Love, the express purpose of the film is to encourage the Korean youth to enter the kamikaze suicide corps. The film’s hero is a young man Eiryu, who decides that the way to find complete fulfilment is to die as a kamikaze hero. In his total assimilation of Japanese Imperial values, he is able to articulate and enact a masculine subjecthood that allows him to transcend ethnic boundaries and become a full participant in the Imperial narrative. Straits of Chosun follows the parallel paths of a young recruit and his wife as they both make the decision to mobilize for war – he in the army and she in the factory. While I will examine closer the female roles in all these films in the next chapter, what all these films have in common is that women are key in encouraging their men into the military and supporting their military desires. In You and I, both the Korean and Japanese female characters are fully supportive of the military and are delighted to be offered a tour of the army training barracks where they express admiration for the young soldiers and their bravery. This was a reflection of reality since many women were indeed offered the chance to visit the barracks in an attempt to inspire wives and mothers to support the military recruitment of their menfolk – although whether many women were happy to see their menfolk go off to war is debatable. In Dear Soldier, the film opens with a Korean idyll where women are happily celebrating and congratulating themselves on their son’s conscription. When one recruit returns home to visit his sick father, his mother admonishes him, ‘The honor of our people from this peninsula is on your shoulders –you should remember that. Try not to disgrace your father’s name.’ As the opening of Dear Soldier states, ‘The purpose of this film is to introduce the courage and the diligence of the soldier in the military.’ The need to establish a common focus of antagonism is quickly achieved in the opening statements regarding ‘millions of enemy soldiers’. What makes these films unusual when compared to the films of, for example, Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy or Francoist Spain is that the enemy always remains, for the most part, a blank spot. We occasionally see some Chinese insurgents such as in Suicide Troops on the Watchtower or Straits of Chosun, but for the most part, the

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focus of the films is on inspiring the Japanese and the Korean collectivity and working in cooperation rather than presenting a specific enemy. The barracks in which all the soldiers end up residing are a homely and, more importantly, modern space. As already discussed, modernity is a key narrative that Japan was telling to the colonial and Imperial territories, and what is clear is that the modern military lifestyle is established as an aspiration lifestyle that engages with the narratives of modernity that were being conveyed around the Imperial territories. In Dear Soldier, the repertoire in the programme at the troop’s passing-out celebration is very telling. We are shown Korean dances, Western classical music and a more popular and modern singer. In this way, the older Korean culture is placed at the site of a to-be-looked-at spectacle of nostalgia but one that cannot offer any meaningful help or aid in the modern world. In Vow of Love, Volunteer, Portrait of Youth and Children of the Sun, education and the school system play important roles in the development of the colonial citizen. The students are all shown in the educational environment that is presented as supporting and encouraging without prejudice the Korean students in the correct and modern ways of Empire. Thus, the military was presented as a logical conclusion to the modern schooling receptive students had received at the hand of the Imperial and colonial school systems – a chance to pay back all that Japan had given to Korea via the actions of loyal Korean soldiers. This notion of working together as a united element is heavily emphasized in the films. In Dear Soldier the opening makes very clear that the army is a family that loves and cares for its own and we are shown several scenes of the Japanese and Korean troops engaging together, troops helping to dress each other and show loving care and concern. The narrative is very much based on the key concept of naeseon ilche/naisen ittai. The ‘one body’ of the army will be constructed via the working cooperation of the Korean and Japanese soldiers under Japanese leadership. The family unit of the Imperial Army replaces the family unit of the home. In Vow of Love, the future kamikaze pilot forgoes marriage to focus on his brotherly love for his military comrades. In Volunteer, Bun-ok is left behind as Chun-ho happily departs for his military desiring object. In Straits of Chosun, although the hero acknowledges his son, his actions articulate that his first ‘family’ commitment is to the Imperial Army. In Portrait of Youth, the family units of the young men are marginalized and finally rejected as they seek to construct a new militarized masculinity which is forged by trial and endeavour according to Imperial standards. The ‘family’ narrative of the

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troops in Dear Soldier climaxes with Yasumoto Eichi’s speech delivered to a group of men and women from his village. When I first entered the army, our sergeant and commander told me that an army squad is like a home to its soldiers. According to my experience, it is. The commander is my father, major my mother, lieutenant my brother, our sergeant my sister. I even learned to wipe myself in the toilet from my sergeant (laughter from onlookers) I’m not joking. I had to learn how to protect myself from getting a contagious disease. If you follow the orders of your superior officers and do your best at the tasks given to you, military life is neither strict nor difficult … so don’t worry, and go and get yourself examined. Be proud to enlist. And parents, you can rest assured and send your precious sons to the Army. – Dear Soldier (my emphasis)

Highly sycophantic and insulting to the modern ears, we have no record of how it was received by the contemporary Korean audience. This narrative of inability to clean one’s own genitals leads to clear questions of the bio-political narratives of space, cleanliness and control. The Korean subject becomes infantilized in the need for the paternal Japanese army ‘parent’ to teach such basic skills aligned with dirt and disease via the clear implication that Korean hygiene habits are neither effective nor appropriate. The Imperial Army is presented therefore as offering a new, modern and ‘better’ family unit than the Korean parents and the community can provide. Returning to Duara’s construction of the nexus of power, we, therefore, see that prestige, familial honour, the drive for modernity, social responsibility and, specifically, a construction of an idealized masculinity are all brought to bear on the promotion of military conscription. The films are dismissive of the more traditional values that are clearly aligned with Korea rather than Japan. In order to become completely Japanese, the Korean citizens need to shed not only the outward appearance of Korean-ness (via their clothes and their language) but also ensure they reject Korean customs and traditions in favour of the modernity that Japan offers. It is this shedding and rejection of Korea that ironically becomes the key narratives that in fact undermines the desire and promotes the key concept of naeseon ilche/naisen ittai. Acceptance and acknowledgement into the Japanese army was actually asking for a serious shift in the previously held colonial narrative. The presentation of Korean masculinity is directly related to the question of Korean engagement in the Japanese armed forces. As explored in the Chapter 1, the Japanese approach

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to Asia was a highly radicalized project as much as it was an economic, military and cultural one. Michael Weiner engages with the Japanese approach to the conquest of Asia and the narrative construction of incorporation of other Asian nations as a ‘two-tier narrative of race’ where the Japanese were thus identified as sharing the same ‘racial’ origins as Chinese and Koreans. None the less, this European-derived narrative of ‘race’ did not preclude the existence of a further definition which identified ‘race’ with nation, and which distinguished imperial Japan, in equally deterministic terms, from its Asian neighbors … . The subdivision of human species … imposed a set of obligations on Japan as Toyo no Meishu (the leader of Asia). These include not only raising colonial people to a level commensurate with their ‘natural’ abilities but preserving the essential and superior quality of the Japanese within a carefully delineated hierarchy of ‘race’ (Weiner 2009: 14).

If you were asking people to fight and die for your country then this dual narrative was clearly going to a problematic one. As already stated previously, the superiority of the Japanese ‘race’ and nation and the racist policies and approaches that operated across the Empire, and especially in Korea, were designed to enhance and support notions of kominka rather than genuine notions of equality and sameness. As Anne McClintock explains, ‘Gender dynamics were, from the outset, fundamental to the securing and maintenance of the imperial enterprise’ (1995: 7). Japanese narratives of Imperial masculinity were steeped in the rhetoric of militarism; in short, ‘masculine ideologies that linked men to the state and made them sons of the Emperor’ (Low 2003: 84). Through this period there was a renaissance of the code of Bushidō – samurai cultural practices – and it was via the exultation of samurai figures and an ethos such as this that masculinity was increasingly closely tied to the Imperial system. In this way ‘imperial power was gendered masculine: proactive, rational, protective, and resolute’ (Aitkins 2010: 183) and most decidedly Japanese. As a series of writers examining questions of Empire and gender have noted, the feminization of the colonial male subject is something that can be widespread across colonial narratives. As Judith Butler argues, gender postulates a normative masculinity poised against a femininity construed as lack or deviation (Butler 1990). This normative masculinity asserts itself in a particular way inside a colonial discourse, which Said in his seminal work on Orientalism constructs Europe in a masculine role dominating a feminized Orient (Said 1978). This

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notion of the feminization of the ‘other’ (while clearly not in the dynamic of Europe and the Orient) in the Japanese colonial narratives takes on even more complex overtones. In their work on the racial discourse as related to the African experiences of colonialism and postcolonialism, Fanon and West have noted that the colonial narrative as articulated in various times and spaces represented the African men as hyper-masculine (Fanon 1967; West 1993). Thus, the African man occupies at once masculine and feminine subject positions. The same complex dynamics of duality between masculinity and femininity can be seen operating inside the narratives surrounding the colonial soldier body. Fujitani notes that with relation to Suicide Troops on the Watchtower the Korean soldiers’ visual and narrative construction is more aligned with the feminine rather than the masculine. At one point in the film, the Korean troops sing and dance for their Japanese colleagues and return to the communal table clad only in undershirts and rolled-up trousers. Thus, there is a linkage between the outward signs of military commitment (via uniform) and the embodiment of the lauded and desirable Imperial, and by extension, masculine, traits and behaviour. Fujitani comments, ‘It is only through their heroic deeds and their commitment to being loyal Japanese that they acquire the uniform – a multivalent sign of both masculinity and Japaneseness’ (2011: 343). This can also be seen even more overtly in the Volunteer. In the fantasy sequence that takes place halfway through in the film, Chun-ho sits dripping in sweat, imagining rows and rows of military-clad marching soldiers (with himself in the ranks) performing military manoeuvres across a parade ground (Figures 7, 8 and 9). Chun-ho cannot achieve a complete and satisfactory place in the masculine Imperial order unless he can don an army uniform and enter into the military narrative that is presented as vital to the male identity. He is symbolically (unable to join the military), as well as literally, impotent (he cannot marry Book-un and therefore cannot prove his masculinity in this fashion either). Hall’s ‘racialized regime of representation’ (Hall 1997: 249) therefore was also operating within the Imperial narratives of Japan. Symbolic castration of the Korean, other, is achieved via refusing entrance into the codes that defined the masculinity of the time. At one point we see him sadly looking on as Korean children play at ‘war’; like them, until he is allowed in the military, he can only ‘play’ at war and therefore remains in an infantilized and reduced state. In You and I, Eisuke initially meets his Japanese ‘brother’ Kenzo as he hands out good luck charms to Japanese soldiers arriving at Seoul station.

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Figures 7, 8 and 9  Chun-ho sits suffused with desire for the military life (Volunteer (1941)).

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Similar to the Volunteer, despite his desire to join the Imperial Army, Eisuke is barred under the pre-1940 regulations. Eisuke comments to Kenzo, ‘I am depending on you.’ Under the rules that forbid him to enter into the army, he, like Chun-ho, is left in the same position as the women waving off the troop train. They have to rely on true Japanese masculinity to protect them and are themselves unable to gain a position inside this masculine code until they are able to don the uniform and head off to the front. Fujitani notes in You and I how the changing of attire indicates a gendered positioning. At the station, Eisuke is wearing traditional Korean dress as he plays the role of woman and child rather than that of man. Once he joins the army, he appears in a full military dress and is able, via this new status, to gain further proof of his masculinity through Kenzo’s encouragement to marry his metropolitan Japanese sister Mitsue. This visual form of code switching would be seen again in Dear Soldier, Suicide Troops on the Watchtower and Volunteer and always serves to present the transition from an infantilized and feminized state into one of prime masculinity. In Straits of Chosun, the volunteer soldier Seiki parades with his fellow soldiers through the streets of Seoul to the admiration of all as the idealized vision of masculine power. In Dear Soldier, the alignment of the Korean troops with infants and children is made very clear throughout the film. The lead figure Eichi is not sent to the front with his peers at the film’s conclusion, instead he is asked to remain in the barrack setting and continue his work promoting the army and tending to the younger recruits. Ultimately, masculinity is denied to Eichi as he is left behind to operate as a ‘mother figure’ while his colleagues march off to war in a spectacle of masculine pride. He has been simultaneously feminized and infantilized and, unlike his compatriots, Eichi is not awarded the opportunity to move beyond this state. The requirement of instruction to care for one’s own bodily functions is an ideal means with which to inscribe the Korean body as a site of masculine lack. While the film acknowledges the need to accept Korean male bodies in the army, the narratives of equality are clearly based on the Imperial ability to grant (and to remove at whim) this new status; thus, the equality is based on very specific and, ultimately, unequal power relations. Kobena Mercer notes with relation to black men and women under colonial power that ‘in racial terms, black men and women alike were subordinated to the power of the white master in hierarchical social relations of slavery, and for black men, as objects of oppression, this also cancelled out their access to positions of power and prestige which in gender terms are regarded as the

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essence of masculinity in patriarchy. Shaped by this history, black masculinity is a highly contradictory formation of identity, as it is a subordinated masculinity’ (Mercer 1994: 142–3 emphasis in original). Korean masculinity inside Japan was subordinate in both the literal and the theoretical sense. This was achieved, primarily, by denying Korean men access to the central components of masculinity – that is, patriarchal power and authority – and by reducing Korean men, politically, legally, socially and often verbally, to the status of infants. Repression of language and the suppression and denigration of Korean customs along gendered lines resulted in a Korean masculinity that was unable to define itself in any positive light other than in relation to the Imperial Empire. The bodily and cultural separation that marked everyday colonizer/colonized relations can, however, as the military recruitment films state, in the embrace of the Imperial Military uniform and life achieve equality between Japanese and Korean men. However, Dear Soldier’s Eichi’s status inside the Empire is completely controlled by the Army, and if they choose to deny him the ability to prove himself in the masculine sphere, he is left unable to find another pathway. The recruitment films, therefore, reveal a contradictory process. Koreans were minoritized by the dominant colonial narratives of Japanese racial superiority, but in these films, via their positioning as the living symbol of unity between Japan and Korea, they, simultaneously, became the subject of a romanticized idealism. Their very being is seen as reflecting a possibility of ‘the Greater East Asian co-prosperity sphere’ and the justification and support of the Imperial rhetoric. Thus, they became idealized/equals and condemned/ inferior simultaneously. The construction of the Korean male body as a site of active warfare was therefore highly ambivalent. Bhabha locates this process of ambivalence as central to the processes of stereotyping within colonial discourse; he suggests ‘in a very preliminary way … the stereotype is a complex, ambivalent, contradictory mode of representation, as anxious as it is assertive’. Therefore, this ambivalence results in the Korean ‘other’ remaining both ‘fixed’ to serve the Imperial rhetoric of Japanese superiority, and, at the same time, being open to radical movement and change. Throughout the Volunteer, notions of the modern and Chun-ho’s engagement with it are raised. Chun-ho’s desire to fulfil the Imperial narratives of modern development and complete sublimation into the Empire is denied to him, and in the face of this initial denial, he is rendered unable to function as a husband (he will not marry Bun-ok), a son (he resists his mother’s desire for him to settle

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down) or a citizen (he cannot find a role for himself in the Imperial framework since he rejects the traditional and inherited role of farmer). This splintering between the realist and the Imperial narrative in one light could be seen as quite a damning criticism of the colonial process. Young men are left disenfranchised by the system that surrounds them and are unable to find a place for themselves in the wider world that they have been forced into. The Japanese propaganda of the time was seeking to present the positive benefits of allegiance and loyalty to the Empire (Kushner 2007: 9) and ‘grasping hearts and minds’ needed to present a satisfactory narrative to the colonial citizens. Far from a unified ‘Attractive Empire’, the film, therefore, presents quite clearly both the real and the symbolic distance between naichi (homeland) and gaichi (colonies). As Foucault notes in his writings on resistance, power relations are open to multiple engagements and deviations. ‘Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power’ (Foucault 1979: 95). This question of exteriority lies at the core of the colonial: Is there an outside to power? The very articulation of colonial power, therefore, becomes one and the same as the articulation of resistance to that specific power. In Volunteer, Chun-ho, as the film’s main contact zone between the colonial subject and the Imperial narratives, therefore, becomes the site where resistance and dominance are intertwined. For the audience, this quite ambivalent process, in fact, highlights the tensions between kominka and naisen ittai/naeseon ilche, as Chun-ho’s inability to join the army and the problems that stem from it deliberately raise the question of inequality in the system. For the volunteer, this potentially problematic situation is easily resolved when the edit banning recruitment is lifted and Chun-ho can finally join the Japanese army. However, the question of inequality has been raised and, while for the duration of the film it has been solved, in the wider world the Korean audience members would be more than aware that the inequalities presented are part and parcel of everyday reality. There are also some curious framing shots utilized throughout the film that leads to a sense of ambivalence. This can be clearly seen in Figure 10. The Japanese officer is significantly smaller than his Korean counterparts3 (and this is particularly clear when we see Chun-ho towering over him). This subtle juxtaposition does open up some curious oppositional readings with regard to the dominant narratives being told. Where the volunteer films as a genre are also interesting is the language aspect. The first films were made when the film units still had a bilingual

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Figure 10  The Japanese body is clearly smaller than the surrounding Korean civilians (Volunteer (1941)).

policy. This was later revoked so the later films are solely in Japanese – once again changing their nature and ideology. This places these films within the debate that I have already articulated in relation to mimicry and engagement. The act of mimicry that takes place in the volunteer films presents in very real terms the way in which the Korean subject is denied an authentic voice and cultural existence while masquerading as an idealized and equalized citizen. To this end, films such as Dear Soldier were heavily restricted in their subversive potential, but they did, via their very failure, supply the possibility of the creation of Althusser’s ‘the bad subject’ (1968: 115–24); in short, the subject ‘who sees through the interpellative function of ideology and begins to counteridentify with it’ (Msiska 2012: 78). Fanon, describing the complex ontological contradiction at the heart of the black male subject, therefore, sets out to demonstrate, as Françoise Vergès suggests, ‘that colonialism had configured colonised masculinity as feminized and emasculated, and concluded that men in the colony had to reconstruct their manhood and their freedom through a rejection of colonial images’ (Vergès 1996: 60–1). These films, therefore, function as powerfully elucidating texts since the films confront the everyday reality of equality that existed between Japanese and Korean citizens. The recruits are not Japanese, something the films endlessly reference, and yet are being asked to function, often without question, as Japanese bodies. Thus an

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‘undermining [of] the intended ideological and historical determination of his or her identity’ (Msiska 2012: 78) takes place, and in this moment we can see the ‘unveiling of the very real terms by which the colonial truth is constituted’ (Msiska 2012: 78).

Conclusion From the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937) to the end of the Pacific War the estimation is that between four and seven million Korean men and women had been mobilized throughout the Empire (Higuchi 1992: 120). Koreans would serve in all the territories Japan occupied, from China to the Pacific Islands; and on Japanese war memorials, if you look hard enough, it is possible to see Korean names occasionally interspersed between the Japanese ones. The treatment of these soldiers after the war would be highly lamentable. The Korean troops were separated from their Japanese comrades and repatriated back to Korea and were unable to receive war pensions or support as they were no longer Japanese nationals. Wages owed were left unpaid for many years, and compensation was only given to some former soldiers in the 1990s when the South Korean government began to seek them out. The sums were not substantial with a little more than two million yen (US$ 16,650) given to each soldier by the Japanese government for their service and sacrifice made for Japan. The treatment of those Koreans convicted of war crimes would be even more problematic. Of the serving Korean soldiers at the end of the war, 148 were convicted as B/C-class war criminals, and 23 of those convicted were hanged. The reasons for this high number are hard to explain but various reasons abound, the fact that the poor treatment of Korean soldiers in the army perhaps led to a loss of humanity in the soldiers themselves or as the lowest ranking soldiers the worst tasks, such as the mistreatment and murder of prisoners – a frequent cause of war criminal convictions – would be left to them. These men would serve their sentences in Japan, but unlike their fellow Japanese war criminals they received no government support on release; instead, they were shipped back to a nation that saw them as nothing more than traitors. The glorious rhetoric of collaboration, brotherhood and loyalty seen in the recruitment films would be long forgotten in the harsh light of defeat, and these soldiers would be left behind in the post-war reconstruction and reconfiguration of wartime and colonial memories.

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Notes 1 In 1942 all the production companies had been consolidated under one studio known as Chōsen Eiga Kabushikigaisha or Korea Motion Picture Production Corporation. 2 Both Tasaka and Iijima both quickly dissociated themselves from the film when its lack of box-office appeal became apparent. By all accounts, the Japanese crew was horrified at the basic facilities offered by the Korean studios, perhaps a clear indicator that Korean film lagged behind Japan in all aspects of film production in this period. 3 This may very well be based on fact. The ability to join the Korean army was based on a variety of things, including age and physique. Koreans had to be seventeen years old and over 160 centimeters tall, the average Japanese recruit however only had to be 155 centimetres tall (Utsumi 2005: 84). Simply put, the few Korean troops that were selected for volunteering were likely to be taller and broader than their Japanese counterparts – another factor that undermined the Japanese claims to masculine superiority.

5

‘Good Wife, Wise Mother’: Articulations of Womanhood

While the previous chapter explored Korean colonial masculinity, this chapter will examine how women were socially and culturally presented and (re)created in the Imperial filmic and cultural imagination. Women were as much a part of the Japanese Empire as their male counterparts. A historical and academic separation between what has been defined as ‘gender history’ and ‘Imperial history’ (Midgley 1998: 2) too has resulted in female sidelining. However, recent studies, focusing on how Imperial narratives were undoubtedly shaped and formed by questions of race, gender and class, have called this limited interplay into question. In this section, we need to avoid the pitfall that Jane Haggis refer to – of seeing women as operating between the two poles of patriarchal victims or plucky feminist heroines (Haggis 1990). We need to see women as part and parcel of the colonial and Imperial process. As Ann Stoler writes, there have been a number of studies in the recent past that have explored the specific interplay between state authority and gender. Via this approach we can see ‘state building and empire building as a familial generated social processes’ (Stoler and Cooper 1997: 23). In short, it is not only men who are responsible for the creation and maintenance of Imperial dynamics; women are also performers and active articulators of them. This chapter will serve two purposes. First, by charting the presentation of women in a series of films from across the Empire I will argue that narratives regarding women were perhaps some of the few discourses that were truly cross-cultural. Women’s positioning in the cinema of the Philippines and all the way to the cinema of Manchuria was remarkable for the comparative lack of diversity. As will be explored, women all too frequently operated as malleable objects to be utilized in the respective narratives of nationhood. However, this is alongside women and girls as the site of considerable anxiety and tension.

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Via the examination of films primarily from Korea and Manchuria (this decision is based on the number of surviving films rather than for any ideological reason), I will explore how women became complex and potentially disruptive figures in the Imperial narrative.

Objects of nationhood To date, the overall approach to women in the Japanese Empire has operated in alignment with some key narratives. The first is seeing the women as passive victims of both the military and the governmental forces that surrounded them. Reducing women to nothing more than history’s victims is clearly problematic. It negates the very active engagement of women in all aspects of a community, cultural and domestic life, and more importantly, it excuses behaviours and belief systems that were often very heartfelt and deeply adhered to. This process of passivity has been enhanced by the symbolic narrative construction of the nation. Women have been constituted as nurturing entities, symbolic bringers of peace and care; in short, women have been positioned as ‘other’ to or ‘outside’ the narrative of Empire. While there have been as various studies exploring the roles Japanese women played within the Empire,1 women outside the centre of the Empire have received less critical attention. A polarizing narrative of seeing them as either victims or rebels has for the most part been heavily adhered to. Bell hooks notes that women of a colonized nation are also doubly colonized, not only by Imperial forces but also by men of their own nation. This double oppression has often resulted in female silence both during and after the period of colonialism. The sexual slaves of the Japanese military were silent for many decades, not just due to fear of reprisals but often due to fear of rejection from their own communities (Soh 2008). As Choi comments these women have become the signs of ‘cultural and national defilement’ (1998: 13) as it equated to homo-national identity and they continue to be a politically controversial topic. The role that women have played in the construction of a nation via the cinematic field has been well documented in various studies vis-à-vis a wide range of national cinemas.2 Cinematically, women and girls across the Empire in this period were all too often the canvas via which nationhood could be outlined to support the Japanese Imperial vision. The presentations of South East Asian women in Japanese productions are the most obvious examples of this. They

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are often reduced to nothing more than eroticized fantasy figures in both the Japanese film and literature of the period. Where they are actually characters in their own right, their roles are still limited. In Tiger of Malaya/Marai no Tora (1943) the key female character is Yutaka’s young sister who is murdered by evil Chinese insurgents. The death of his sister is the impetus for Yutaka to become the titular tiger fighting ‘righteously’ against the British and the Chinese. The Japanese female is, therefore, a motivating victim and native women are left as nothing more than spectacle inside the film text. In one scene Yutaka visits a Malayan plantation and we see the women singing and dancing on the beach. The female body here is nothing more than pretty, exotic decoration to be enjoyed by the Japanese male agents, and by extension, the Imperial Japanese audience. Films made under Japanese Imperial rule as a result of co-productions with the local cinema units for the most part sideline the female experience. Fire on that Flag completely weaves around the male experience with the only real female role taken by a mother of one of the soldiers. She has limited speaking time on screen and operates only to show the male population how respectful the local women were to the Japanese troop – something the audience would know was a complete fallacy. Tatlong Maria may have revolved around the fates of three sisters but the film’s adherence to musical melodrama conventions results in stereotypical female figures. We have the evil sisters, the loyal virgin who transforms into a devoted and steadfast wife and the dying mother. The film oscillates between the machinations of two older sisters wanting to cheat their half-sister, Maria Fe, out of her inheritance. While they initially succeed, various reversals of fortune results in the entire family once again being united and living peacefully in the countryside at the film’s conclusion. As per Japanese ambitions, the film was designed to inspire a sense of Filipino nationalism and a rejection of American consumerism. In one scene in the film, we see the poverty-stricken Maria Fe prostrate at the feet of the statue of the Filipino hero Jose Rizal and gain inspiration for surviving by gazing on his features. Manila is shown as a den of inequity and it is only once, when they are back in their rural village, do the sisters achieve true happiness. The female characters are used to promote a very specific vision of nationhood and this results in them being reduced to nothing more than a stereotype. The film’s ending focusing on the happy face of the Maria Fe as she holds her baby son, and as the village brings in a harvest, is reminiscent of another Japanese propaganda feature – the German–Japanese co-production

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The Good Earth. As discussed in Chapter 3, the ending has Mitsuko farming in Manchuria as her baby son plays beside her. Their happy and contented faces at their rural farming life echoes in Tatlong Maria as the Imperial ambition for a productive (in both fertility and work ethic), but ultimately obedient and nonchallenging, female citizen is realized on screen. The limited remaining footage makes it hard to draw conclusions about women’s visual representations in Taiwanese cinema. However, one excerpt of an early ethnographic film gives some indication as we see a group of aboriginal women dancing in traditional dress. The female in this case is serving as the ideal representation of a pre-modern tribal Taiwan. This female representative mode directly supports the Japanese Imperial project via a creation of feminized (and backward) image of a passive Taiwanese nationhood. These women require the masculine gaze of a Japanese male ethnography to give meaning to their actions and, by extension, Taiwan needs Japan to give the nation a recognizable form and place in the modern world. Women were both the metaphorical site of nationhood and the literal means via which Japan hoped to convert and reform her territories. From the remaining newsreels from Japan, Korea and Manchuria, we can see women utilized as part of various campaigns devoted to education, hygiene, education and, later, the war effort. Women were instrumental in family organization and childrearing and thus were vital in the transmission of the cultural narratives that Imperial and colonial authorities wanted to be told. Inside a territory like Manchuria where the goal was not cultural assimilation, Japan needed to create a vision of nationhood that promoted their aims and objectives. One of the key players in this proposed national narrative was Yamaguchi Yoshiko. Born to Japanese parents in Manchuria and fluent in Chinese, she was the leading star of Man’ei during the 1930s and 1940s and is certainly one of the most widely discussed and debated stars of this period in global scholarship. For this reason I am not going to extensively examine her here, as discussions can be found elsewhere and are listed in the bibliography. Yamaguchi operated across cinematic boundaries, and her films were screened across Japan and all its colonies, travelling as far as the Philippines and Taiwan. She was a living symbol of the Empire’s desire for transnationalism and she was variously known as Li Xianglan or Li Hsiang-lan (China), Ri Kōran (the Japanese pronunciation of her Chinese name) and Yamaguchi Yoshiko.3 In Yamaguchi’s films the political narrative of Imperialism was vaguely disguised as collectivism and collaboration: in short, she was there to sway hearts and minds towards the

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Japanese Empire. Yamaguchi held great value in both economic and ideological terms and functioned as a symbol of ‘borderless fantasy’ in an idealized construction of an East Asian state. As Shelley Stephenson notes, she operated as a ‘colonizer passing for colonized,’ and as a result, ‘her border-crossing mobility and variable identity elicited a utopic Greater East Asia imaginary where national boundaries and the ethnic and linguistic markings were erased’ (2007: 242) Despite the nature of the films she starred in, Yamaguchi was tremendously popular with Chinese audiences. She was an acclaimed singer, with many of the songs from her films gaining commercial success and enduring popularity across East Asia – something that continued until her death in 2014. The number of films she starred in throughout this period (over 22 from 1938 to 1944) indicates her bankability as a star. She worked in Taiwan, Japan and Korea, but it is her work in Manchuria where she has garnered the most attention. China Nights has been a particular focus. Many studies have explored the dynamics between Keiran (Yamaguchi), a Chinese orphan, and Hase, a Japanese naval officer who ‘adopts’ her after a confrontation in the street. Hase ends up taking her back to the boarding house where he resides with various other Japanese residents, and despite her hatred for Japan (whose bombing of Shanghai killed her family), Keiran comes to ‘understand’ Japanese motivations and falls in love with Hase. A key scene shows Hase getting the young Keiran to bathe. As Yomota Inuhiko notes, the act of bathing itself is part of the biopolitical dialogues of cleanliness and colonialism (Yomota 2000). As Hase cleans and tends to Keiran, he makes her ready to become the ideal colonial mate. She moves from being a grubby Chinese orphan to an immaculately dressed modern Japanese wife, a not-too-subtle metaphor for Sino-Japanese relations. Yamaguchi, therefore, becomes the fantasy of a feminized and pliant China where Japanese masculinity could be successfully articulated. For me, what is more interesting are the interrelations between the ‘Chinese’ woman and her Japanese counterpart, a woman called Toshiko. (In this discussion I am referring to the pre-war version of the film and not the postwar edited version, which is far more widely available but excludes various scenes.) In the pre-war edit, the beginning of the film features Toshiko singing in a nightclub. The music here is important as she sings a very upbeat song that literally translates as ‘Peace in Asia’/Tôyô heiwa no uta. Japanese singer Hattori Tomiko played (1917–81) the role of Toshiko. Hattori was one of the leading singers and actresses of the period and her hit song Manchsū Masume or ‘Manchurian Girl’ was played all over the Japanese Empire. Manchsū Masume

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has her playing a young Chinese girl longing for her springtime lover, and she often played Chinese roles in her songs and performances. Throughout this period Hattori would, like Yamaguchi, come to personify a soft-core ‘spectacle of Chinese-ness’, as it was articulated to the Imperial market. Here in China Nights, although she is playing a Japanese character, she is specifically used to help articulate a vision of ‘Chinese’ womanhood that appealed to the Imperial imagination. Toshiko is key in the gradual conversion of Keiran via the modelling of the ideal image of Imperial womanhood. She is staying in Shanghai to tend her dead brother’s grave. We learn that he died at the hands of the Chinese; but unlike Yamaguchi’s character, Toshiko accepts her loss with quiet resignation as she explains, ‘My beloved brother was killed by the Chinese. But I don’t hate your people. I think they devoted their lives to this country in order to bring about true peace in both Japan and China. So I endure my individual sorrow’. The fact that Toshiko is in love with Hase is made clear, but she respectfully steps back to allow Hase’s relationship with Keiran to blossom. In the end, Toshiko’s brother is re-interred in the Yasakuni shrine so she departs from Manchuria for Japan. She leaves as the main female role model in the territory the ‘Chinese’ woman (Yamaguchi) who has fully embraced her Japanese Imperial future. This narrative would be repeated in Winter Jasmine/Yingchun Hua (1942), where a Japanese man falls in love with a Chinese woman (Yamaguchi) despite being engaged to one of his fellow countrywomen. In the end, the Japanese woman will leave for Japan, and is shown to be happy in this decision as she believes it has opened up the pathway for the man and his Chinese love to be together, thus aiding Japan and China to become united. The Japanese woman inside Manchuria, both internal and external to the film text,4 is therefore used as an example for teaching the local women about the true meaning and processes of womanhood. However, for both Japanese and Chinese women, there are broader questions raised, as the dismissal of the Japanese woman in favour of her ostensibly Chinese counterpart would appear to refute the key Imperial idea of Japan as superior. Knowledge about Yamaguchi’s real nationality was needed to settle this issue (and it is likely that Japanese audience did know she was Japanese). With this in mind, the film works in various ways depending on audience knowledge. Knowledge about Yamaguchi’s nationality negates the idea that Japanese audience (or indeed the Chinese audience) could read the film as a real example of Japanese–Chinese cinematic interrelation. They would be aware that this was a fantasy of Empire and therefore, like all fantasies, open to a sudden ending.

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Despite the audience’s love of Yamaguchi, the vision of a womanhood that was willingly subjecting herself to the dominance of Japan was universally rejected across Manchuria. Michael Baskett has commented that because of the struggle Man’ei had in balancing success and ideology, the messages that the goodwill films were giving ‘had an ambivalence that opened them up to a variety of possible readings’ (2005: 22). Yamaguchi’s role as both linguist translator and cultural communicator here visualizes some clear ruptures in the Imperial narratives being told. Through her ability to transcend linguistic and cultural barriers, Yamaguchi actually highlighted the clear differences between the Chinese and Japanese citizens. This opening up manages to shut down the closed circuit that the Imperial propaganda machine hoped to tell regarding unity. While the films preach unity, their very existence and composite elements served to alert the audience to the very fallacy at the heart of the Imperial narratives. Although the goodwill films were often insulting to China, they became more than the sum of their parts, and ultimately, failed as propaganda. Yiman Wang has noted the films’ affective power, not just as propaganda, but also as sites of entertainment, romance and escape. Focusing on their musical aspects, Wang observes that music ‘was so elevated that it was seen as an art form that would potentially outlive and transcend’ (2011: 147). The films therefore are not a site of repression, but rather a means by which the structures of Imperialism could be put on show, ultimately allowing for multiple possibilities of reinforcing, derailing or reconstituting political discourse (2011: 163). Throughout most films featuring Yamaguchi, the entire Japanese Imperial project is often based on the linguistic and cultural knowledge of an ostensibly Chinese woman rather than military might. In this way, Yamaguchi’s presence allows for the emergence of a debate in the specific context of its production and dissemination. The woman here becomes the symbol through which the Imperial discourse is played out and debated rather than presenting the closed circuit that the Imperial propaganda machine hoped to tell.

Education, gender and nationhood Women as the site of tension could be seen across the Empire in the very clear attempts made to closely monitor and control them. In Taiwan and Korea, the implementation of a girl’s education system was part of a desire to instill a vision

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of Japanese subjecthood into the young women who would become mothers to the future Imperial nation. The importance of women as wives and mothers had been a central tenant of Japanese cultural ideology since the Meiji period. A woman was considered to be ‘good wife, wise mother/Ryōsai kenbo’ and this dialogue became the main focus of women’s citizenship requirements and aims. The ‘good wife’ would manage prudently the household affairs and enhance and support the success of the adult (male) family members, while the ‘wise mother’ would devote herself to the growth of devoted and compliant citizens of Imperial Japan. The ethos of ‘wise mother, good wife’ was taught through the colonial school system and, like in Japan, emphasized the scientificization and professionalization of domestic work (Yoo 2008: 85–94). In Korea the terms would be reversed, so instead we have ‘wise mother, good wife/hyoonmo yangcho’, a small but important element that indicated that the Japanese narratives had been given a Korean slant that engaged previously with gender norms based on Confucian vision of womanly virtues and the ‘influence of American protestant missionary notion of domesticity’ (Choi 2009: 3). As Choi continues, Korean colonial women were therefore envisioned in a transcultural context that offered both repression and potential liberation (4). Existing gender dynamics and Western influences also played a key role in how women and girls were visualized in colonies such as Taiwan and Okinawa. In Taiwan traditional ideas about marriageability meant some parents were reluctant to allow their daughters ‘too much’ education (Hu 2011: 18) and higher educational facilities remained closed to most women in the face of ethnic and racial chauvinism. Educating women into the ethos of ‘good wife and wise mother’ became a culturally ambiguous idea since better educated women bore fewer children and were more active in community affairs. As a result, the aims and ambitions of women’s education became a much-debated topic (Chang 2009: 31). One key issue was that colonial education often replicated the ethnicity and class dynamics of the respective regions. The schooling systems in Taiwan and Korea saw the separation of Japanese and colonial subjects, and girls from poorer and rural areas were still unlikely to receive a formal education. Women were already doubly marginalized inside the Imperial dynamic both as gendered and as ethnic subjects, and when class entered the equation, many women were left highly disenfranchised. The vulnerable position of the female lower classes was directly referenced in the Korean film, Angels on the Street. Here female existence is one that is mired in a state of anxiety, deprivation and hardship.

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The two orphaned children are initially forced to sell flowers and trinkets, but later, attempts are made to force the girl into prostitution. The young girl here maintains a problematic positioning. What her future will hold challenges the film world. While the young street boys are integrated into a rural school, the girl’s fate is left far more uncertain as she cannot gain a new social position via ‘respectable’ work (she has no education and the school is for boys) and she is not a desirable candidate for a bride due to her background. Thus, the film raised issues related to both class and gender that spoke to broader concerns about the development and future of young women in colonial modernity. In terms of a transnational narrative, numerous Chinese films that circulated in the Imperial period such as Daybreak/Tianming (1933), The Goddess/Shennü (1934) and Street Angels/Malu tianshi (1937) would also narrate this concern into Imperial Chinese-speaking territories where they would find resonance with local fears about the vulnerability of girls. In reality, few women actually managed to complete their education and it remained the domain of a very small minority group. By the mid-1930s in Korea, only one-third of eligible women were educated and numbers were equally low in Taiwan. Education remained in the hands of those wealthy and socially mobile enough to access it, and a series of educational initiatives, for the most part, failed to adequately address the poor levels of education among Korean girls and women (Choi 2012: 48–9). This failure is actually referenced in several films of the period in quite a robust usual critique of the colonial moment. Military Train, Sweet Dreams, Angels on the Street and Tuition/u-eop-ryo (1940) all make a nod to the inequalities present between men and women in the educational system and raise the key issue that this situation was damaging not only to the individual female but also to the wider social fabric. In the previously discussed Volunteer, Chun-ho’s fiancée Boon-uk is highly concerned about her limited education. She states to Chun-ho, ‘You once told me women need more than primary education, I am useless.’ The failure of the educational reforms is made apparent on the screen as she is left without place or status when Chun-ho departs for the front. The film actually ends on Boon-uk’s image. She is silently standing on the track staring at the receding train clutching her Japanese flag. A slight smile on her face, ‘close-up and framed in detail’ (Cui 2003: 113), Boon-uk is rife with sociocultural meaning and yet little actual subjecthood. She has come to represent many things inside the text – Korean peasant culture via her rural allegiances, an object to be traded and an object

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to be lusted after. When we take this film as a cross-cultural dialogue between Imperial Japan and colonial Korea, Boon-uk becomes a beautiful and eroticized image of Korean passivity and her silence indicates a willingness to submit to the demands of Imperial Japan. She would appear to be the image of the repressed Korean woman that the Japanese colonial authorities were claiming they were seeking to remove and yet the Imperial code does not allow her any space for development or change. There is, of course, the sense that Boon-uk can take up a previous betrothal but then she is forever trapped in the rural servitude. While the male subaltern Chun-ho has, at least, been given some method of integration into the Imperial body via military service, gender hierarchies would not allow women the same opportunities.

The ambiguous nature of the modern girl Stoler observes that ‘matters of the intimate are critical sites for the consolidation of colonial power’ and the process of colonial education is key in this discourse. She notes that the ‘management of the domains provides a strong pulse of how relations of empire are exercised and that affairs of the intimate are strategic for empire-driven states’ (2006: 38). Colonial intimacy offers a measure of control inside the most personal aspects of people’s lives, but as will be examined in some cases, the shared spaces of colonial life would allow for a surprisingly wide range of gendered experiences to be visualized. As already discussed, this period was key in the spread of modernity across the colonial territories and this also heralded a new female vision. Women’s magazines of the 1920s found in Japan, Okinawa, Korea and Taiwan were influential and inscribed a new form on womanhood that did not necessarily agree with the traditional vision that many male politicians and opinion makers had in mind, and in this way women were themselves instrumental in their own construction.5 These magazines and women’s societies that were seen all around the urban Empire heralded the New Woman.6 For some women, the colonial moment would bring new opportunities for modern education, consumerism, travel and advancement while for others it would just be another layer to their already disenfranchised state.7 Therefore, the intertwined narratives of modernity, nationalism, gender, class, colonialism and sexuality come together on the screen to make the female the site of confusion, conflict, repression and potential disruption to the status quo.

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Cinema would reflect these tensions in a variety of ways; the modern girl and the new woman would alternatively be lauded and reviled. Korean cinema with her numerous films can easily show this pattern. While some films sought to promote traditional family structures, others sought to debate their appropriateness. In Nonjungo (1926) a girl is locked inside her house to prevent her from marrying the man she loves. The move towards ‘love matches’ as opposed to arranged marriages would be something that was debated exhaustively on the screen, with, for the most part, modern love winning over every time. Duplicitous wives would be a common theme in many melodramas of the 1920s and early 1930s. In Farewell (1927) Min Bum-Shik’s wife plots his murder to steal his money and in Soldier of Fortune/Pung-un-a (1926), a wife kills her husband as vengeance for his plan to divorce her and as part of her plan to run away with their Russian lodger. Girls in peril would also be a common element. Usually under threat of forced marriage or enforced prostitution, rescue, as in Incident of the 7th Bamboo Flute/Chilbeontong sosageon (1936) and Angels on the Street, or suicide, as in The Grief of Geumgan/Geumganghan (1931), remained the only two real options for socially acceptable ‘good women’. The lives of the modern girl would seem to hold all the exciting elements required of a film, including the potential for promiscuity, drink, consumerism and tragedy. A key film genre of this period, melodrama has been, and continues to be, the one that is traditionally aligned with questions of the female and is the dominant mode of female representation as we see in Korean (and Chinese and Japanese) cinema of this period. The role that melodrama plays in the Korean cinema of this period is linked to the influence of sinp’a (kr)/shinpa (j) theatrical style that Japan had exported to Korea throughout the 1920s that would interact with already existing narratives of femininity. Shinpa’s key narrative of women suffering through the strict and unbending structures of class and social prejudice would be seen across the films from this period and were clearly informed by, but also contributed to, the role and position of contemporary women. These tear-jerkers were particularly focused on gender as a mode of discourse, and as McHugh and Abelmann write, melodrama is key in its ‘use of gender for its variable articulations of political and cultural forces within a particular national imaginary in a distinct historical moment’ (2000: 3). The 1936 film Sweet Dreams operates as a good marker of the complex melodramatic narratives surrounding the modern female experience. Sweet Dreams is perhaps the most damning of the perceived materialistic desires of the modern woman. A housewife’s affair with a silver-tongued Lothario begins

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in the department store as she demands more and more expensive merchandise to be brought before her. She will later learn that her consumerist romance is built on lies and deceit as her lover is nothing more than a laundry man with a sideline in minor criminal activity. Horrified at his lack of wealth she turns him into the police without even a second thought and proceeds to focus on her new love, a visiting dancer. What Sweet Dreams creates for the audience is a visualization of a female desiring subject who has not only sexual but also subjective desires. I am using the term desire here to reference a vision of yearning, longing or want, and not only in the erotic sense. While her initial move into adultery is based on her ambition for a ‘fun materialism’ that her husband denies her, her desire for the dancer is based on something quite different. She admires his discipline, his purpose in life, his sculpted muscles, his artistic rigour and skill and his physical prowess – therefore the film raises the taboo subject of female sexual desire. This is the female subject knowing her ‘own’ desires as distinct from those of others. The film is here helping to reproduce the female spectator as a consumer (Hollows 2000: 53) and Sweet Dreams allows the female audience to engage with a remarkable series of consumer delights and sexual as well as non-sexual adventures. It is clear that the housewife is being held up as the marker of deviant femininity but, nevertheless, she is echoing many of the materialistic and pleasure-seeking desires of her audience. We see the woman fluctuate from visual image to a modern consumer subject. In Sweet Dreams she is never static in meaning. We see the world through the lenses of the female gaze: desiring, passionate and, unlike the good wife, wise mother, this female gaze is both selfish and wanting. While the film offered a space of female subjective desire, it was also keen to engage with cultural trends related to moral panics involving women and modernity. Walter Mignolo articulated colonialism as the ‘darker side of modernity’ (2011) and via Sweet Dreams, the tropes of modernity via the car, the promiscuous woman and the drive for capital gains are rendered abject. For Kristeva, the abject, ‘the traitor, the liar, the criminal, the rapist, the killer’ (1982: 4) remains mired by ambivalence. Neither subject nor object, it is neither external nor internal to the social field and, as a result, it undermines and destabilizes the established order. In Sweet Dreams the promiscuous mother is the embodiment of a liar, a potential killer and the site of selfish excess. Her very existence calls into debate the positive rhetoric of colonial modernity being promoted across the colony and is a process of undermining the gendered narratives being told.

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As explored previously, the film’s use of sound was a new development in Korean cinema, but the film also has another symbolic focus on modernity – the motor car. The film itself operates as a warning about the perils of modern living via the infomercial section where the young daughter Jeong-hee is being taught in school about the importance of road safety. It is Ae-soon’s lack of knowledge about this modern peril that results in her speeding taxi hitting her daughter. Although Ae-soon is in one respect a very modern woman, the film is clear that her lack of education about the modern world is, in the end, devastating. Her placement in this very public sphere raises a question about the women as an urban flaneur. She moves through the urban space with a confident and unembarrassed desire to experience the new, and yet she is seen as lacking the necessary skills to actually master this territory. Thus the film confirms that, although the woman may desire the urban space, ultimately the series of poor decisions Ae-soon makes indicate that she, and by extension any women deviating from traditional gender roles, does not actually belong to it. In this way, the ending of Sweet Dreams is open to debate. She dies by her own hand at the bedside of her injured daughter. Given the film had spent a fair amount of the diegesis exploring how the daughter desperately needed and missed her mother, the return of the mother to the child only for her to commit suicide beside her sits uncomfortably even inside the space of melodrama. The tragic need to purify the family unit via the death of the mother clearly undermines the role that woman could play in modernity. She sacrifices her desire for the dancer for her love for her daughter, but ultimately the film cannot forgive her enough to allow her to survive. The desire for the woman to remain static in a traditionally provided set of female values is the promoted narrative, while simultaneously, the film undermines itself by then offering up a vision of consumerist delight and feminine desire. The pleasure of the film can be found in the very behaviour that we are supposed to be rooting against. For women, therefore, the promise of the modern was littered with conflict and tension. The colonial female subject was, therefore, alienated and stymied by the simultaneous desire for her to be modern and non-modern. The tension between modern and non-modern was at the heart of many female representations. Already examined in the chapter on landscape, Fisherman’s Fire examines the life of a young woman In-soon, who is thrown into dire poverty when her father dies. As explored, the film’s landscape is both a representative of the benefits Japan has brought to a pre-modern Korea and a tentative articulation of a Korean national sense of home that provides safety and

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succour that the Imperial urban centre is unable to offer. The role of pre-modern home versus urban modernity raises some especially gendered issues. Cinema in this way articulated ‘the critical role of gendered metaphors in constructing “the colonial subaltern”’ (Shohat 2006: 18). The film references a topic that the Empire struggled with. The official role of women was to be in the home, and yet, economic and commercial needs demanded that women and girls entered the workforce to fuel the economic demands Japan had on her colonies. Women could only be mobilized inside the structures of the gendered ideology that the state has established over the previous decades. Women had been told that the only acceptable future was in the domestic setting, and then, only those women who have been through the official Japanese education system (kokumin gakkō) were deemed appropriate. As Elyssa Faison comments, ‘In contrast, Korean women from poor families with little education (and usually even less Japanese acculturation) found themselves outside the scope of any prevailing definitions of “womanhood” in both Korean and Japanese societies’ (2009: 29). How to ensure that the good female goals of wise mother, good wife were maintained at the same time as calling for Korean women to mobilize themselves outside the home in service of the Empire? Fisherman’s Fire presents the dilemma where we are told ‘a girl doesn’t need to make money – who is going to hire you anyway?’ while simultaneously we are shown a narrative where she will be sold as a bride unless she can support herself. This summary points to the clear issue at the heart of the gender narratives. Working for the home was one thing, but seeking economic independence was a step too far and undermined commonly held assumptions regarding the female place in society. In-soon becomes a warning to all young women seeking adventure and the city life, as she gradually descends into sex work, depression and, eventually, a suicide attempt. Her return home is a metaphorical cleansing of the shamed women. The natural order is restored as In-soon has learnt to be grateful for her rural life. In-soon now perceives the negatives of modern life and it is only by accepting a return to a pre-modern state that she can be truly happy. The film, therefore, offers resistance to the notion of ‘modernity as progress’ (Hillenbrand 2007: 6). The colonial modern moment in the rise and fall of In-soon is seen as highly negative. This critique can be found in the film’s aesthetics. At an earlier point in the film, In-soon is tricked into taking a walk on the beach with Cheol-soo. While she is on the beach, Chun-seok spies her from the boat in the sea. Looking through the binoculars, he watches her sitting with Cheol-soo. The usage of binoculars

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here serves to engage questions of the female cinematic image. We see In-soon reduced to an image inside an image, unable to control her own vulnerable position. Camera angles are also key in reading this scene. The conversation she is having with Cheol-soo is shot from the front, the back and from above. None of the angles match up so time and space are disrupted as it becomes hard to chart whether we are seeing one conversation or multiple conversations over a time period (see Figures 11, 12 and 13). The camera also breaks the 180-degree rule on two occasions leading to the whole sequence becoming a series of images and dialogue that refute a logical pattern. The binoculars shots, that are supposed to be the vision of the lead male, are disrupted and disjointed, something that challenges the dominant visual reading laid down by classical Hollywood structures. In short, we are no longer certain about what we are seeing. For Kapan, writing on Hollywood melodrama, the resisting film text of the genre ‘deliberately foregrounds the public/male – domestic/female split, making it central to their narrative strategies – a way to make a social comment as against the mere acceptance of such a split in the complicit text’ (Kaplan 1992: 131). The disruption of the male gaze presents a crisis in the colonial subjectivity but also, with relation to gender, ruptures the seamlessness of the established male gaze. This is not so much an allowance of a female subjectivity to be entered into as the disruption calls into question the dominant visual markers that surround the female. Just as the editing highlights a rupture in the subjectivity of the male colonial subject, we have the object of his gaze move into the bakhtinan realm of the process of gazing. This intercut opens up the potential of seeing rather than blocking the dominant vision; in short, making the text ‘simultaneously coherent and manifold, subjective and discursive’ (Fuchs 1992: 39). The sudden dislocating cuts that the film brings us- between woman, sea, binoculars, gazer and gazee – all debate the process of representation of the colonial female subject that the film fails to answer. A film that is unusual for the later colonial period and which offers a wide range of female figures in central roles is Spring in the Korean Peninsula (henceforth Spring). We not only have women in the film but also have references to that key cultural Korean figure, Chunhyang. The whole film is based on the issues involved in filming a version of this classic tale that had already been rendered cinematically in 1923 by a Korean film company. Spring’s first image is the beautiful legendary figure of Chunhyang. We see her in soft focus as she plays music behind a thin gauze curtain. The female body from the film’s outset

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Figures 11, 12 and 13  The images we see disrupt a classical reading of the scene (Fisherman’s Fire (1939)).

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is set up as the site for the cameras gaze and for the vicarious male desire, but the women of Spring narratively and visually seek to refute this reading. This traditional image is revealed to be taking place in the heart of colonial Seoul as a film crew attempt to bring the story to the cinematic screen. Chunhyang is obedient, loyal, talented and the pinnacle of traditional womanhood but Spring shows us a positive vision of modern womanhood as we follow Jun-hee, a young, educated woman who wishes to enter into the film industry. She is educated, having graduated from a school in Seoul, and is nineteen years old. This interplay between education, apparent youth and her clear beauty makes her the centre of affection of multiple men. Her hobbies are naturally music and movies, as befits any modern young woman. She is passed to the bespectacled assistant Kyung-sook, who becomes her friend, roommate and mentor in the complex world of the entertainment industry. Kyung-sook is a curious figure and the image of the traditional ‘fat’ friend that will come to be such a key element in American cinema of girlhood – in short, a stooge to the beauty and grace of the lead women. Although she is modern, Kyung-sook is not threatening. She demonstrates her education and culture via her love of Western art and music, and as the two women talk, a short piano concerto plays on the radio that, we learn, Kyung-sook has bought on a payment plan. Her access to modern credit and modern technology moves her away from traditional ideas of girls residing in the family home until marriage. However, she has been successfully desexualized, and her lack of sexuality means that her working status does not seem to offer any form of conflicting ideals on the notion of Korean chaste womanhood. Kyung-sook is not visualized as the object of anyone’s affections and, in this, she is placed in direct contrast to the other two women. Both Anna and Jung-hee are seen as desirable but in very different ways. As a group of artists sit around discussing Jung-hee, we learn that they admire her talent and her looks and, more importantly, they declare that she is ‘not a bimbo’ and place her in direct comparison to Anna. Anna, the boss’s mistress, who has her eye on Young-il, is the very image of the modern girl. She is obsessed with money, fun, drinks, dance and men. She openly claims that her lover Mr. Han is not affectionate to her and proclaims that she has switched her love to Young-il. The forward and brazen nature of Anna’s seduction of the lead male is concurrent to the boss Mr. Han’s pursuit of Jung-hee. The production of Chunhyang is put into jeopardy when Anna suddenly quits after breaking up with Mr Han. Fortuitously, her removal allows the talented Jung-hee a chance to show case her acting skills.

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To keep the production going Young-il steals money, and when he is prosecuted for theft, Jung-hee goes to Mr Han to borrow the money. Mr Han tells her that he will only lend her the money if she agrees to marry him. The usual melodramatic pathway would be for the sacrificial women to accept his offer. However, Spring does not take this approach. Instead, and counter to her usual lack of direct vision and downwards facing gaze, Jung-hee stands up and directly faces Han (and by extension the audience) and clearly states that she will not be used in such a fashion. This sudden change into a vision of empowered womanhood operates in two ways. The first is that we see how the modern woman refuses to conform to a mode of self-sacrifice that the melodrama usually calls for her to perform. Secondly, the film reverses the usual narrative of male rescue. Young-il will be saved by the women in his life. In an action that one could argue finds its roots in the early westerns (that were doing the rounds in Seoul cinemas throughout the 1930s), Anna transforms into the ‘hooker with the heart of gold’ role and manages to ensure Young-il’s release before relinquishing him romantically to Jung-hee. Together Young-il and Jung-hee depart for Japan to learn about the modern film industry. Spring engages a more complex and nuanced vision of womanhood. Both women are simultaneously modern and traditional. While Anna is clearly seen as the less desirable due to her past and her obsession with money, Jung-hee is not simply a tradition old-style girl. She has ambition and a deep sense of her own worth and individual subjectivity, something the camera and plot are willing to support. Both women are seen as acting as traditional female carers to the sickly Young-il, yet both are desirous for something more than a husband to sustain them. Both figures, even the promiscuous and mercenary Anna, are revealed to be more complicated and multilayered than simple stereotypes.

Military labour and gender At the latter end of the war, the real need for mobilizing everyone became vital, and in 1944, Japan finally turned towards women. The Girls Service Voluntary Labor Act (Joshi Kinrō Teishin Kinrō Rei) was implemented in August 1944. This simultaneously went into effect in Korea and Japan and required the compulsory mobilization of all girls over the age of fourteen whose labour was not directly needed for the maintenance of the family livelihood.8 In Korean newsreel reports such as Chosun, Our Rear Base and In the rear in Chosun, the main focus is on

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women not only supporting the departing troops but mobilizing their labour to produce items they require to be comfortable and to support the troops in their military life. While Taiwan did not come under the edict, newsreels from the period show women working for the Empire in various forms of organized, and gendered labour during this period. The state needed to produce a female productive body. The body of the female would need, like all other aspects of society, to be subsumed into the military model. As written on in a variety of contexts the changing state of social relations produced by Imperial military hierarchies did not always go the way that was expected. For example, in a time where masculinity was clearly defined, Carolyn Steedman (1988) and Prem Chowdhry (2000) focus on how British soldiers in India actually underwent a process of feminization via highly controlled military domestic lives that were based around the traditional female activities of cooking, cleaning and sewing. In Japan, aggressive hypermasculinity was undermined since, as Tsurumi notes, the men were actually ‘reduced to childhood roles’ though the absence of privacy, the creation of anxiety and humiliation and the use of arbitrary violence against them (Tsurumi 1970). This process was ‘designed to create obedient, submissive men with a complete submission to the ideology of death’ (Tsurumi 1970: 124–5). Liddle and Nakajima (2000) argue that a similar but contradictory process was taking place with women. Alongside a new extreme form of femininity that was based on almost continual reproduction, the war effort moved women from the home into the workplace and ruptured the traditional ideas on the interplay between womanhood and the military. Straits of Chosun is the ideal example of the role women in colonial Korea were due to take and yet, at the same time, it undermines and criticizes this very narrative. The film, while promoting male military involvement was also promoting a vision of female wartime service. The main female character Kinshuko may be low in class status but in her hard work, devotion and sacrificial approach to not only family but to the Empire at large she ensures she becomes an idealized symbol of Korean womanhood. Elizabeth Freeman’s vision of chrononormativity (2010) is here helpful to analyse the crosscutting images we see in Straits of Chosun. For Freeman, we see ‘the use of time to organize individual human bodies toward maximum productivity’ (3). In Straits of Chosun, the editing between the factory and the field of battle is made clear. The section moves with the rapid pace determined by the repetitive sounds of the machines and interspersed with gunfire. The passing of time is indicated, not only by Seiki’s movement across the war zone, but by Kinshuko’s

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rapid production of war materials in the factory. Both male and female are presented as the ideal site of Imperial production but, rather than continuing to be productive bodies, we see both ultimately fail to perform. He is shot and she collapses close to death due to exhaustion. Manthia Diawara articulates the power of the spectator in that ‘every narration places the spectator in a position of agency; and race, class, and sexual relations influence the way in which this subjecthood is filled by the spectator’ (1996: 293). For Diawara and bell hooks writing after him, an important element of this would be the rupture, the moment when the spectator ‘resists complete identification with the film’s discourse’ (1991:65). In his work on subjectivity in colonial Korean cinema, Aaron Gerow questions the role that camera angles play in the representation of a colonial subjecthood. With Straits of Chosun, he notes that in one scene we see Seiki lying on the ground staring up to the sky that is shown to us from his point of view. This then cuts to an image of Kinshuko and then a cut to her recollection of Seiki and her relationship. The film never returns to Seiki’s point of view, and for Gerow, this change means that Seiki’s ‘subjective vision is left in limbo, or is effectively hijacked by another in a gendered reversal, but not without undermining the status of subjective moments by betraying audience expectations’ (2015: 37). The ending also references such a rupture. They are unable to fulfil the Imperial demands that are being placed upon them. The film is heavily critical of both Japan and Korea for their behaviour. Seiki’s family are shown as arrogant and misguided, but Japan is shown as bringing the young couple close to death for a victory that was clearly unobtainable.

Conclusion As this chapter has shown, women were often utilized cinematically to tell narratives of nationhood that all too often reduced women to symbols inside tales in which they had little or no agency. This narrative was very prevalent in the one final story available to women in the latter stages of the war. Dying for the Empire would allow women, like their menfolk, to reclaim a specific space for themselves inside the Imperial narrative. In Taiwan, Sayon from Sayon’s Bell achieves Imperial recognition via her death in the raging rivers. In Song of White Orchid Yamaguchi’s character dies at the side of her Japanese lover at the hands of Chinese insurgents. In Suicide Troops on the Watchtower, although suicide is averted, the women prepare to kill themselves and their children.

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While death was about as close-ended as a narrative can get, all the products of this period did not share this limited vision of women. As discussed, women were marked by ambivalence throughout this period’s cinema. It is ambivalence that renders the cinematic female to be the site of potential disruption to Imperial narratives. From the multilingual Yamaguchi to the Korean female military labourer, narratives of gender were filled with idiosyncrasies that highlighted the very artifice of the Imperial structures they were hoping to support. Women as cross-cultural agents of ambivalence are of course not the same as presenting the audience with empowering female role models, and alas, representations of gender in the Imperial period would not radically improve in the post-war period. While in Japan the work of post-war directors such as Naruse Mikio and Kinoshita Keisuke would attempt to offer an examination of the hardship women suffered in the Imperial and post-war period, we rarely see women as part of the colonial and Imperial experience. Women’s roles would continue to be limited and underdeveloped in many products that engage with the Imperial period. Take 2009 Lost Memories (2002) for instance, the female characters are either the main impetus for the Korean man to join the resistance or the reason for the Japanese man to defend Japanese Imperialism. The women themselves are once again left as one-dimensional symbols in the face of male nation-building.

Notes 1 As Noriko J. Horiguchi notes, these various narratives have obscured the role of ‘Japanese women as active and sometimes aggressive participants in the formation of Empire’ (2012: viii). Feminism is not always ‘other’ to Imperialism and well-known Japanese feminists (in the contemporary reading of the word), such as Hiratsuka Raichō, Ichikawa Fusae and Takamure Itsue, from the period made consistent and active commitments to Imperialism and discourses of Empire (Suzuki 1986). Ueno Chizuka (2004) sees the actions of women as always constrained within social and cultural boundaries and expectations, and for her, women’s involvement in the Empire must be examined via the standing and positioning of women in that specific period. Therefore, the life and times of the women are vital to the comprehensive understanding of their engagement with the Imperial moment. 2 In terms of East Asian cinema, see Cui 2003, Rey 1995, Wang 2011, Abelmann 2003, and Russsell 2008.

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3 Her Chinese was so fluent that after the war she would be tried as a collaborator until her Japanese identity could be clearly proven, although whether Chinese audiences really did believe she was Chinese remains under debate (Wang 2011: 149). She would later work in the United States as Shirley Yamaguchi, but after a few films returned to Asia having failed to make a big impact on the US market. 4 If, as Yamaguchi herself indicates in her memoirs, Chinese audiences were aware of her nationality, then they would never be in any doubt that she represented Japanese ideas about China. 5 This can be seen in the interplay between US and Japanese home economic structures and ethos. Here, the 1920s experience of women educators fundamentally changed their relationship with the international sphere. Expanding their influence allowed them to claim that everyday life was a central component of national policy and that the international sphere was an ordinary component in everyday experience (Schneider 2003: 101). Inoue Hideko was one woman who made her fame in Japan as the doyenne of household management, She travelled widely outside Japan in the 1930s and finally settled in Manchuria in 1939 and devoted herself to women’s education. 6 Most of these took place in the cities and took far longer to reach the women in the rural environment, who remained in a static position for much longer. 7 In the Korean context, we can see this reflected in the opening (and then closure after only four issues) of the women’s journal Sinyoja/New Woman. The four editors of Sinjoya, educated, cultured and articulate, were a personification of the New Woman but, by extension, illustrated the impossibility of achieving this status for the average woman. Sinjoya’s closure also references the serious concerns that both local and colonial social leaders had about the power and influence of a potentially disruptive female narrative. 8 There is evidence that some girls, in an effort to avoid the draft, would end up volunteering for what they would initially consider more lucrative jobs in other areas and would end up working in Army brothels. It is estimated that over 20,000–30,000 Korean women were mobilized for the military comfort women stations in this form of highly gendered-specific labour. While films across Asia after 1945 would make reference (whether oblique or direct) to both the enforced sexual slaves and the military prostitutes, they were not mentioned in the film of the period, and so will not be discussed here.

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Part Two

Contemporary Manifestations and the Legacy of Empire

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Introduction to Part Two

The war ended in 1945 and across East Asia nations began the process of taking stock of the events of the last fifty years and debating what their future would hold. This part of the book will explore how the Imperial period has been remembered across the East Asian cinema scape. The subsequent chapters will chart the various approaches that Japan and her former territories have taken with regard to remembering the Imperial and colonial period and how these memories have interacted with the respective political and cultural changes that have taken place in the nations over the last seven decades. Outside of cinema, the legacy of the Japanese Empire has been seen in a variety of studies from schooling (Shin and Sneiders (2011), Vickers and Jones (2005)), through to the 2002 World Cup (Horne and Manzenreiter 2002). With regard to cinema, there have been several studies of note in the last few years. Yoo’s Cinema at the Crossroads makes a serious attempt to debate East Asian postcolonial relations via a psychoanalytic methodology. Yoo has articulated the East Asian colonial as based on a sense of masculine lack. Her ‘moribund masculinity’, a ‘masculine subjectivity that refuses to fulfil the economic and ideological demands made on the male body by global capitalism and the nation-state and remains outside the symbolic order that constructs the masculine national body’ (2012) results in a cinematic visualization of a fractured and problematic subjectivity in the post-Imperial moment. While a Western-inspired framework has been used in Yoo’s work to analyse contemporary Asian cinema, other studies have taken a more culturally specific mode of analysis. Berry and Sawada’s Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia (2016) and Tam, Tsu and Wilsons’s Chinese and Japanese Films of the Second World War (2014) examine multiple cinematic products as part of a post-war, post-Imperial and post-Cold War East Asian dynamic. It is worth debating here the terms postcolonial and post-Imperial. Throughout the first section of this book, the colonial and Imperial narratives were discussed, and while slippages and fractures can be found through the films and cultural materials from this period, overall the placement of Empire at the

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heart of these narratives is paramount to understanding of their very existence. For the West, the rise of postcolonial studies has been, for the most part, focused on the ex-colonies and territories of the great European Empires: France, Britain and Italy. Several studies debating what is, and what could be, a postcolonial moment has, for the most part, ignored the presence of the Japanese Empire much to the detriment of the debate. East Asia has been made even more complex by other temporo-spatial grand narratives: post-Tiananmen China, post-Olympic China, global capitalism, the end of the Cold War, the rise of the Asian Tigers and various economic booms and busts. For many nations, the legacy of Japan’s Empire would be overshadowed by new traumas that would quickly appear on the political and cultural horizons post-1945. Korea would descend into the Korean War and subsequent partitioning. South Korea would spend years under a military dictatorship while North Korea became one of the most isolated states in the world. The PRC would move from the bloodshed of the communist revolution to the socialist modernity of Deng Xiaoping to its current role as a potential global superpower. Taiwan would suffer from the repression of the Kuomintang and the new hazard of the politics of the PRC. The very term Asia itself is, of course, open to debate and is here used by force of habit rather than any specific and legitimate structure. The roots of the term Asia is based on an Imperialist construction as something that was and is ‘other’ to the West. Orientalism, therefore, is a common thread and a defining discourse when it comes to the very definitions that we work with. A singular definition of postcolonial likewise cannot be found. In the historical sense, the postcolonial was born from the collapse of the European empires and, arguably, the subsequent dismantling of the Soviet Union (although of course, the interlinked idea of post-socialism is more appropriate in relation to this). Its genesis was in the work of those writers such as Franz Fanon and Edward Said, who themselves struggled and held deep reservations about the term. For Said, his critique of the Western academic discipline of orientalism as a method of producing a specific image of the ‘other’ was a process that ultimately served the promotion of an Imperial ideology. While many of us have sat through countless conference papers that misuse the term orientalism with alarming alacrity, what is clear is that Said’s work provided a vital and firm basis for the beginning of the debate. What is perhaps more relevant to this study are the recent debates that have seen the postcolonial move beyond the boundaries of East/West into a new

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frame of reference. For too long Asia has been used to constitute and consolidate a globalized view of the world that interpellates the world into a binary subject, a positioning that continues to orientalize the non-West. Asia has too frequently been defined as ‘what the west is not’. While the term ‘white postcoloniality’ has been applied to Irish writers such as James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield, seeing the debate move beyond a Western-centric focus has been relatively limited. Kuan-Hsing Chen comments ‘If modern colonialism has been shaped by the West, then the postcolonial enterprise is still operating within the limits of colonial history and has not yet gone beyond a parasitic form of critique’ (Chen 1996 quoted in Chen 2010: 2). For Chen, the focus and analysis need to be reconfigured to examine globalization and the Imperial and colonial past from which it emerged. Dissanayake’s work articulated the relationship between colonialism, ‘a form of violence and domination, a state of mind, a cultural practice, a multivalent discourse, and an ideology of expansion’ (1994: ix) and nationalism, a process via which colonialism extends its ‘range and depth’. For him, the relationship between colonialism and nationalism is riddled with paradoxes, and yet, this relationship is key to the development of cultural modernity across East Asia. As Stuart Hall (1997) notes, the postcolonial is more often than not an Anglo-American construct and the its ideas and borders are not in fact easily transferable. McClintock and Shohat’s comment that the postcolonial, so heavily informed by discourses of Western Imperial privilege, cannot correspond in any way to the reality of many nations (1997). Chungmoo Choi as argued with specific reference to the Korean situation that, for this nation, ‘ “postcolonial” South Korea is a place lying between the empty signifier, postcolonial, and the reality that it (mis)represents’ (1997: 461). Arguing against the broader aims of Shoat and McClintock, Choi takes the specifics of the Korean nation as a process of decolonization that needs to allow for the rejection for the ‘colonisation of consciousness’ that takes place in the colonial moment to be examined, not as part of binary them and us, then and now trajectory, but as one that ‘requires a self-reflection examination of this ambiguity that deters decolonisation from within, beyond the more palpable material conditions and hegemonic forces from without’ (1997: 462). The postcolonial therefore becomes the site where the past, present and future are debated. Hyon Joo Yoo summarizes that a ‘formation of a post-colonial East Asia marks a world historical event that produces historical, ideological and cultural effects that warrant such critique’ (2012: 22). Her formation of a

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post-colonial East Asia is still fraught in the machinations of orientalism and the West. Japan is mired in a ‘dialectic of Othering’. Japan’s loss of Empire forces a recognition of its own Otherness to the West, which in turn results in Japan determined to re-enter Asia as ‘the modern subject in Asia’ that once again leads to an othering of its less-modern Asian neighbours and the continuing positioning of Japan as an icon of modernity in the modern Western gaze. For Yoo, ‘Japan’s modern subjectivity depends on this binary re-imagining of Asia’ that negates the impact and entry of other Asian nations into the modern moment. Imperial Japanese cinema had attempted to create a specific hierarchical vision of Asia. The sense of crisis that emerged following Japan’s surrender is something that would mark, and continues to mark, cinematic engagement with the memories and legacies of the Imperial period. As the following chapters will explore, this past has been manifested in a variety of ways and speaks directly to the politics of the postcolonial East Asia.

6

Remembering the Empire

In the former territories of Japan, how the period of Imperial rule has been remembered has been inevitably related to the respective nation’s contemporary history. This chapter will explore how the Imperial period has been remembered across Asia with examples from the cinemas of Taiwan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand. I will explore how specific trends can be seen in each nation’s historical filmic engagement with the Imperial period and place these trends as part of a wider cultural nexus that interconnects her former territories with Japan but also with each other.

Taiwan: Nostalgia, affection and market politics The dynamics of memory in Taiwan has been a hotly contested process over the last few decades. The politics of Taiwanese identity has, all too often, been constructed via what Bhabha has charted as a ‘process of othering’ (1990, 219), since there can be no singular, united or uncontested vision of the nation due to historical legacy and the nation’s current global positioning. It is important to remember that Taiwan’s independence is hotly debated by the PRC who view the nation as an adjunct to China. The global power of the PRC has meant that most nations are reluctant to openly acknowledge Taiwan’s independence. Cinema has played a key role in the charting and interrogation of this dialogue, and colonial Japan is just one element in the processes of memorialization and mapping of a fragmented and vicariously globalized and hybridized national state. Bhabha’s notion of a time lag is here helpful in theorizing the Taiwanese engagement with Japan. Symbols and the subject positions can be reinterpreted, repositioned and recycled; in short, ‘the lagging impels the “past,” projects it, gives dead symbols the circulatory life … time-lag keeps alive the making of the past’ (italics added) (1994: 254). In the Taiwanese context, the socio-historical events have resulted

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in national identity being a site of flux, and therefore the meaning intrinsic in the symbols and signals of nationhood are mis/reinterpreted. As will be discussed, Japan has no fixed meaning as it stands in the Taiwanese imagination and, in short, it can be used to debate a multiplicity of discourses related to Taiwan’s standing as a nation in her own right. Tensions with PRC meant that Taiwan was keen to keep Japan as her friend in the decades following the end of the Pacific War. For this reason, few films detailing the colonial period were made prior to the 1970s. From the 1970s a gradual increase would be seen in films detailing pre-1945 events. Films such as Eight Hundred Heroes/Badai zhuangshi (1977), Heroes of the Eastern Skies/Jiàn Qiáo Yīng Liè Zhuàn (1977) and Everlasting Glory/Ying lie qianqiu (1973) made throughout the late 1970s and 1980s present an engagement with the SinoJapanese war. Supported by the nationalist government these films spoke as much about Taiwan’s contemporary standing as about their engagement with the past. They feature a series of brutal Japanese stereotypes and visions of heroic, brave and resourceful Chinese heroes (and even a few heroines). While these products are interesting in their own right, what they also reference is the contemporary political positioning of Taiwan. In 1971 the PRC became the internationally recognized Chinese state over the ROC and the militaristic films of this period are clear in their desire to promote a strong military state whose spirit survives in contemporary Taiwan (Li 2015: 84). This is about the rejection of the PRC narratives of nation-building and the films are keen to emphasize the power and the might of the KMT exploits in the war against Japan over the communist actions. Taiwan’s complex geopolitical standing has meant that her films have held a curious place on the international stage as she has always been keen to export her national products as a part of a narrative of difference from her Chinese neighbour. Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s historical trilogy City of Sadness/Beiqing Changshi (1989), The Puppetmaster/Xi meng renshen (1993) and Good Men, Good Woman/Haonan Haonü (1995) were released to international acclaim and helped to boost Taiwanese cinema’s reputation on the international stage. All three films visualize the colonial period as neither wholly bad nor wholly good but just as a part of Taiwan’s turbulent development. City of Sadness follows the fate of a family through the end of colonialism to the aftermath of the 28 February incident in 1947. We see multiple family members abused and then killed, not by the Japanese occupiers but by the various Taiwanese and Chinese political factions who vie for control of Taiwan post 1945. Good

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Men, Good Woman follows the true-life story of Chiang Bi-Yu who fought the Japanese in China only to eventually be executed as a communist by the KMT during the White Terror on returning to Taiwan. The Puppetmaster also takes its inspiration from reality via its fictional examination of the life of Taiwanese puppeteer Li Tian-lu. These three films have been discussed in depth as part of the debate on Taiwanese cinema history (not only in terms of content but also as part of the development of the Taiwanese New Wave), and all three maintain a complicated layering of the a perceived history, film aesthetics and (inter)cultural readings. Take, for instance, Good Man, Good Woman, where the ‘real life’ history is mediated to us via the contemporary positing of the actress Annie Inoh Shizuka as she prepares to act in the role. This is not a film charting history per se – we are not seeing a film that is devoted to a linear and organized representation of the past. Rather, this is a film about how film as a specific medium engages with the very idea of both a personal and a national history. The trilogy of Hou is representative of the complex relations between the memories and legacies of both colonial Japan and the KMT rule as well as the complex interplay between the personal and the national seen via the individual (The Puppetmaster, Good Man, Good Woman) and a larger family unit (City of Sadness). Cinematic time and space in all the films are open to debate. Yoo’s Lacanianbased politics of the invisible sees the mundane politics of everyday life in films such as The Puppetmaster as resisting the Imperial knowledge/power via the refusal to allow the camera to fully grasp and understand the life of the subaltern. The Puppetmaster shows us the everyday minutia of real life that supersedes the colonial demands. At one stage, the Japanese army demands a puppet show from Li Tian-lu but they are unable to fully comprehend that the show, and their occupation, is nothing more than a movement in the lifecycle of the lead character and his large familial community. The Japanese colonial moment is shown as a passing time period that the community quickly overcomes. By the end of the film we see an abandoned Japanese plane disassembled for scrap to fund another puppet show – this time to celebrate Japan’s loss. The Imperial vision is, in this case, interrupted by the refusal of the colonial body to submit itself to the structures and edits of the colonial order. Instead gaps, fractures, and slippages are created that allow the articulation of a nation state that can exist outside the strictures of the colonial moment. This has particular resonance in Taiwan where the power of the PRC still looms large. A vision of a Taiwanese

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nation that can survive all external political movements is a powerful narrative to tell to the Taiwanese and indeed the international audiences. For Taiwan in the postcolonial moment, the decades of KMT occupation and several decades of martial law have now given way to a multiparty democracy. However, the continuing tensions with the PRC and the legal standing of Taiwan as a nation continues to raise serious concern. The position of Taiwan in international events such as the Olympics, and public shaming of the sixteen-yearold K-pop star Chou Tzu-yu1 illustrates the containing controversial positioning of Taiwanese nationhood. To this extent the postcolonial moment and the postCold War experience frequently becomes manifest in the same cinematic space. In his analysis of two Taiwanese films Dou-san (1989) and Banana Paradise/ Xiang jiao tian tang (1989), Chen explores how the colonial, postcolonial, the Cold War moment have been engaged with and utilized in contemporary terms. For Chen the entangled periods have produced, what he has noted as, ‘emotional structures of feeling’ which have become the ‘emotional-material basis’ of ethnic conflict’ in contemporary Taiwanese nation-building. In Dou-san we see a man born and raised under Japanese occupation left behind in the new KMT, Mandarin-speaking Taiwan that followed. Dou-san has completely become a colonial subject and cannot conceive of a world where Japan is not the pinnacle of development and achievement. For him, the world of the KMT offers nothing but hardship and alienation, as his children do not share his language (he cannot communicate in Mandarin) or cultural ideals (they reject Japan as the colonial occupier). Banana Paradise, in turn, follows the fate of a family fleeing from communist Mainland China. Banana Paradise is critical of the Taiwanese state and the former KMT regime, and once again we see a generational gap between those born in Mainland China and their children born in Taiwan. These two films articulate the tensions in memory building in Taiwan, as both the colonial period and the Cold War become interlinked discourses of personal and national trauma. Both eras saw the enforcement of a national language (Japanese and Mandarin respectively) and both periods were marked by hardship, repression, censorship and violence towards the bulk of the Taiwanese population. When you compare these products to earlier films you can see a serious shift in approach. The heroic images of Chinese fighters defending innocent citizens from the evil Japanese have been replaced with a more nuanced and highly textured reflection on both the colonial past and the KMT which replaced it. The affect the present has on cinematic representations of the past can be clearly seen in a series of recent box-office successes. These products have focused

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on articulating the colonial past while simultaneously augmenting Taiwan’s positioning as part of a contemporary global experience. Cape No 7/Haijiao Qi Hao (2008) is an interesting and well-discussed case study since it was one of the most surprising box-office hits. Based on a bundle of lost letters, Cape No 7/Haijiao Qi Hao simultaneously charts a colonial-era romance and the contemporary notions of loves, trials and numerous escapades of a group of disparate musicians. Cape no 7 visualizes a postcolonial community that maintains a link between the past and the future via the dual romantic relationships between a colonial-era schoolteacher and his Taiwanese lover and a contemporary musician/postman A-ga and Tomoko, a Japanese PR coordinator working in the region. The region’s diverse cultural and ethnic identities are brought together in the rather terrible band who have been instructed by the mayor to write and perform a song to open the concert of a visiting Japanese pop star Atari Kōsuke. We have the 10-year-old keyboardist Dada, Hakka-speaking drummer Malasun and guitar-playing Rukai along with (indigenous Taiwanese) father and son Olalan and Rauma. We also have a central comedic character – the 80-year-old, Japanesespeaking, Yueqini-playing, Old Mao. Cape No 7 maintains a warm sense of nostalgia towards the colonial past, something the film received criticism for but it clearly appealed to the local audience. The film offers a vision of contemporary globalized and multicultural Taiwanese identity that ‘allows the Taiwanese viewer to celebrate a locally produced film well versed in global popular culture and sensitive to vernacularization of such cultural hegemony’ (Wang 2012: 147). The film is all about cultural interaction and mutation as we see Japanese music informing and then being informed by Taiwan. At the end of their section of the concert, the reluctance of Old Mao to hand over the limelight to Atari results in the band performing an impromptu version of Schubert’s Heidenröselein to mass applause. They are joined on stage by Atari and then the film moves back to the colonial era where Atari reappears playing the young Japanese schoolteacher who is departing from Taiwan. The blending of the present and future creates a loop, not only between Japan and Taiwan but also between the national and the local. The small community on the coastal town of Hengcheng is repositioned as part of a wider dialogue of cultural flow and interplay. There is a highly positive vision of Taiwanese culture as represented via the music, characters and dialogue. This is a Taiwan that, via the film’s refusal to engage with the KMT period, is presented as a separate and unique entity from the mainland despite China’s claims of paternalism. The bypassing of the decades of the KMT with a refocusing on its ex-colonizer allows the film to visualize a Taiwanese identity

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that is both local and global. The film moves Taiwan away from China and back towards Japan via a process that emphasizes the cross-cultural contact that exists between Japan and Taiwan. Although we have a few voices of dissent, primarily Dada’s mother who claims all Japanese are arrogant and unfeeling, the film is generally positive in tone towards Japan. As seen in Section One, the Japanese Empire had presented a vision of Taiwan as interconnected to the wider world and mediated via her colonial master. In products such as Cape No 7, this idea of interconnectedness remains, not as part of a colonial dynamic but one that presents Japan as representative of a global moment that allows Taiwan to bypass China to enter the global intercultural dynamics. Wei’s next feature would return again to the colonial past. This time the focus is on the experience of the aboriginal communities under Japanese occupation with a revisiting of the Wushue incident. Seediq Bale, whose English title was Warriors of the Rainbow (2011), is a sprawling four–and-half-hour epic that performed well on the national and international stage (although the international version is a cut down to a two-and-half-hour feature). As someone who queued up in a local cinema in Taipei on both of the respective opening days, the levels of expectation around this film are hard to convey. After the success of Cape No 7 and the hype about the amount of money spent on the film (to date is it the most expensive film in Taiwanese cinematic history), Seediq Bale went onto become one of the top-grossing Taiwanese films. The film is primarily a dialogue between Japan and the aboriginal communities. Chinese citizens receive limited screen time and the film articulates both Japanese aggression and, in the same breath, Japanese admiration for the Seediq tribe’s bravery and honour. In Seediq Bale a dialogue has been constructed between Japan and Taiwan that excludes China. The film was released in the same timeframe as a global tourism campaign that specifically promoted the Wushue region as a site for international tourism. Given that Japan is a much-needed tourism revenue for Taiwan, a presentation of a complex but ultimately respectful relationship between the two nations can be seen as part of a wider experience of contemporary Japanese-Taiwanese relations. Blue Brave: Formosa in 1895 released in 2008 explored the period prior to Wushue with an examination of early resistance against Japan and the short-lived Formosa Republic. The film focused on the Hakka ethnic groups’ experiences in the war, and it primarily uses Hakka as the main language of conversation. Blue Brave was a box-office success but also received criticism. The film’s main narrator is Japanese writer Dr Ōgai Mori and it is his voice that guides the audience through the events. Taiwan, as with the colonial films, is actually being

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mediated back to herself via a Japanese voice. With this in mind, Corrado Neri asks, ‘Is the Taiwanese public supposed to identify more easily with a Japanese intellectual rather than a Hakka militant?’ (2015: 181). This interplay between Japan and Taiwan as respectful friends who are also part of wider global systems of interconnectedness has been seen in a variety of features. Films like Café Lumier (2005), The Passage/Jing guo (2004), Millennium Mambo/Qiānxī Mànbō (2001) and Miao Miao (2008) all tell the tales of the often-romantic interplay between Taiwan and her former colonizer. ChineseTaiwanese co-production About Love/Guan Yu Ai (2004) is three-part tale that interlinks Japan, China and Taiwan. Interestingly in a film about people in foreign lands, there is no interaction between Mainland China and Taiwan. Instead, the stories respectively focus on the interaction between Taiwan and Japan and Japan and China. The Passage offers a lyrical vision of the development of a bittersweet romance between a Taiwanese museum assistant and a visiting Japanese researcher. Millennium Mambo follows the travels of a Taiwanese female migrant as she navigates the hostess bars of the economically declining Japanese city of Yubari. Somewhere I have never traveled (2009) is about the sexuality of a young Taiwanese man which is only realized when he shares a romantic encounter with a visiting Japanese male student. Miao Miao configures the Japanese and Taiwanese relationship with the lesbian teen market in the tale of the unrequited love between a Japanese exchange student Miao Miao and her Taiwanese hostess Ai. While Miao Miao finds happiness and fulfilment in her year in Taiwan, her departure leaves Ai devastated. The film ends with the lovelorn Ai running desperately after Miao Miao’s plane. The intense and loving friendship, even if not sexual one, that Ai wants is seen as a formative and key relationship in Ai’s life. The vision here of a postcolonial subject literally chasing after the representative of the former colony opens up a multitude of questions that moves beyond the star-crossed narrative of romance. The film is, therefore, acting not only in tandem with contemporary political concerns with the global impetus of a market that has for the last few decades been saturated with Japanese culture but Japan functions in the Taiwanese cinematic imagination as a ‘post-modern heterotopia’ (Yoo 2012). Taiwanese cinema engaging with Japan has seen an emptying out the past to allow for new articulations of the postmodern experience and this post-modern moment is as much based on Taiwan’s global positioning as its colonial past. As Sharon Wang (2012) notes, this is a post-modern moment defined by ‘transaction and reinvention’ as opposed to colonial structures of power and knowledge.

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This idea of transaction and reinvention can be seen in the series of sportsbased colonial films as demonstrated by the box-office hit Kano (2014). Kano tells the tale of a mixed-ethnicity baseball team who, against all the odds, manage to get to the most prestigious high school baseball tournament in Imperial Japan. The team is made up of Japanese, Taiwanese and aborigines and the director himself has stressed that film as neither pro- nor anti-Japan. The film is rather heavyhanded in its promotion of intercultural cooperation. The team leader notes that all the various elements have their own special skills to bring to the game (‘han’s are strong, the natives are fast and the Japanese good at defense’). The film is billed as showing the origins of Taiwanese baseball, and in this statement we see once again a move away from China via the stressing instead of the intercultural mix that makes up the Taiwanese nation. Japan is once again the locus of modernity in both sport and in the building of a dam and reservoir in the region. It is via their success in Japan rather then in Taiwan, that the team will gain the respect and admiration of their peers. Kano is reflective of the time period in that most of the dialogue is conducted in Japanese and not in any of the local dialects, but in this linguistic choice we see Taiwanese cinema move towards Japan and away from the PRC once more. Kano ends with the team arriving back in Taiwan after their Japanese adventures. They may have lost but they have discovered a new sense of pride and a Taiwanese (not Chinese) identity founded on true sportsmanship.

Korea and the impact of global cinema trends With a highly dynamic opening scene, 2009 Lost Memories offers a curious premise that history can be rewritten and envisions a Korea where the Japanese colonial narrative continues unimpeded. The film opens with the failed assassination of Ito Hirobumi and then manages to convey, via doctored historical images, a new pathway between the two nations. We see a historical timeline where Japan never loses the war. Key events are rewritten to visualize a version of Asia that sees Japanese Imperialism consolidated on a global level. We travel to modernday Seoul where Japanese signs adorn the streets and Japanese and Korean policemen work in unison to prevent terrorist threat posed by the Korean nationalist insurgents. From this interesting premise, the film quickly descends into standard action sci-fi fare; Japan had discovered a time machine and the failed assassination attempt sets off a string of events as presented in the film’s opening. Travelling back in time the Korean patriot, Sakamoto, faces his once

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close Japanese friend, Saigo, and, true to cinematic form, the past is corrected and the timeline is returned to normal. 2009 Lost Memories does not shy away from charting what happens to Japan. Saigo is motivated to keep the altered timeline since his wife’s family is from Hiroshima. Once he has this information he quickly changes from a Koreanophile to a rabid Japanese nationalist. The events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are presented as the penalty Japan must pay for her aggression in Korea. 2009 Lost Memories, therefore, manages to present a vision of muscular Korean masculinity that, despite setbacks (and contrary to historical fact), is more than capable of defeating Japan. Halbwachs’ vision of memory is here a helpful tool to unpick the Korean relationship with Japan. For Halbwachs, memory can be seen as an individual, intergenerational or collective/mémoire collective. Mémoire collective allows for wide-reaching cultural transmission and the creation of specifics of tradition that can inform the contemporary present. Our memory and our perceptions are guided in specific ways through social patterns, cultural communication and cognitive scheme, what Halbwachs calls the cadre sociaux. The Korean memorialization of the colonial period (their cadre sociaux) can perhaps be best articulated around three often-interlinked strands. The first is colonialism as trauma, the second is colonialism as part of a myth of a robust and unfailing nation state and the final one, which has emerged in the last few years, is a vision of a historical colonialism utilized for box-office success and market entertainment. Collective memory is not ‘history’ as commonly defined since history is fractured, ruptured and innately unreliable whereas collective memory is strongly evaluative and hierarchical and functions as a key element in identity formation. For instance in the Korean case, collaboration was hardly an odd occurrence in the colonial moment, and yet, collective memory tells us that Korea fought Japan as a matter of national principle. In the immediate period following the collapse of Japan, we see a series of films lauding Korean nationalism made by the very film-makers who had produced propaganda features for the Japanese. The immediate post-war period saw several releases celebrating the end of colonialism. It was during this period that the myth of resistance was most clearly established with a decided focus on the revitalization and reimaging of the Korean culture and people. Films such as Hurrah! For Freedom! and Mother of Fatherland/jogukui Omoni (1949) charted the hardship the Korean people has suffered under the Japanese together with a positive focus on Korean future. This future would quickly descend into the Korean War followed by partition and the

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imposition of a military junta in the South and a communist autocracy in the North. As Frances Gateward (2007) notes, Korean cinema’s preoccupation with the past can be seen in three key periods related to colonialism until 1945, the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 and from 1971 to 1987 when they saw the end of military autocracy. The cinema of the post-Imperial period, therefore, is marked by national and individual trauma. The cinema of South Korea has sought to deal with this narrative of trauma  in  various ways and a pronounced focus has been maintained upon the male experiences and the effect this has had on the development of a postcolonial/post-war/post-partitioning Korean nationhood. In the colonial period, masculinity and nationhood were deeply intertwined as we saw in Chapter 4. The construction of Korean masculinity as an ‘inferior masculinity’ continued into the postcolonial period and has heavily impacted Korean cinematic visions of nationhood. A notable film from the 1960s, a period where Japan and Korea had not re-established post-war relations, is Kim Ki-young’s, The Sea Knows/Hyeonhaetaneun algo itda (1961). The film charts the hardships faced by a young conscripted military recruit. Aro-un suffers at the hands of the Japanese soldiers including been forced to literally lick the boots of an officer and then bark like a dog. This humiliation does not deter him from falling in love with a Japanese woman Hideko and, despite her family’s objections, they marry. An American air raid causes the death of many citizens and the Japanese military burn the bodies en masse without allowing people to reclaim their dead. Out of the flames, Aro-un emerges apparently unscathed and returns to Hideko. The Korean male subject here becomes the extraordinary symbol of the human desire to survive and even flourish in appalling conditions. The Korean male reclaims a masculinity that is specifically not built on Japanese military edicts but on his love for his wife and wider community. The Korean man successfully winning a Japanese woman’s love and adoration would speak to a postcolonial desire to reclaim a masculinity lost in the colonial moment. What better way to show a newfound manhood than claiming as your own a woman who is part of the colonial aggressor nation? The Korean nation, as personified by Aro-un, is shown as able to rise from the literal flames of colonial aggression and walk towards a postcolonial future. The Sea Knows was an early film in the canon of ‘male trauma’ cinema to emerge from South Korea. While Kim Ki-young’s film ends on an affirmative note, most of the films to emerge later were not so positive. This crisis in masculinity was compounded by the Korean War and the military dictatorship in the 1980s.

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Kim Kyung-hyun writes eloquently on the socio-political reconfiguration of masculinity that took place in post-1980 cinematic products. In features such as Peppermint Candy/Bakha Satang (1999), The Taebaek Mountains/Taebaek Sanmaek (1994), Spring in my Home Town/Areumdawoon sheejul (1998) and Sopyonje (2003), we see a disenfranchised, damaged and wounded manhood seeking to reclaim a form of masculinized empowerment that they struggle to find. In Sopyonje we see a disenfranchised masculinity in the figure of the father, who attempts to find a place for himself in the colonial order that excludes him. As a result, he seeks to confirm his masculinity in another way, by absolutely controlling his family to the point of blinding and raping his adopted daughter and driving his son away. The condition of postcolonial masculinity, like colonial masculinity, is therefore defined by violence and hardship and broad misogyny. Women are infrequent actors in this cinematic construction of the new South Korean national cinema. Women, as in the films of Imperial Japan, are all too often seen as visual and narrative objects that can either spur men to fight or drive men to their demise. Rape is common in these features and the powerlessness of Korean men in the colonial period is revisited by either showing them as gaining a sense of masculinity via the abuse of the female (harkening back to Japanese treatment of Korean women) or once again losing it as they are unable to defend a specific woman against the sexual aggression of other men. Alongside these more tortured visions of the Korean state, throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the gangster genre offered a more dynamic and popular visualization of the colonial period via a focus on activities of Kim Du-han. This real larger-than-life character was indeed a freedom fighter and gangster who would enter into politics after the end of colonialism. Brother Kim Du-han and Brother Shirasoni/Kim Du-han hyeong Shirasoni hyeong (1981), The True story of Kim Du-Han/Sillog Kim Du-han (1974), A Chivalrous Man named Kim Du-han/ Hyeobgaeg Kim Du-han (1981), all brought to the market a vision of a Korean subject who, via cunning, violent and a steadfast sense of Korean nationhood, was not only able to survive the colonial period but also flourish. The tales of Kim Do-han would be rebooted in 1990s with Im Kwon-taek’s hit series The General’s Son/Janggunui adeul (1990, 1991, 1992). In a similar fashion to Ip Man in Hong Kong, Kim Du-han’s story is altered to allow an admirable vision of nationhood in the midst of historical tension. We see Kim fight a series of Japanese repressors (police, Japanese martial artists, and criminals) as well as Korean subjects (corrupt officials, collaborators) and emerge triumphant. As

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Gateward notes cinema, such as the Kim Du-han films, operates to provide ‘younger generations engaging and readily available mimetic experiences of the monumental traumas of which they have no first-hand recollection’ (2007: 194) This ‘righteous outlaw’ therefore allows a social and culturally correct image of the colonial period while appealing to the desire for entertainment that the younger cinematic audience require. This notion of engaging audiences has been particularly powerful in the last two decades in Korea where box-office demands and the Hallyu phenomenon have substantially impacted upon the film industry. Criticizing what he has seen as the nation-centred approach that has dominated memory studies, Andreas Huyssen argues that ‘Lieux de mémoire today function not just in an expanded field but in a field altered by globalisation’ (2003: 97). In the case of Korea, the global positioning of Korean cinema has seen the engagement with the colonial past change over the last few decades. Recent Korean cinematic visualizations of the colonial period have taken on a curiously whimsical approach that, in keeping with Huyssen’s thoughts, engage just as much with the global filmic dialogues of genre, space, market share and stardom as with the desire to memorialize the past. From 2000 onwards the film tone towards the Imperial period changed in line with a new desire to produce Korean products that appeal to a broad international audience. Anarchists/Anakiseuteu (2000), notable for being the first joint Korean/Chinese production, charts the heroism and sacrifice of a group of Korean insurgents in Imperial Shanghai. The film (clearly influenced by the Young and the Dangerous series from Hong Kong), offers a series of action set pieces culminating in a dramatic climax that sees the Korean insurgents and their Chinese allies succeed in their specific anti-Japanese aims. The film, while not a financial success, began the process of transforming the colonial period as nothing more than the site of action where genre trends could allow a vision of history to be created that offered audience enjoyment and more importantly ‘shies away from the clear moral dichotomy dividing the colonized, the colonizer, the victim and the victimized, and good and evil’ (Chung and Diffrient 2005: 118). Modern Boy (2008) sees a reconfiguring of colonial society away from the dismal oppression of earlier features by instead visualizing a landscape of exciting sounds, fashions and music. The film’s opening credits utilized the images we are used to seeing from the colonial features; there are the government buildings, the trains, the colonial troops marching in unison all accompanied by an upbeat

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jazz soundtrack. From there we are taken to the life of a young and affluent dandy Lee Hae-myeong – the modern boy of the title. His life of hedonism is interrupted when he falls in love with a beautiful nightclub singer who is also a nationalist insurgent.2 This relationship eventually culminates in his arrest by his closest Japanese friend and, for the first time, Lee realizes that he is not treated as an equal in the Empire. His rough interrogation ensures that he fully commits to his girlfriend’s plan to blow up a Japanese event. As the heroine notes, ‘Instead of my love for you, I had to choose our country’, and in that sense Modern Boy articulates the common nationalistic narrative of love of the nation over private love of the individual is a far cry from the images of subservient Korean citizen/ victims. Lee will survive when his girlfriend chooses to detonate the bomb herself in his place and he goes forward in to the future with a new resolve to support the Korean nationalist movement. In a similar vein, Once Upon a Time (2008) uses the colonial background to offer a glamorous musical heist. The film’s plot involving a giant diamond, gold bars, a beautiful cat burglar and a handsome thief is set towards the end of the war. The film manages to ensure that the heist-comedy narrative and style fit into a colonial debate via the usage of the stolen goods as a means of rebuilding Korea on Japan’s defeat. Unlike Modern Boy, the film has a happy ending that is more in keeping with its action cinema genre codes. This adherence to cinematic conventions perhaps explains why critics and audiences were more satisfied with it when compared to the larger budget Modern Boy that failed to ignite box-office interest. Genre in this sense has played a key role in the recent productions and the genre of the film has been more important than the colonial setting. Radio Dayz (2008), for example, is a comedy made around the production of the first ever Korean radio drama. Radio Dayz approach to the colonial period can be best described as nostalgic with the film conforming more to contemporary television comedy-drama comedy tropes. The all-star success story The Good, the Bad and The Weird/Joheunnom Nabbeunnom Isanghannom (2008) brought the spaghetti western to Imperial Manchuria. The Good, The Bad, and the Weird, although maintaining a vague semblance of a nationalistic narrative, is mostly about de-politicized entertainment. As ‘The Good’ notes in The Good, The Bad and The Weird, if ‘you don’t have a country you at least need money’ and national allegiances are quickly forgotten in the face of the gold the lead characters are all fighting over. The sporting ‘underdog’ films have also had a colonial makeover. YMCA Baseball (2002) is an anti-Japanese comedic vision of early baseball. The

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semi-historical film explores how baseball allowed a group of Korean subjects to come together and find common pride, dignity and unity in the face of Japanese racism and suppression. Fighter in the Wind/Baramui paiteo (2004) and Rikidozen/Yeokdosan (2004) continue this sporting trend via the tales of Korean subjects who achieve great victories in martial arts and wrestling against the Japanese nation. One interesting addition to the colonial canon is Blue Swallow/Cheung Yeon (2005) that charts the story of a pioneering Korean female pilot Park Kyung-won. Park struggles against colonialism and sexism in equal measure as she desperately tries to fulfil her dreams of flying. While the film did not receive much critical attention, we see that simplistic visions of the period are no longer acceptable as Park has negative experiences at the hands of both the Korean and Japanese due to her gender rather than her ethnic background. My Way (2011) returns to the interplay between Japan and Korea in the war film genre. The film takes its inspiration from a rather unfortunate real-life story of Yang Kyuongjong who was forced to fight for the Japanese, the Russians and the Germans before his capture by the Allies on D-day. We see a highly competitive relationship develop between Tatsuo, the grandson of a Japanese official residing in Korea and the Korean son of his grandfather’s butler Kim Junshik. It is this relationship that presents the film with a narrative structure as the film charts the complex love–hate relationship between the two men. The film concludes with Kim dying and Tatsuo taking his identity and winning the gold medal for Korea in testament to his friend. The referencing of colonial mimicry in My  Way is interesting. Throughout colonial period Koreans were asked to perform ‘Japaneseness’, in My Way the early parts of the film chart the inability of the Korean subject to ever become fully Japanese. The constant ethnic markers that the colonial Empire constructed to ensure obedience and subjugation (including the forced conscription into the army) are all presented. The end of the film sees this situation reverse with the Japanese subject becoming Korean as the only way to find a nationality he can be proud of. In a reversal of colonial edicts, he chooses to take a Korean name. He dons the Korean flag on his running vest and completely rejects his Japanese heritage. In his individual (not national) act of atonement, he literally replaces the lost Korean life by substituting his own and then goes on to win glory for Korea. Despite its rather interesting take on the colonial relationship, My Way was not a success. The graphic war scenes and the complex plot failed to ignite audience interest but arguably this should not be seen as a lack of interest the colonial period. Rather it was as more likely a rejection of war drama. Korean cinema has seen more than their fair share in

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the previous decades and, by 2011, the general consensus was that the genre had run out of steam. The fact that the colonial period was still a vibrant time period for films can be seen in the fact that 2015/16 saw three colonial-era films released. Spy thriller, Assassination/Amsal (2015) follows the activities of a group of freedom fighters trying to capture a Korean double agent. Assassination, more than any other of the recent colonial dramas, draws a much clearer link between the colonial period and the post-war period. In Assassination the Korean traitor Yeon survives the colonial period and manages to become a high-ranking South Korean policeman. He is eventually put on trial for war crimes but is exonerated when one of the key witnesses is murdered. Yeon is eventually killed by former female freedom fighter Ahn, who then reminisces nostalgically about her longdead friends in the resistance. The film was a huge success but the desire to entertain a younger, and arguably, more ahistorical audience means the political content often feels emptied out leaving a series of impressive action pieces that could be relocated to any other environment. Age of Shadows/Miljeong (2016), from Kim Jee-woon (who had also directed The Good, The Bad and The Weird), is an action thriller that moves between Korea and China and, in the same fashion as his earlier film, blends action, high-end visual aesthetics and comedic moments to explore the interplay between Korean freedom fighters and the Korean police collaborator who is trying to arrest them. While a few films from this canon have a female lead, The Silenced/Yeongseong Hakgyo: Sarajin Sonyeodeul (2015) is unusual in that a focus is maintained on the colonial female. The film merges horror, teen cinema and historical drama and takes a look into an elite sanatorium that caters exclusively to teenage girls. The Silenced offers a multiplicity of examples of colonial code switching as we see the girls refer to each by both their official Japanese names as well as their banned Korean names. The film shows the day-to-day realities of the bio-politics of colonialism with ‘going to Tokyo’ established as the pinnacle of achievement. Alongside the complex socio-sexual relations of girlhood that the all-female environment enhances, the girls spend their time playing sports, receiving an Imperial education and embroidering cherry blossoms as part of the commitment to Empire (see Figures 14 and 15). The film revolves around the friendship Ju-ran/Shizuko and Yeon-deok/ Kazue who quickly gain amazing strength and vitality in a short space of time. The two girls discover that the school is conducting genetic experiments on the

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Figures 14 and 15  The images of cherry blossoms evoke the colonial and gendered status of the girls (The Silenced (2015)).

girls in the hope of creating a breed of super-soldiers. The experiments have resulted in some girls changing into blackened corpse-like entities leaking black, bloody fluid from their eyes, mouths and other orifices. These monstrous visions are embalmed for scientific research by the teachers/scientists who are convinced that at least one of the girls will eventually survive the experiments, and begin to focus on Ju-ran as a potential candidate. Ju-ran and Yeon-deok decide to escape but are captured by the army who conduct more tests on Ju-ran and kill Yeon-deok. Ju-ran escapes and murders

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all the soldiers while the other affected girls turn on their carers in a bloody orgy. The rewriting of the colonial codes is graphically illustrated at the end when one of the teachers is attacked and killed by the girls who embroider multiple cherry blossoms into her very skin (Figure 16). This vision of Japanese symbols etched into the skin of those who collaborated is a literal rendition of a process that the film had already presented via the unnamed Headmistress. Fluent in Korean and Japanese the Headmistress/Head scientist is the very emblem of the desires that suffused the colonial subject. She both hates her Japanese military handler Kenji and desires him, as he represents her ultimate desire to become Japanese. She believes that her work with the military will ultimately yield the desired acknowledgement of equality and ‘worth’ from her colonial masters and eventually allow her ‘to get the hell out of Korea’ and becoming fully Japanese. The Headmistress is the ideal subject that the propaganda films of the 1930 and 1940s had aimed for. She wishes to be part of the colonial nation and yet is keenly aware of her apparent inferiority within the very structures she desires to be part of. Girlhood as horror is not a new addition to the South Korean screen. The Whispering Corridors (1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2009) series and the Tale of Two Sisters (2005) are just some of the well-known Korean horror films that focus on schoolgirl protagonists. Jinhee Choi has noted that in reference to this cycle of horror films, the boundaries of private and public spaces are explored to

Figure 16  The cherry blossoms have been embroidered literally onto the skin of the collaborator (The Silenced (2015)).

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question and reveal the tensions inherent in contemporary gender dynamics. In The Silenced, the girls exist in a space where ‘social latitude and flexibility’ (44), specifically related to the girls own gendered lives is both clearly missing and made all the more restrictive by the additional layers of colonial repression. The interplay between private and public speaks to the very tensions inherent in the colonial moment when the colonial powers sought to control and inform all aspects of Korean life. The Korean girls in The Silenced are both colonial and gendered subjects and their liminal status in both of these dynamics make them the ideal site for narratives of horror. There is no room for them in the narratives of colonial nationhood and thus they stand outside it. Their ‘outsider’ status allows them to move beyond the structures that entrap the older figures of the Headmistress and her assistants. The girls are both the victims of colonial rule but also the means via which it can be defeated. The Japanese Empire cannot win when facing the army of Korean girls it has created but is ultimately unable to control.

From the masculine hero to the female spy: Chinese cinematic remembrances For the wider Imperial territories, Japanese occupation has continued to be a defining event. Inside the PRC a great deal of war memorialization has taken place around the events at Nanjing. This will be discussed in greater depth in the next chapter so I will not dwell on it here but outside the Nanjing narratives, Japanese characters as visualized in the wider Chinese visual imagination has been limited. The legacy of the Japanese Empire lives on in a wide variety of racially offensive, brutal, idiotic and physically deformed Japanese characters who have resided on the Chinese screens for decades. Literally ‘devils’, their representation, while understandable to a certain degree, have rarely moved the debate forward in terms of popular imagination. The myriad of films charting the myth of the development of Communist China all feature this visualization of Japan as the locus of mindless brutality. Daughters of China/Zhonghua nuer (1949), Guerrillas on the Plain/Pingyuan youji dui (1955), Reconnaissance across the Yangtze/Dujiang Zhenchaiji (1974) and Evening Bell/Wanzhong (1988) all feature brave Chinese citizens resisting the Japanese invasion and it is remarkable how little the presentations change between the 1940s and the 1980s in this regard.

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The forging of the communist state is a complex and controversial topic. The need to present a heroic and unassailable communist army fighting for the people against internal threats such as the KMT (as well as external threats such as Japan), results in a one-dimensional representation that serves contemporary politics as much as visual history. Anti-Japanese activities were a founding pillar of the communist party’s mythology and, as such, it is a well-charted cinematic element. Films such as Letter with a Feather/Ji Mao Xin (1954) and Female Fighters/Lìrén Xíng (1949), Zhang-ga – A Boy Soldier/Xiao bing zhang ga (1963) all focus on the hardship and abuse that the Japanese submitted the Chinese population to as well as on maintaining a semblance of heroism in the face of adversity. Red Sorghum/Hóng gāoliáng (1987), one of the key films in the rise of the Chinese fifth generation, presents the Japanese as mindless terrorizers of the local citizens, including attempting to get a local butcher to skin alive an insurgent. The local peasants in the end band together to fight the Japanese troops and despite heavy losses emerge victorious. The narrative of heroic nationhood continues to the modern day with bigbudget dramas such as Death and Glory in Chengde/Chang De Da Xue Zhan (2010) and The Founding of the Republic/Jiàngúo Dà Yè (2009). China struggles between the tension of official memory and the elided narratives that are forbidden from discourses. This means cinema has seen little development of the post-war narratives. The focus on the masculine communist hero has never faltered, and government desires and popular opinion means that an undermining of this myth of nationhood would result in censorship. However, different narratives have emerged in the Chinese market that, although never truly removing themselves from the traditional representation mode, have attempted to consider the period from a more humanistic position. Purple Sunset/Ziri (2001) focuses on the latter part of the war on the eve of Japan’s defeat. The film follows the events surrounding an unlikely trio of a Japanese war orphan Akiyoko, Russian military medic Natasha and Chinese peasant Yang. The film is anti-war in that all the subjects, regardless of nationality, are innocents who suffer as a result of the conflict. Natasha has seen her fellow troops killed and Yang has lost his home and family. Akiyoko’s family died when Japanese troops abandoned them at the front, and she is killed by a group of battle-mad Japanese soldiers when she tries to tell them the war has ended. While Natasha and Yang kill these soldiers as vengeance for her death, the film actually ends with a declaration of peace and harmony accompanied by the casualty statistics from this period. The film is clear to propose that common humanity wins over

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nationalistic pride, a change from the previous films exploring this period that have emerged from China. Devils on the Doorstop/Guizi Laile (2000) continues these anti-war themes by constructing a narrative that violently emphasizes the absurdity of war. The film was highly controversial for its perceived sympathy towards Japan from the Chinese side and was never publically seen in Japan, although various illicit versions circulated in the market – a fact that pays testament to the idea that subverting the official narratives can land a filmmaker in trouble. While the film does not shy away from violence including the brutal killing of children, the protagonists are never one-dimensional. We see the emotive rationale for the behaviour of the Japanese troops and the Chinese protagonist, Ma Dasan, is a highly flawed creature who is capable of great violence himself. The communist insurgents are shadowy figures on the periphery of village life who are seen as much of a threat to the village’s peace and stability as the Japanese occupiers. In his comparison of the two films, Gieselmann concludes that they both herald the key fact that ‘Sino-Japanese relations in the post-cold war period remain an unresolved issue’ (2014: 102). Purple Sunset refocuses the narrative in a nostalgic glimpse of the old China-Russian Cold War alliance, while Devils on the Doorstep undermines the nationalistic myth of Chinese heroic resistance against an evil force. Contrary to the mainstream images of nationalism, patriotism and Japan as an unmitigated evil, these films seek to present a notion of ‘peace and dignity that transcend national boundaries’ (Zhang 2016: 33). Genre has also played a role in the representation of the Imperial past. The spy thriller has been a common mode via which the Imperial period has been represented across East Asia. Taiwanese cinema had a series of spy features set in this period during the 1960s and 1970s and Korean cinema since 2000 has likewise used the Imperial period as the backdrop to several espionage dramas. Chinese cinema in the last few years has seen an engagement with this genre and Purple Butterfly – Zi Hudie (2003) is one of three films to focus on the experiences of the female spy specifically in the Imperial period. The use of the female as a means to debate the Imperial past has perhaps more resonance in China than in other territories. The Man’ei cinema unit had utilized the female body – most notably Yamaguchi Yoshiko – to present the Imperial codes to the Chinese audience. These female-based spy dramas have all conversely used the female to highlight and disrupt the very same Imperial codes. Purple Butterfly, Lust Caution/Se, Jie (2007) and The Message/Fengsheng (2009)  all engage with a woman caught in various forms of espionage.

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Purple  Butterfly follows Cynthia whose love for a Japanese man Itami turned sour when he relocates back to Japan and her brother is brutally murdered by Japanese citizens shortly afterward. Itami returns to Shanghai some years later but he is now a passionate anti-Japanese rebel. The film follows the complex interplay between Cynthia, Itami and rebel cell leader (and Cynthia’s current lover) Xie Ming. The film also follows the story of Szeto, an innocent man who gets caught in the crossfire when his fiancée is gunned down in a battle between insurgents and the Japanese police. The film has minimal dialogue and has a slow contemplative cinematic style with the focus on the emotions of the protagonists over actual historical events. Purple Butterfly is defined by a lack of dramatic heroism and presents a visceral reminder of the everyday hardships that most people faced in this period. People are constantly surveyed not only by the ubiquitous Japanese agent but also by the Chinese freedom fighters ever on the lookout for traitors. Even bystanders who have not desire to be involved like Szeto and his fiancée are brutally drawn into the conflict. The endless rain that dominates the film presents a dark and grey palette on which the betrayals and counter-betrayals are enacted. Itami harbours highly complex feelings towards Cynthia – at one stage he wistfully notes he wishes his life could have worked out differently and we learn that he has arranged for Cynthia to go to Japan with him despite his knowledge of her activities. For most of the film, we are uncertain of Cynthia’s feelings towards Itami and there are many aspects of their relationship that seem to imply she still loves him. However, the end of the film avoids any cliché of the female spy falling in love with the enemy (a narrative that would clearly upset the Chinese censorship board). We learn that she and Xie Ming were lovers at the very end of the film via a flashback sequence. Her supposed emotional attachment to Itami is ultimately debunked at the conclusion via the inclusion of the end shots of Cynthia’s love for Xie Ming. Her relationship with Itami becomes nothing more than a symbol of her willingness to sacrifice her own body for China rather than a genuine love for the enemy. The film finally ends with a series of news articles on Japanese atrocities in China and in one of her last lines in the film, Cynthia asks Xie Ming, ‘What are we fighting for’. The film makes it clear to the audience that the ends most certainly justified the means and the narrative of the sacrificial female Chinese hero may have been debated in Purple Butterfly but ultimately is safely maintained. Echoes of Purple Butterfly can be found in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution. While Lee at the helm makes it ostensibly a Taiwanese film, Lust, Caution was heavily

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funded by China Film and was filmed on a specifically constructed set outside Beijing and hence is appropriate to be discussed here. Purple Butterfly and Lust, Caution both have a highly sensual lead female who is sexually involved with either a Japanese agent (Purple Butterfly) or a Japanese collaborator (Lust, Caution). Lust, Caution, based on Eileen Chang’ novella, follows Wong Chia Chi as she seduces Japanese collaborator Mr Yee (Tony Leung) as part of a complex plot to assassinate him. Unlike Purple Butterfly, Lust, Caution places the emotional needs and complex desires of Wong over the demands of the nation’s. She betrays her rebel cell in a moment of weakness for her lover leading to the execution of all involved. However, the film does not condemn her for this action. Lust, Caution more than any reflects the physical manifestation of Imperial codes, as Wong laments to her insurgent handlers, He not only gets inside me he worms his way into my heart like a snake. Deeper. All the way in. I take him in like a slave. I play my part faithfully so I, too, can get to his heart… . And when he finally comes inside me, I think maybe this is it. Maybe this is when you’ll rush in and shoot him in the back of the head and his blood and brains will cover me.

The affective response is required for any form of power to be truly challenged and Wong’s actions serve to undermine any narrative of nationalism that would seek to force the human body to work for it. The song that Wong sings for Yee is ‘To the end of the world’, a popular Chinese patriotic song from the 1930s. To sing such as song to her collaborator lover engages new layers of meaning as we see the deconstruction of a ‘grand narrative of nationalism’ (Ding 2011: 96) beyond the previously held boundaries. Wong and Yee’s sexual connection becomes the means by which they both are seeking to remove themselves from the political narratives they have become embroiled in and it is this connection that Wong decides to honour over her national allegiances. She is not sacrificing herself for ‘love’ in the stereotypical sense but for those moments that have allowed her to escape the boundaries that social and political machinations are forcing her into. The film’s usage of the female body to offer an inscription on not only imperialism but also patriarchy allows for what Rey Chow sees as the process via which ‘brutality and historicity ask to be grasped as a force of imagining, one that affects and pervades the very object of objectification, in narrative as much as images’ (2012: 180). Chow is heavily critical of the film, seeing it as a

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brutal exploration of visible misogyny under the guise of historical recreation. For her, the film’s graphic sex scenes allow for an infinitely visible orient, open to voyeuristic pleasure but with little real possibility of alternative power relations. Wilson’s criticism of this reading questions, ‘if the opposition of this is an “orient” swathed in layers of occlusion, does that really improve the debate?’ (2014: 145) For this author Lust, Caution is an affective response to the complex emotional and physical rendering of Imperial collusion. Wong’s choice to allow Yee to escape is a physical emotive response that operates outside the narrative of nationhood that seeks to define the female only in its own terms. Although in this sense you can see Chow’s argument that her death ‘may be seen as an extension of the masochism required of her (and her fellow students) by the Chinese resistance, which dignifies such masochism as heroism (martyrdom)’ (2012: 561), it is worth noting that the film opens up the audience, as well as Wong, to the cost of this heroism. Her death at the end is both a rejection of narratives of nationhood and a confirmation of the potential power of Imperial nationhood. Lust, Caution offers both a discontinuity and continuity with the past. If the punishment of collaborators is a force to create internal cohesion, then in Lust, Caution, we see desire as the destabilizing force that escapes the contemporary borders of war memory as traditionally established in china. This is not so much as ‘strip search of the past’ (Chow 2012: 178), but an uncovering of the affective dynamics of imperialism and the post-Imperial moment. Using the same affective approach, The Message (2009) explores the effects of torture on both the human body and the psyche of the victim. The Message involves a complex game of cat and mouse between five suspects interred in a remote castle and the officer charged with discovering who is the super-spy known as the Phantom. The film does not shy away from the torture sequences in the same way Lust, Caution offers graphic images of sexuality. In one scene a female suspect has all aspects of her body measured in a chillingly upsetting literal visualization of the Imperial desire to know the other. Her body and those of her fellow captives become the method via which Imperialism is either resisted or surrendered to. While the torture they all undergo mutilates their bodies, the film ends with the revelation that it is these physical injuries, literally written on the body of the female spy, that allow the Phantom to warn the resistance of a trap. The Message, Lust, Caution and Purple Butterfly all share the centrality of the body as a way of debating and visualizing the sensual, affective and dramatic experience of the nationalist female spy. These films can all be seen as part of

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a re-envisioning of the ‘spy film genres in contemporary Chinese cinema by adopting a humanist approach that focuses on the examination of the notion of the spy’ (Zhu 2015: 369). The complex female spy has replaced the nationalist male hero as the body via which the Imperial past can be explored. The complex and highly gendered interplay between secrecy and openness, internal and external, and sex and death that can be seen allows for a new nuanced vision of the power but also the weakness of the Imperial moment.

South East Asia Representations of Japanese Imperialism can be found across the South East Asian spectrum. This section will examine how the Japanese period of occupation has been remembered in films from Thailand and Malaysia as an example of how political groups have utilized this period for their own purposes and the means to comment on the idea of Malaysian and Thai nationhood that have little to do with the actual history of the period. A notable film on the Imperial period from Thailand is Sunset at Chaophraya. Based on the novel Khu Kam/Fated Couple it has been adapted for Thai film and television on multiple occasions. The earliest version was produced in 1973 and the latest version reached the big screen in 2013. Although there are some differences between the film and televisions versions, the main premise is that a young Thai woman called Angsumalin/Hideko who is involved in the Free Thai Resistance ends up marrying a young Japanese naval officer as part of a plot to undermine the Japanese occupation of Thailand. Naturally, she begins to develop feelings for him and in the true romantic-tragic style, he also falls in love with her. The film charts her struggle to balance her lover for the nation and her love for her husband. What this indicates is that war memories are not always as simple as initially assumed. During the actual occupation amid the countless stories of brutality we also have stories of harmony and good working relations between the Thai citizens and the Japanese soldiers. In reality, the Japanese commander general Nakamura Aketo, was warmly welcomed in Thailand in 1955 (Reynolds 1988: 194) referencing once more the complex engagement between Japan and its former Imperial nations. Sunset at Chaophraya offers a trite and limited version of nationalism and the melodramatic film genre allows the film a successful way to avoid any collective guilt at the death of the love interest. Although Angsumalin lights

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the flare that draws the Allied bombers to the naval base, the hero ultimately dies as a result of the bombing rather than following the original plan which was to see him killed by his wife’s Thai insurgent compatriots. In the 2013 version, while he was crushed under the remains of a building, the rain washes his face clear. The symbolism is clear, although misguided, the hero’s heart is basically true and the star-crossed lovers never pose any real threat to the post-war memory. His death removes the post-war questions about their marriage and she is free to move forward into a free Thailand without her Japanese lover complicating the narrative. The positive presentation of Japan, and indeed the potential of love for the Japanese enemy, is heavily influenced by the post-war events. Over the years Japan has been a consistent and generous provider of overseas development aid and Japanese popular culture has enjoyed great success in the Thai market. While this is true for many other Asian nations, what we see in the Thailand, via the constant recycling of a commercially viable story such as Sunset at Chaophraya, is a process by which cultural memories are re-inscribed along the lines of the film text. In short, the historical process of the film itself becomes almost a substitution of the real-life memories on which it may, or may not, have been based. The interaction between contemporary politics in the process of war memory can be clearly seen in Malaysian cinema. In all the films, the Japanese invasion is articulated via the rise of Malay nationalism in the face of all external colonialism. This means that for many of these films Japan and Britain are both positioned as the Imperial other. This means that history has to be rewritten for the filmic version of events. Leftenam Adnan is ostensibly based on the life of Adnan bin Saidi, a soldier in the Malay Regiment of the British Empire who fought against the Japanese until his death at their hands in 1942. Inside Singaporean and Malaysians texts books, Adnan is articulated as true Malay hero and this approach is one that the 2000 film version of his life is determined to promote. Commissioned by the Malaysian Ministry of Defense, the British soldier is rewritten to become a fervent Malay nationalist. Rather than fighting for Britain, Adnan articulates, he is fighting for Malaysia and his desire to see her free of all external influence. As Hack and Blackburn (2012) note, the film is even more remarkable in the aligning of Adnan, a colonial soldier, and the KMM’s Ibrahim Yaacob both as anti-Imperialist in a radical stretch of historical rewriting. Yaacob was imprisoned by the British and then freed by the Japanese in 1942. Yet, the film has him undertaking anti-Japanese actions alongside Adnan,

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despite historical evidence that Yaacob was a supporter of Japan in the early stages of the invasion as a way to oust the British. For Malaysia, a nation that has been beset by issues of definitions of nationhood most clearly illustrated by the 1969 race riots and continuing tensions between the various ethnic groups, the need to articulate (and create if necessary) national heroes is part of a postcolonial desire to reclaim a Malaysian history that is separate from that of its Imperial rulers’. This deterritorialization of the story of Adnan can be most clearly seen in the scene when he inspires his troops using the language of Malaysian independence ‘Hidup askar Melay’. This unlikely fact is required to ensure that the life of Adnan, a Malay hero, becomes a story of independence and national pride rather than a tale of the loyal colonial soldier. Embum, another government-funded production, sees a group of patriotic Malaysian citizen’s shout allegiance to Allah as they unite to demand Japan free Malaysia. Via this specifically religious identity, Malaysian nationalism is confirmed and articulated in the face of Japanese aggression. Throughout the film, the Japanese are visualized as just another brutal force that must be overcome for Malaysia to achieve independence. As David Lim notes (2011), this is a muscular Malay nationalism that is devoted to creating an independent Malaysia removed from any form of Imperial influence. In one scene the young heroine Embum has her headscarf removed with a sword by a group of rapeintent soldiers. She is then gang raped, and the film uses her assault as a call for the Malaysian male nationalist to fight to protect the community. The focus is almost entirely on the Malay community and shows a lack of engagement by the Indian or Chinese community groups. The narrative is therefore not only reconfiguring Malaysian nationalism as anti-imperialism but also conforms to contemporary racial politics regarding the make-up of the Malaysian nation. Paloh released in 2003 caused more dissent that either Embum or Leftenam Adam for its portrayal of the various factions involved in fighting the Japanese. Paloh directly engages with the role that the communists played in the fight against Japan. In one scene, a communist insurgent group rescues a group of freedom fighters and we see community leader note ‘far better to die a communist. At least the communists are fighting for our country against the Japanese and the British’. Paloh was also unusual for attempting to be linguistically accurate with a variety of language used and English subtitles are provided throughout. The end titles of the film tell us that the communists will kill the British or the Japanese and the Japanese and the British will kill the communists so there can be no end to this conflict. Paloh therefore engages

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with not only the postcolonial but also the post-Cold War dialogues that would impact upon the post-war moment. All three films have a couple of things in common. Namely, they failed to inspire any huge box-office following and all three are intent on referencing a vision of a national history that excludes ethnic groups and narratives that don’t fit the contemporary desires of national identity. There is a tension between the individual groups and the wider national memory that the films try to paper over in a rather heavy-handed fashion, either by ignoring specific elements or rewriting the various complex elements to fit the narrative. In this way, the cinematic nation-building of the multi-ethnic nation seeks the removal of the minoritized elements who don’t fit the desired pattern.

Conclusion The approach that the former Imperial territories have taken to visualizing this period is highly varied in terms of language, nation and genre, and yet, many hold common themes. In all the nations, the contemporary political and culture concerns have heavily impacted on how the Empire has been remembered. This chapter has explored fictional film imagination but it would be remiss to not mention three powerful documentaries that made a clear impact on the way the Imperial period has been remembered in the global imagination. Korean female director Byun Young-joo’s The Murmuring/Na-jeun Moak-so-ri (1995), Habitual Sadness/Na-jeun Moak-so-ri 2 (1997), and My Own Breathing/Na-jeun Moak-so-ri 3 (1999) all seek to present a nuanced, non-dramatic but sympathetic engagement with the events of the Imperial period. Told over a period of years, Byun followed a group of former sex slaves in their search for justice as well as financial security. The films were internationally critical hits and are extensively used in university classes globally. All the films seek to offer not only a testament to the events that took place in the respective women’s lives but also how the events of the Imperial period define the post-Imperial present. The films offer an in-depth examination on how the women and the broader issue of sexual slavery has been treated in postcolonial Korea. This issue has become especially controversial in the last couple of years (writing this in 2016). On 28 December 2015, the Japanese and Korean foreign ministers announced that a ‘final and irreversible deal’ had been made regarding the issue of the sex slaves. Abe Shinzō issued a verbal apology and the Foundation

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for Reconciliation and Healing, supported by 1 billion yen from Japan, is planned to both care for the remaining women and distribute financial compensation to the surviving women and the families of deceased former sex slaves. For many Koreans, including the remaining women themselves, this deal has not been greeted with enthusiasm. They see the agreement as allowing Japan to ‘buy’ her way out of genuine wartime apologies and feel that the Park Guen-hye’s government made the deal to further Korea’s economic and political relations with little regard for public opinion. With a deal that is ‘final and irreversible’, the expectation from Japan is that the government will now actively discourage references to, and discussions about, the sex slaves in popular media.3 In short, they feel the matter is closed. What the treatment of the former sex slaves in both politics and popular culture illustrates is that, just as it was in the Imperial moment, gender, ethnic and class dynamics were reproduced and reinforced in the post-Imperial moment. Those who suffered most under the Japanese occupation continue to be minoritized in the postcolonial and post-war dialogues. The collective national memory, it seems will always elude those who often have the most need for justice.

Notes 1 The young singer, who belongs to Korean based multinational band TWICE was forced to apologize on international television for waving a Taiwanese flag on a television game show. 2 In the end, his lover will die in Lee’s stead as she detonates dynamite, killing groups of Japanese officials. Illustrating that these new visions are perhaps not as radical as one would hope, female sacrifice for both the national and the personal good is upheld and her death allows the male to become a fully committed resistance member. 3 Cho Jung-rae director of Spirits Homecoming (2015) in conversation with Chi YunShin Showroom Cinema, Sheffield, 28 October 2016. Cho was clear that he felt his film about the women had touched a nerve given the general discouragement from official channels about the continuing discussion of this issue.

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We did away with the pre-war emperor system and put the peace constitution in its place… . Yet, I (and perhaps many others) can’t seem to escape this suspicion that even now, in many areas of society, we are being peacefully and quietly obliterated as nameless articles of consumption… . Peel back a layer of skin and what do we find breathing and pulsating there, but the same old sealed national system of ideology. – (Murakami Haruki – interview in Marco Polo, 1994) As with her former territories, memories about the Imperial period have been heavily influenced by the geopolitical landscape of Japan as it has altered over the decades between 1945 and the present day. The debate on Japan’s wartime responsibilities in Western political frames tended to emerge only after the end of the Cold War, since it was deemed unnecessary to critique one of the few allies the United States had in that region (Hilgenberg 1993). This chapter will explore Japan’s cinematic history with regard to the colonial and wartime period. Charting the main trends, themes, and genres that have been utilized in the last seventy years of cinema, we can see that a majority of Japan’s approaches have changed very little since 1945. I will conclude with an examination of how the war has been remembered in the cinema of Okinawa and Zainichi Koreans residing in Japan and will explore whether we can see any diversion from the dominant narratives coming from mainstream Japan.

Under the stars and stripes: American and Japan in the post-war period The American occupation led to a ban on debates about wartime responsibility in favour of an emphasis on the democratic future Japan could look forward to.

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This process has been referred to as a curious type of ‘collective amnesia’ as the colonial and wartime events were repressed and ignored (Rose 2005; Lai 2013). While there has indeed been a process of ‘forgetting’, Orr notes, this ‘amnesia’ was not wholesale; rather, the ‘amnesia was intermittent and often only partial, (2001: 173). Japan’s approach to this period can best be described as a process of ‘frozen memories’ where the national process of remembering the Imperial past was beset by silence and an unwillingness to engage with the topic. Therefore ‘silence is a space where nobody speaks what everybody knows, and it is an area which is socially regulated, socially preserved and socially destroyed’ (Winter quoted in Rothermund 2015: 5). Katō Norihiro’s after-the-defeat debate discourse, while certainly deserving some of the criticism levelled at it, does offer some insights into certain cultural patterns with regard to Japan’s remembrance of the Imperial period. For Katō the period after the Japanese defeat in the Second World War led to a ‘personality split’: a division between those who supported the post-war constitution and those who kept a highly conservative desire for the pre-war systems of government and society. Katō saw the division along the lines of those who were ‘outward looking’ and therefore more willing to embrace external/foreign influences in the construction of the post-war state and those who were ‘inward looking’ and ‘grounded upon such traditions such as the homeland, the emperor, and the purity of the Japanese ethos’ (quoted in Tetsuya 2005: 194). This split, while internal in nature, raised a more important question about wartime responsibility. For those who wished to remain aligned with pre-war systems, accepting wartime events responsibly was an anathema. For those who looked outwards, the war seemed to become a necessary blip on the path to development and reconstruction. For these people, the future was more important than a debate on the ‘why, how and what’ of the past. Either way, wartime reconciliation, and indeed reparation, was not undertaken. Having said this, writers and intellectuals in Japan are well aware that an examination of the colonies is vital to fully understand Japan’s Imperial past. Iwanami Press published its impressive Modern Japan and its Colonies in 1992 that contained a vast number of articles devoted to the study of the interaction between Japan and her former colonies. Later studies such as Komagome Takeshi’s The Cultural Integration of the Japanese Empire (1996) and Oguma’s vast tract on the Boundaries of ‘Japanessness’ (1998), all contributed to extensive discussions inside Japan on her colonial past. Komagome, in particular, is key for articulating that the colonies were as influential on the metropole as the

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metropole was on the colonies. Japan’s position, as part of a postcolonial East Asia, has been fraught with debate and tension since, as Takeda Seiji comments, The issue of the Emperor system and the Showa emperor’s war responsibly … have long been discussed in a binary mode. The answer to the question has automatically been determined by political stance – either ‘progressive’ or ‘conservative.’ (2000: 7)

Tomiyama Ichiro (1996 quoted in Hanasaki 2007: 184) states that ‘before discussing post-coloniality, we must problematize the absence of any basic discussion about the process of decolonization and the abandonment of the responsibly for decolonization in Japan’. The sudden end of Japan’s Empire in August 1945 meant that Japan lost her territories overnight without having to undergo the longer process of decolonization that nations such as France and the UK underwent. The sudden removal of territories simultaneous to Japan’s humiliating defeat resulted in the two events becoming irreversibly intertwined. As Ukai Satoshi observes, ‘The absence of the (post) colonial question is directly linked to the memories of colonial rule are deeply intersected by the memories of the Second World War’ (1998: 45). Therefore, in Japan, ‘the memories of war and the memoirs of colonial rule are overlapped in a temporal and spatial continuum. It is a structure that suppresses memories of the war and concomitantly supresses the memories of colonial rule’ (Ukai 1998: 45). As will be explored later, when a process of memorializing has taken place inside Japan, the focus on the war has all too often removed the spectre of the colonial from the discourse. Inside the cinematic sphere wartime events are to a great extent still the main focus rather than Japan’s Imperial past, and rather than developing the narrative, it has remained remarkably static over the decades. One of the key reasons for this was that Japan has continued to define her post-war self in relation to the United States rather than to the rest of Asia. Naoki Sakai comments that the United States ‘has continued to dominate Japan by endowing the Japanese with the grounds of their nationalism. It is through the apparent sense of national uniqueness and cultural distinctiveness that people in Japan have been subordinate to the US hegemony in East Asia’ (1997). Japan’s alignment with a state of modern nationhood aligned with her Western allies over her East Asian neighbours has, in its main ethos of Japanese superiority, not experienced serious rupture since the pre-war period. This, in turn, has resulted in a ‘claim to cultural authority’ (Yoo 2012: 27) that still permeates Japan vis-àvis her relationship with the rest of East Asia.

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In terms of cinema, the linkage with the United States has clearly impacted the post-war period of remembrance. Japan was heavily affected by American rhetoric of democratic development and neo-liberal market ideologies. In the aftermath of defeat, Japan entered a period of tremendous hardship where starvation and privation was rife and all levels of cinematic production were directly affected by the occupation. In her sustained and impressive study on the Japanese film industry under Japanese occupation, Hirano Kyoko notes that there was a dual policy in operation. The first aim was to promote suitable themes for film production that would exalt the main tenets that the US occupiers wished to convey to the Japanese population. The second was a policy of rigorous censorship to ensure that the first aim could be successful. Initially, the censorship was pre-production and all scripts and film projects was examined. This was relaxed in June 1949 until the end of the occupation, and censorship took place only post-production. From the outset, the CIE (the unit established to both produce and censor cinema in the occupation period), would produce a series of ‘desirable subjects’ that the film studios were to follow, including a broad emphasis on peace, free discussion, respect, tolerance and a focus on Japan’s new post-war constitution and future. In 1945 a list of prohibited topics was issued, including presenting any positive visions of militarism, ‘chauvinism’, anti-American sentiment, approval of suicide among a variety of other topics (Hirano 1992: 44–56). There would be another more telling and informative change in that the Americans would insist on the banning of the name Greater East Asian War/Daitōa Sensō and instead insist on the usage of the term ‘pacific war’. This change in the lexicon would, in its very ethos, allow the Imperial legacy to be marginalized in favour of more simplistic narratives that saw Japanese Imperial aggression in East Asia gradually reduced in stature when compared to Pearl Harbour and the subsequent atomic bombings. These regulations would, for obvious reasons, have a serious impact on the initial filmic remembrances of the wartime events. Where criticism did occur, it was couched in very veiled terms and it is often very unclear whether the criticism is levelled at the government that led Japan to war or the American occupation. This highly opaque nature of debate continued throughout a series of films made after the war that engaged with the everyday hardships being faced by Japanese citizens. These ranged from a focus on the economic to the sexual but presented little serious discussion on the reasons why these events  took place and on the impact that the post-war/colonial moment had outside Japan. Critically acclaimed films such as Twenty Four Eyes/Nijū-shi no Hitomi (1952), The Human Condition Trilogy/Ningen no jōken (1959, 1959, 1961) and

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Harp of Burma/Biruma no tategoto (1956), focuses on the individual struggling to survive inside the Imperial system but a focus on basic humanity and the promotion of tolerance and universalism does little to actually represent, let alone apologize, for Japan’s actions. While numerous products can be examined to support this notion (and indeed an earlier version of this chapter of 20,000 words just doing that), it is perhaps more helpful to focus on a specific case study. The impact that the censorship codes and wider cultural tensions had on post-war memory and engagement can be most clearly illustrated in the filmic saga of Taijiro Tamura’s novella Shunpunden. The original 1947 novel Shunpunden tells the tale of a relationship between a soldier on the Manchurian front and a local Korean prostitute. The short story itself received critical censorship and was, rather remarkably, dedicated to Korean prostitutes who had served the Imperial army in China and other territories. The first film version of Shunpunden, entitled Escape at Dawn/Akatsuki no dasso (1950), would keep the narrative of an ill-fated affair between a soldier and a woman in a Manchurian army town, but would have changes in two key elements. The first key distinction is the ending. The censorship codes ensured that the love-struck couple dies by machine gun fire as they flee, rather than the suicide of the original novel. The second and perhaps more important is the altering of the nationality and the occupation of the female lead. The initial censorship on the first script at Escape at Dawn meant that, in the film version, the prostitute had been transformed into a travelling entertainer called Harumi, with her nationality firmly confirmed as Japanese.1 Hirano posits the reason for the change from Korean to Japanese was to avoid incurring negative Korean sentiment (1992). However, the nationality change opens up wider issues of war guilt and the inability to fully acknowledge the horrific female sexual abuse that had taken place in military bases. The excising of the Korean body from the narrative allows the narrative of Japanese victimhood to continue unimpeded as other nationalities are reduced to minor characters or removed altogether. The transformation of the prostitute from Korean to Japanese moved the debate away from the acknowledgement of the abuse suffered by Japanese colonial subjects (Tamura’s original aim in the novel) to one that engages with the abuses heaped on Japanese low-ranking soldiers by their own commanders vis-à-vis a brutal and corrupt military. The treatment of low-ranking soldiers by their commanders was close to the heart of the director Taniguchi who had served on the Chinese front and had

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been a POW in China. Actor Ikebe Ryō had also been in the army in China and the South Pacific. Yamaguchi’s desire to never make a film that would offend the Chinese people would ensure that Escape at Dawn is a film that positively endorses Chinese behaviour during the period. When the Chinese insurgents capture Mikami, he is taken to a hospital and given treatment. When a Chinese officer arrives, he speaks Japanese and, compared to his Japanese counterpart, is tidy, practical and sober. There is no demonization of the Chinese citizens; instead, they are shown in a highly positive light compared to the Japanese army. The soldiers in Escape at Dawn are far removed from the glorious heroes of the wartime period. Drunken debauchery is the norm and morals are abysmally low. The military order has broken down and we see Harumi forced onto a table to sing for the soldiers. She is singing in Japanese since her real-life days of Chinese impersonation are over. This is a mature Yamaguchi, dealing with the wartime events and the defeat of Japan and the series of apologies she would make after the war can be found germane to this film. For David Desser, Tamura’s novel was ‘an ideological rejection of the militarist and feudal ideology’ and he goes on to comment that it was felt that ‘eroticism, understood as a kind of thinking with the body, might replace feudalism’ (1994: 312), For the 1950s version censorship would ensure that this erotic focus was negated in favour of politically correct melodrama. However, moving a decade forward, Suzuki Seijun’s take on the film, clearly entitled Story of a Prostitute/Shunpuden (1965) would keep at its heart the highly erotic element of Tamura’s novel. The female lead is firmly a prostitute once more and a Korean prostitute is included in the narrative (although she is not the main focus). The plot remains highly similar in that a group of women travel to an army stronghold and ply their trade. Unlike the film’s previous incarnation, this film is allowed to play out some reference to the racial dynamics in the treatment of the Korean prostitute. We see her rejected by many of the troops who prefer to stand in long lines to be serviced by the Japanese women rather than pay money to a Korean. She is excluded by the other women and left in penury when her one loyal customer is killed. We never learn her fate and she vanishes from the story before the film’s conclusion. As with Escape at Dawn, the Chinese soldiers are shown as compassionate and willing to help the couple despite the Japanese army’s treatment of Chinese citizens. However, the use of China and Korea within Story of a Prostitute is not about visualizing Japan’s crimes upon East Asia. Rather, they are used to articulate the crimes the Japanese military committed against her own people, in this case, the low-ranking soldiers and the women who loved them.

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Where the film radically departs from the earlier version is in the filmic style. While Escape at Dawn is linear and traditionally shot, Story of a Prostitute engages with the cinematographic freewheeling that would come to mark this sub-section of Japanese film-makers from the period. The film’s anti-war sentiment is imbued with a deep sense of anti-establishment and a profoundly anti-traditional patriarchy that dominates the Japanese New Wave. Films such as Pigs and Battleship/Buta to gunkan (1961) Night and Fog in Japan/Nihon no Yoru to Kiri (1960) and Cruel Story of Youth/Seishun Zankoku Monogatari (1960), Under the Flag of the Rising Sun/Gunki hatameku moto ni (1972) would continue this approach with levels of intense criticism of the government and social structures of post-war Japan. However, despite their rebellious and antiestablishment aims, Japan’s colonial and Imperial past rarely features inside these film texts and they are inward looking rather than moving the gaze beyond the borders of Japan to the legacy Japan has left across Asia.

Shin-Toho and a return to a heroic war It is important to balance films made and the films that actually succeed at the box office. The films that people chose to literally go and see are a good indication of popular opinion. While the works of directors such as Ichikawa Kon (Harp of Burma, Fires on the Plains/Nobi (1959)) were critically acclaimed, they were not the average cinemagoers’ choice. A series of films made inside the ShinToho studio throughout the 1950s and 1960s would prove to be more popular with audiences and, ironically, have a narrative that would seem much more in keeping with the wartime approach to nationhood and combat. Films such as Human Torpedo Sacrifice/Ningen Gyorai Kaiten (1955) and Emperor Meiji and the Great Russo-Japanese War/Shintōhō’s Meiji Tennō to Nichiro Daisensō (1957) glorified the military past of Japan. In keeping with Yoo’s argument about post-war Japanese refusal to engage with East Asia, the films are almost exclusively situated in the United States/Japan axis and, as Dick Stegewens notes, where a colonial nation is mentioned (Princess of Asia under War Clouds/Sen’un Aija no joō (1957) and The Silent Battlefield at Dawn/Shizuka nari akatsuki no senjō (1959)), the focus is on pro-Japanese subjects. In his extended examination of these revisionist films, Stegewens notes that they are consistent in their refusal to acknowledge Japanese aggression and instead refocus the cause of the war onto Western Imperial expansion in East Asia.

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There is a clear rationalizing of Japan’s Empire and a process of displacing guilt onto the Western powers who are construed as threatening Japanese borders and security. Japan was no longer occupied by the United States and, in defiance of the post-war cinematic codes, the films recycled the term Greater East Asian War/Daitōa Sensō with films openly using the term in their titles and content. Oguma states that the ‘myth of the homogenous nation’ was reinforced and re-inscribed throughout this period (1998). This process, when taken in tandem with the refusal to confront Japan’s activities in the war and her colonial past, resulted in ‘the effacing and denying the traces of those who “once were Japanese”’ (Ching 2000: 768). In Chapter 3, the ways that various Japanese ethnographers desired to place themselves within the dynamic of science and investigation rather than colonialism has some resonance here in the post-war period. Mary Louise Pratt’s ‘anti-conquest’ is once again returned to via the process seen in the Shin-Toho films, namely the continuance of seeing Japan as unique and separate from the wider Asian discourses. We see former Imperial subjects ‘seek to secure their own innocence in the same moment they are asserting their hegemony’ (1992: 9). Positing a clear narrative of Japan’s victimhood at the hands of the Allies, while refusing to explore her own responsibilities to other Asian nations, was key in this process. The melodramatic Mothers of the Sugamo Prison/Sugamo no haha (1952) would be an ideal example of this. Here we see the trial and tribulations a mother undergoes when three of her sons have been killed in the war and the fourth is arrested for war crimes as soon as he appears on Japanese soil. We are given to understand that, like many of the war criminals represented in mainstream Japanese cinema, her son has done nothing to seriously ‘merit’ the 30-year prison term and, as Anderson and Richie note, the film and those like it, ‘sought to prove that imprisoning mothers’ sons was very immoral since their captivity caused mothers so much anguish’ (1982: 221). I want to be a shellfish/Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai would also deal with the uncomfortable events of the war crime tribunals. Originally released as a both a television drama in 1958 and then a popular film in 1959 (there have also been both television remakes in 1994 and 2007 respectively and another film in 2008), I want to be a Shellfish would once again tell the tale of a convicted war criminal whom we discover never actually committed murder (his bullet only grazes the prisoner) and had only participated in the execution due to pressure from his superiors. The dubious moral grounds on which he is being executed becomes the focus. The fact that such controversial topics were part of popular

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cinema indicates that ‘the situation of class B and C war criminals had become a mainstream cultural topic (Wilson 2013: 552). This engagement with the legacy of the war crimes was not about Japan accepting responsibility. Instead, the focus remains on Japan as a victim, with her colonial past notably missing from the debate.2

‘We need men prepared to live … if no one tries to survive, our dying will be in vain’: Imperial hegemony reinstated from the 2000s onwards From the 1980s to the 2000s historical dramas exploring this Imperial period tended to be seen more on television than in film, something outside of the scope of this study. Films that did emerge tended to keep to the similar narratives already identified. There was a mixture of revisionist films that extol the virtues of Empire (The Greater Empire of Japan/Dai-Nippon teikoku [1983], Zero Fighter Burns/Zerosen moyu [1984]) and a few features that sought to refute this approach. Shanghai Rhapsody/Shanhai bansu kingu (1984) and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence/Senjō no Merī Kurisumasu (1983) are two notable examples. The 1990s saw a new interest in kamikaze films (Desser 2016: 84) with products like Summer of the Moonlight Sonata/Gekkō no natsu (1993) and Wings of a Man/Ningen no stubasa (1995) gaining box-office interest. Despite this, the 1990s tended to shy away from this period as a popular topic. However, in the last decade (writing this in 2016) a series of big budget box office have brought the war back to the Japanese cinematic screen. For Those we Love/Ore wa, kimi no tame ni koso shini ni iku (2007), Yamato/Otoko-tachi no Yamato (2005) Lorelei/Rōrerai (2005), Sea without Exit/Deguchi no nai umi (2006), Battle under Orion/Manatsu no Orion (2009), The Eternal Zero/Eien no Zero (2013) are all remarkable in their similarities of approach to the wartime events and their ability to draw audiences. Yamato grossed over ¥5.1 billion in ticket sales making it the best-selling Japanese war film for some years, Lorelei was the ninth highest grossing Japanese film of 2005, The Eternal Zero earned over ¥8.76 billion at the box office and was the second highest grossing Japanese film in 2013. What these figures show is that the demand for wartime features is certainly buoyant, but, rather than indicating a new rise in Japanese awareness of their past, these films do little to change the domain narratives related to the war as I will now explore.

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All the films focus on the notion of ‘salvation’ on both a personal and a national level. We see a symbolic and often difficult personal journey undertaken; this, in turn, acts as a metaphor for the wider nation. In Eternal Zero we see the descendants of the soldiers try to discover the ‘truth’ about their forefathers’ actions in the wartime period. For Those we Love (2007) explored the legacy of the tokkōtai or kamikaze pilots. Orion tells the tale of a granddaughter exploring her grandfather’s wartime activity. These journeys all tend to work in the same way. Via the stories told to them, the younger generation, and by extension, the audience, are shown a honourable, noble and highly masculine vision of Imperial Japan. This vision of the noble self-sacrificial solider is an exact echo of the films of the 1930s and 1940s. This fact perhaps illustrates the lack of development in the Japanese narratives around this period. The one narrative difference is that instead of fighting to maintain the Empire (as they were in the 1940s), in keeping with the ‘after the defeat’ discourse, all the films have the men lay down their lives not for Imperial Japan but for the positive future that the post-war moment will bring. Yamato tells us that the men of the Yamato are laying down an ‘Eternal Foundation for the Empire’, and it is made clear that it is not the Empire the soldiers of the time were envisioning but the peaceful and prosperous contemporary Japan. This is very clearly stated via the speech Chief Nariwaki makes to the brawling and terrified men on the eve of battle: Nippon has neglected the idea of process. Spirituality has been valued above anything else. Without progress, nothing prospers. History shows us. The Satsuma and the Choshu clans were defeated by modern weapons so they dropped isolationism bought guns and beat the shogunate. Defeat brings us understanding. That is the only way Japan can be helped. Achieve understanding today and Japan will be saved. We are pioneers in the rebirth of our nation.

This is not a repression of the past but a misrecognition of the past as seen through the lens of nostalgia. The old sailor Kamio states at the end of the film, ‘I didn’t know the meaning of the last 60 years’ and the film allows him, and vicariously, the audience to gain closure on events without accepting any sense of national guilt or acknowledgement that other nations also suffered. Sea without Exit and Battle Under Orion (2009) follows a very similar narrative to Yamato but this time both films focus on Japan’s submarine corps. Orion shows the war as composed of a dialogue between United States and Japan rather than seeing it as part of Japan’s wider actions in East Asia. The plot hinges

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on following the last battles of submarine I-77 and the American submarine chasing her. The film becomes an interplay between the two captains as they attempt to destroy each other while maintaining their own individual codes of honour. Like with Yamato, Captain Kuramoto instructs his men to attempt to reject the narrative of death without purpose. He states that war should only be conducted among soldiers – ensuring women and children to be spared. He refused to allow suicide missions and comments that ‘we are fighting to live. Humans are not weapons. We only have one life and its precious.’ On the captain’s last night on land, he is presented with the score of ‘Manatsu no Orion’. It is this score that connects the two captains across the years from the eve of the battle to the contemporary period. Reflecting on the kaitan torpedoes, the US captain on the Percival (the ship chasing the submarine) comments, ‘The Japanese navy is supposed to be the best and bravest opponent out there. Professional sailor bound by honour who fought smart and fair. Then they create a creature like that. What has driven them to this madness?’ The usage of the term madness operates to remove rational responsibility from wartime Japan. In the same fashion as the American film Hunt for the Red October, the music drifts across the water connecting the two crews. While Hunt for the Red October connected Cold War America and Russia, Orion memorializes the conflict between the United States and Japan while removing wider East Asia completely. While Yamato dealt with the navy, Orion with the submarine units, The Eternal Zero (2013) focused on the most well-known Japanese battle tactic, the use of tokkōtai or kamikaze pilots. In common with both Orion and Yamato, the film starts in the present day and follows the tale of soldier’s descendants as they try to discover the truth about their ancestor, in this case, their grandfather. A young man Kentarō Oishi is unaware that his mother’s biological father had died as a kamikaze pilot in the war and this discovery sets him and his sister on path aiming to discover his ‘true’ family history. This film follows the life and death of Miyabe Kyūzō (Junichi Okada of the boy band V6 as an added attraction for the teen audience) a Zero pilot who, unlike his colleagues, is determined to survive the war and return home to his beloved wife and daughter. Like Yamato and Orion, the focus is on the desire and need to stay alive despite the official rhetoric of the glory of death that we see surrounding the soldiers. None of these films debate the reasons for Japan’s involvement in the war. All avoid any direct mention of Japan’s Empire in favour of an opening intergenerational memory pathway that allows the descendants of the soldiers to take pride in their actions of their ancestors. Eternal Zero was one of the biggest success

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stories at the Japanese box office in 2013. It was number one in the charts for over eight weeks and became one of the highest grossing films of all time in Japan to date. The desire for the Japanese cinemagoer to engage with this version of the wartime events perhaps speaks volumes to the lack of progression in the postImperial dialogues. The prime minister of the time, Abe Shinzō, who has been clear in his desire to reinvigorate ‘traditional’ Japanese values and pride, strongly supported the film, illustrating the conservative cultural milieus that such a film was created and succeeded within. We see the conservative arguments reiterated in the big screen, firstly, that the young people do not know the ‘truth’ and secondly, it is important that those overseas (nominally the United States) understand the correct vision of Japan’s war. As Kentarō attends a dinner with his peers, we see a debate emerge on kamikazes versus contemporary suicide bombers. The female members state they don’t want to think about such things and the male partygoers are fairly disparaging of their motivations. They seem to see the kamikaze as nothing more than deranged nationalists and as oneperson notes ‘to foreigners, the kamikaze is no different from the suicide bombers of modern day Middle East’. Angrily, Kentarō defends the kamikaze missions as ‘totally different from terrorists targeting innocent citizens’. Via this claiming of innocence for the pilots, Pratt’s ‘seeing man’ of anti-conquest narratives is alive and well in Japanese contemporary cinema. After hearing the tale, Kentarō watches all the contemporary citizens happily living their lives and imagines a zero plane flying over the streets of modern day Tokyo linking the happy present with the sacrifice of his grandfather’s generation. The film concludes that their death was ‘ample declaration of love’ as opposed to a nation’s desire for Empire. One of the critics of The Eternal Zero was Studio Ghibli’s director Miyazaki Hayao who criticized the film for glorifying the kamikaze fighters. That same year Miyazaki released his anime exploring the Zero plane program – The Wind Rises/Kaze Tachinu. In a similar vein to Grave of the Fireflies, this anime focuses on an individual residing in Imperial Japan. In The Wind Rises, the lead character Jirō is an aspiring engineer who becomes one of the leading plane designers in pre-war Japan. Jirō becomes the mastermind behind the Zero plane that would become the leading symbol of Japanese modern warfare. The film charts Jirō’s life from a young boy witnessing the great Kanto Earthquake, to a young engineer traveling to Nazi Germany before ending on his greatest achievement as the Zero plane’s designer. We see Jirō gradually realize that his

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work of engineering art will ultimately be used for mass destruction despite his own pacifistic tendencies. The film concludes with Jirō watching the burning countryside while engaging in an imaginary conversation with Italian airplane designer Giovanni Caprioni. Caprioni comforts him noting that Jirō did achieve his ultimate ambition of designing a beautiful aircraft. While the film has many aesthetic merits and is clearly anti-war in a wider sense, the focus on a remarkable individual means that it manages to avoid any serious discussion about Japan’s Imperial responsibility. We see the Kanto Earthquake in vivid and remarkable detail but the massacre of the Korean enclave that took place after is missing from the narrative; the Nazi approach to non-Germans is examined but Japan’s own feelings towards other nations and her own colonial subjects remain hidden. In short, The Wind Rises fails to debate and consider Japan’s own actions in this period and in that sense can be seen in a similar category to films like the Eternal Zero and Yamato.

Variations in the narrative The Imperial period does not mean the same to all citizens of Japan. The most prominent differences can be located in the remembrance process that has taken place in Okinawa and with Japanese citizens of zainichi/Korean inheritance. This last section will explore how the mainstream Japanese approaches have not managed to reflect the experiences of these groups, and will discuss the films that can be considered as coming from the margins of Japan. Okinawa was Japan’s first Imperial territory and, although she continues to be an important part of the Japanese nation, the interplay between Japan and Okinawa has a long and complicated history. The Okinawan citizens suffered tremendously at the hands of the Japanese soldiers during the process that saw Okinawa join Japan in 1897, and, as Kyle Ikeda comments, Okinawa continues ‘to have a complicated relationship with both mainland Japan and the United Sates’ (2014: 6). This trauma ‘has become shaped by the geographical proximity to the sites of the traumatic past and the condition of military occupation by a wartime antagonist, as well as survivors reintegration into the nation state of its historical colonial oppressor’ (2014: 7). Although treated better than the Korean or Taiwanese citizens, Okinawans were not seen as full and proper Japanese citizens and experienced prejudice in everyday Imperial life. Conversely, Okinawans were also members of the Imperial army that had acted as the colonial aggressors

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in many other nations. Therefore, Okinawa was simultaneously a victim and a perpetrator of the Imperial process. The most notable film to have emerged from Okinawa to directly engage with the Imperial period is Imai Tadashi’s The Tower of Lilies/Himeyuri no tō (1953). Remade in 1995 as part of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, The Tower of Lilies focuses on the students and teachers of the schoolgirl nursing corps who died at in the Battle of Okinawa. This film, for several scholars, has come to personify the issues in the post-war engagement with Okinawa and the Imperial period. While the film is undoubtedly anti-war, and in that respect is highly successful in the debunking of the ideas of honour that lead the girls to commit suicide, what the film fails to do is posit a critique of the Imperial period that led to such narratives. The romanticism that is involved in the demise of these virginal girl heroines is something that remains a central element of the film. The body of the girl becomes the site by which the wider trauma of the nation will be enacted. The interplay between the young girls singing and dancing together in a stream in the early part of the 1995 film and the dead and dying bodies that the film ends on is a stark and unrelenting examination of the horror of war. In one scene the girls run screaming from a US plane that mercilessly machine-guns them as they flee across a muddy field. As with the pre-war films, girls become the means via which the politics of the period is illuminated. The dead and dying bodies of the young women become the symbol of the trauma of war and the beautiful Okinawan setting only highlights the futility of the wartime period. Matsuda Masao has argued that in The Tower of Lilies we see Okinawa ‘as the perfect place for declaring the tragedy of war, in a word, Okinawans wandering about Okinawan landscapes amidst the ravages of war’ (1991: 110) For Matsuda, the Okinawans were reduced to nothing more than tragic objects through which the universalizing horror of war could be illustrated. Yomota Inuhiko criticizes the film that, although offering a clear anti-war stance, Imai was unable to grasp the fact ‘that Okinawans during the war were subject to linguistic and identity formation under the discriminatory gaze of the mainlanders’ (Yomota quoted in Gerow 2003: 303). Gerow himself continues this criticism noting that the film is unable to deal with the fact there was a profound difference between how Japanese and Okinawan citizens experienced the Imperial and the wartime period. The Okinawans have been doubly affected, firstly by the colonization of Japan and then later by the neo-colonial dynamic of the United States. Okinawan

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cinema struggles to deal with this interplay and containing legacy. For those in Okinawa, the day-to-day reality of the Imperial past is surrounding them in the form of the US military bases and installations that are littered across the land. Analysing Okinawa through a postcolonial lens has therefore become a key element in discussing the region. While literature has been a fruitful area for analysis, cinema has also come under more critique in the last few years from this angle. Inside the cinema world, Okinawa has often been seen as the site of seductive exoticism that appeals to a broad Japanese audience. The Okinawan Boom, personified by products such as Hotel Hibiscus/Hoteru haibisukasu (2002) and Nabi’s Love (both from Okinawan director Nakae Yuji), articulates Okinawa as part of what Mike Ko has labelled the process of ‘cosmetic multiculturalism’ (2013). This process pays homage to an inclusive, happy and varied Japan while masking the real oppressive injustices that had been delivered upon Okinawa in the past and the present. With reference to this desire to hide the past, Gerow sees most cases of cinema set in, or from Okinawa, as unable to escape the twin poles of a desiring touristic gaze and a nationalist narrative that seeks to obscure the past. He cites Imamura’s Profound Desire of the Gods/Kamigami no Fukaki Yokubō (1968) as an ideal example where the natural space of Okinawa is utilized ‘to imagine a Japanese self in opposition to Western modernity’ (2003: 277). The almost ethnographic examination of Okinawa harks back to the Imperial cinema that sought to establish Okinawa and the native Okinawans as primitive and nonmodern entities that, by their very existence, promoted and supported the Imperial desire to modernize and control. The most notable Okinawan director is, of course, Takamine Gō, whose various feature films and documentaries have all sought to present a vision of Okinawa that is defined as clearly separate from Japan in both language and culture and, yet, at the same time intertwined. While Mika Ko in her study Japanese Cinema and Otherness charts, in far more detail than I can here, the intricacies of Takamine’s work, what becomes clear is that Okinawan memories of the Imperial period are not simply an extension of Japan’s but a complex interweaving of discourses of nationhood, language, culture, history, globalization and localization. In both Paradise View/Paradaisu byū and Untamagirū Okinawan is the main linguafranca as Japanese is shown as the simultaneously the language of the ‘other’ as well as the language that Okinawa is forced to define herself by. In his writing on cinema Takamine, himself, seems to articulate the very crux at the heart of

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postcolonial Okinawan identity. While talking about a scene in his film featuring Okinawan independence fighters he notes: I am wondering why we did not sing the Internationale in the Okinawan language during the student movement days of pre-reversion. … While advocating an anti-Japan and anti-reversion status, we were, after all, thinking in Japanese.

What we see is the cinematic articulation of a contemporary Okinawan identity caught in a postcolonial moment vis-à-vis their relationship with both the Japanese mainland and the United States. While Japan has been able to ignore the colonial past, it has been far more difficult for Okinawa, as they continue to live in a postcolonial present. Back in mainland Japan where discussions about the legacy of the colonial period have occurred, they have tended to be found in the works by zainichi film-makers (which is perhaps not surprising, as experiences of the historical and contemporary inequalities still plague those of Korean descent living in Japan) or in the works of a very limited number of non-zainichi directors who have been vocal in their support for this minority group. As one of Japan’s leading politicized film-makers the plight of the Korean citizens in Japan was brought to the screen by Oshima Nagisa. Oshima’s 1963 made-for-television documentary The Forgotten Imperial Army/Wasurerareta Kogun was a direct questioning of the post-war processes that saw Japanese soldiers of Korean nationality denied war pensions and compensation. For Oshima, the fate of these Korean Imperial subjects was something that he felt Japan should be ashamed of, and he would return to this topic in 1968 with Death By Hanging/Kōshikei. Death by Hanging opens with a blow-by-blow account of the processes of an execution. Told in stark and unemotional terms this introduction sets up the strange premise of this film – the prisoner does not die. Despite the efficient hanging his heart keeps beating, and the film follows the prison officials as they struggle to deal with the legal and moral issues of an executed man who does not die. The film offers a clear presentation of the trauma that Japan has enacted upon Korean bodies. When R’s sister arrives she comments to the guards, ‘You are touching Korean skin which bears the long and painful history of the Korean race. … here are no women of my age from South Korea who do not bear such scars.’ His sister then states that R is innocent of his crimes as he was a victim himself of Japanese nationalism. She rejects the Japanese law, given that R himself did not want to be born in Japan. She comments that ‘R’s crime was a Korean crime.

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Your crime is the only way for a Korean to wreak revenge upon the Japanese. In the name of the Japanese nation, the Japanese have murdered innumerable Koreans. However, we, who belong nowhere, can only take personal revenge upon the Japanese.’ She states, ‘This crude imperialism that still thrives today, among you, officials, you are representatives of Japan who are nothing but bloodhounds of imperial authority’. The guards fail to comprehend what she is saying and continue to refuse to acknowledge their past guilt. Since R has already been executed for his crime the judge eventually decides he is free to go. However, the blinding light which greets him as he opens the door is a stark reminder of his inability to ever truly become part of the Japanese national narrative. As the judge states to him, ‘The nation is invisible but now you can see it and cannot escape its existence.’ On realizing this R returns to the cell and submits to his hanging. Oshima’s film reflects an inability to move beyond the Imperial moment. Just as R is trapped in his position as a Korean colonial subject, the guards are also trapped in the Imperial past. At one point the guard notes that, although time has passed since the end of the war for him, and by extension the wider Japanese nation, the old Imperial stereotypes of lowly Koreans versus the ‘superior’ Japanese are still true. This idea of Japan unable to envision Korea in anything other than a subordinate position would be referenced in other products. The River of the Stranger/Ihōjin no kawa (1975) contains flashback sequences that offer a debate on the cruelties of the colonial period juxtaposed with the main narrative of the day-to-day inequalities and insults offered to a young zainichi Tokyo residents. Later films such as All under the moon/tsuki wa docchi ni dete iru (1993), Go (2001) and Break Through!/Pacchigi! (2005) likewise visualize the contemporary situation of zainichi Koreans as one that is continually negatively marked by an Imperial past that Japan refuses to engage with. The Firefly/Hotaru (2001) saw Takakura Ken take the lead role in Furuhata Yasuo’s engagement with the wartime past of Japan and Korea. The Firefly directly creates a dialogue between the colonial past and contemporary (1980–1990s) Japan by focusing on the legacy of a young Korean fighter pilot Kanayama/Kim Sonje who died on a kamikaze mission. The story follows an elderly fisherman Yamaoka, who is driven by a series of events to return the personal possessions of his Korean wartime friend. Accompanied by his dying wife Tomoko (who was also Kanayama’s fiancée), Yamaoka visits Kanayama’s family. With the aid of a translator Yamaoka greets the family but is angrily repudiated by an uncle

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who demands to know why Kim Sonje, a Korean national, failed to return home while a Japanese man lived. Yamaoka apologizes and reconfirms his friendship and love for Kanayama by reading Kanayama’s will, in which he states that he is flying not for Japan but for his family, other Korean families that he knows, and his Japanese fiancée Tomoko. Yamaoka then concludes with a rendition of Arirang that he heard Kanayama sing the night before he set out on his suicide mission. This display of Japanese atonement softens the family’s attitude towards Yamaoka. They allow Tomoko and Yamaoka to visit the grave of Kanayama’s parents as a stand in for Kanayama’s (who never received an official burial). The Japanese couple pay their respects to the unacknowledged colonial Korean soldier – something rarely done in Japanese cinema. The film features several historical figures including the historical figure of Tome Torihama, who ran a restaurant in Chiran frequented by the pilots before their missions (Tome would be the focus of the nationalistic For Those we Love a few years later). The figure of Kanayama can be read as a fictional amalgamation of the various Korean pilots who flew kamikaze missions. One, in particular, Second Lieutenant Fumihiro Mitsuyama, was reported to have sung Arirang to Tome before his death with the promise he would return as a firefly (Akabane and Ishii 2001: 156–69; Asahi Shimbun 1990: 27–8). While Hotaru was a huge hit in Japan, the film, despite all its strengths, still keeps to some common themes. The basic human connection between the Korean and Japanese pilots and the women they love ensure the film becomes a sentimental journey of human kindness and friendship rather than a serious discussion on the colonial past. While Kanayama is one of the film’s central figures, he ultimately serves as the means via which a Japanese man can gain peace in his old age, rather than the site of any serious debate on the nature of the processes via which he became a pilot. In many ways, you can trace the linkage from the films discussed in Chapter 3 directly to The Firefly. Kanayama’s motivations to participate in war were based on his desire to stand side-by-side with his Japanese brothers and defend a vision of Korea that is closely interlinked to Japan. The singing of Arirang is not a declaration of Korean independence but the use of a sentimental trope to bind Japan and Korea within a wartime memory that continues to allow Japan to escape from any real need to acknowledge her Imperial actions. The following year, Blood and Bones/Chi To Hon (2002) would examine lives of Korean citizen residing in Japan during the colonial period. Blood and Bones is based on the very violent novel by zainichi writer Yan Sok-il and was directed by Sai Yōichi. Sai’s previous film All under the Moon, also penned by Yan, had

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focused on the everyday abuses heaped on a zainichi taxi driver as he goes about his day-to-day business. Shifting to an earlier period what Blood and Bones manages to articulate is the lure that Japan held for many colonial citizens. The young Kim Shun-Pei departs from Korea in 1923 to move to the Osaka – one of the most common destinations of Korean economic migrants. Here he settles amid his fellow Koreans and begins a series of business ventures. He is a brutal figure who rapes his wife, viciously assaults his children, attempts to rape his daughter and abuses the wider Korean population via his work as a loan shark. He has multiple families with multiple women, often via rape. He eventually dies dreaming of the boat crossing to Japan he undertook in his youth. While Japan is oppressive and often cruel to the immigrants, it also offers the possibility of economic success. We see that for many older Korean citizens the Empire has become the only way of life they know. As Shun-pei’s brother Shinji simultaneously celebrates his marriage and departure to fight in the war, we have some impassioned subjects loudly singing patriotic songs and offering banzis cheers. The celebrations are hardly joyous and take a turn for the worse when a young man shouts out manzi, the traditional cheer of the Korean nation. He is viciously abused by the older patriots and forced to salute the Empire. We hear the indoctrination of the Imperial order echoed back in the words of the local Korean citizen as he claims ‘as sons of Empire Japanese and Koreans must fight as one’. The position that many Koreans found them selves in at the end of the Empire is highlighted when the same man is surrounded by and abused by a group of Korean-Japanese youth. ‘Crush the Imperial Collaboration. From 100 million patriots to 100 million penitents’, is shouted out by the Korean population in the Osaka enclave. The man who had berated the young manzi who shouted in the earlier scene is asked how many Koreans he sent to the war. Given his role in the military police on Jeju Island, Shinji is accused of being a war criminal and is only saved as a result of his brother’s fearsome reputation. For the older citizen, the reason for his allegiance to Japan was clear. ‘What choice did I have? I have no country’ he shouts over and over as he is beaten by his countrymen. The notion of not having a country is echoed throughout the film since the characters we follow, despite their proclamations of Korean independence, do not choose to return to Korea but instead stay to make their lives in Japan. The few who do go back, head to North Korea not South Korea and they are never heard from again. The idea of the republic of Korea is maintained in the mind of the émigrés but nothing tangible is ever presented. The slum remains the same

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throughout the decades, and the wider development of Japan seems to bypass the small urban area. They are left isolated from the mainstream community of the country they reside in, but are also unable to return to a country they have never been a part of. At the film’s conclusion, we learn that an elderly Shun-pei moved himself and his whole fortune to North Korea, where he dies in extreme poverty. The film is highly circular in nature as the opening on the emigrant ship is returned to at Shun-pei’s moment of death. These are Korean subjects born in the moment of Japanese colonialism and, in the film, we see an inability to escape this process. The postcolonial moment in Blood and Bones is one marked by the innate violence, anger, and abuse that Japan feels towards her colonial subject and that the colonial subjects feel towards themselves. While within the mainstream Japanese cinema the postcolonial moment has never arrived, within the Korean space we see that the Imperial moment continues to echo across the generations, negatively marking those who are living embodiments of the colonial past.

Conclusion To conclude this chapter I turn to Harry Harootunian’s comment that, for Japan, ‘the postwar has become an empowering trope that condenses the temporality of a duration into an endless spatial scape and present’ (2004: 717). Cinema has been just as guilty of this as the wider culture. The post-war cinema has been the means and methods via which Japan has debated the events of 1945 but there has been limited questioning of her own Imperial past and the effect it has had on the colonies and the people she once ruled. While narratives of difference can be found in the cinema, for the most part, these alternative visions have restricted audience numbers and circulation. When you compare Japan to other nations, such as France and the UK, you can see the sheer lack of cinematic debate that has taken place. There are no voices emerging from Japan that have such as a keen postcolonial focus as directors like Claire Denis, Mira Nair, Steven Frears or Chris Marker. Until Japan can escape the endless post-war dynamic, the colonial and Imperial past will remain oblique and hidden inside the endless recycling of narratives of individual victimhood and statements of common humanity.

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Notes 1 The script went through multiple and often substantial rewrites before it was finally approved (Hirano 1992). Records indicate it was reviewed over seven times between 1948 and 1950, when it was finally released. The film would achieve a good measure of success (as well as stern criticism) and would rank in the top ten in Kinema Junpō’s best films of that year. It would also be selected as Cannes entry of 1951 and was the first post-war Japanese film to be released in Chinese-speaking areas (not, however, in the PRC) and across South East Asia (Hirano 1992: 94). 2 As Oguma continues, a key reason for this was the Allies took the dismantling of the Empire out of Japan hands and, as such, unlike other major players like Britain, France or Germany, Japan did not have to assume responsibility for the legacy her colonial rule has left behind in her former colonies (1998: 769). This means that decolonization was a process that is missing from the post-war Japanese moment.

8

Representing the Rape of Nanjing

On 13 December 1937, Japanese troops arrived at the Chinese city of Nanjing situated in the Eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu. What happened there in the following weeks has echoed down the decades. This chapter will examine the visual and cultural legacy of the events of Nanjing and the positioning of Nanjing in modern cultural and cinematic memory. In Chapters 6 and 7, I examined how the Imperial period has been remembered in the cinema across the wider East Asian and South East Asian spectrum. This chapter will question how a specific event, in this case, the Rape of Nanjing, has become a collective vision (not just Japanese or Chinese) within which different nations have articulated themselves for a variety of political and cultural purposes. Perhaps the first question is why Nanjing? Together with Pearl Harbour, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, Nanjing is one of the most defining and discussed events from the Pacific War. It has been visualized across the visual and popular culture spectrum and references to it can be found in art, sculpture, music, television, photography and literature. In terms of cinema, while a fictional rendition of the events did not grace the screen before 1987, since 2000 there have been over a dozen films made. The events surrounding what has now become commonly known in English as the Rape of Nanjing holds both a cultural and political weight that has moved beyond the historical facts. It operates as a key symbol of anti-Japanese sentiment in China, but conversely, for the far right in Japan, it functions as an example of Japan’s undeserved international maligning.1 These two polarized positions can be most easily be seen in the differences in the number of dead cited. In the more extreme Chinese statistics we have 450,000 plus people killed, while for far right Japanese groups, there is a complete denial that a massacre even took place. This chapter is not going to debate the historical facts, as there are many other studies which have done that in depth, but focus on the role of film as the potential tool for ‘producing information and transforming

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audiences’ (Torchin 2012: 5) – a vision that was promoted ironically within the Imperial period. Just as Japan had sought to instruct her Empire for her own needs, her former Empire has attempted to find a vision of nationhood(s) in the post-war period that works with contemporary geopolitics. In this way, the events of Nanjing have been used in the political sphere for a variety of often-conflicting reasons. With Nanjing, we enter into what Blanchard and Veyrat-Masson have labelled the les guerres de mémoire (2010). For them, the ‘war of memories’ engages with three key elements: the field, the actors and, of course, the arms (2010: 21). Cinema has entered this war from a variety of perspectives with an even wider range of political desires and objective. As the individuals who lived through this period gradually die, visual culture increasingly becomes the method via which this period can be memorialized. Taking a methodological basis from Francophone studies’ theorization of its colonial past, this chapter holds several key ideas to be true. First, a social group uses a ‘cultural memory’ to provide a concretion of identity. This identity can be constructed and then later reconstructed to suit contemporary concerns and issues. This ‘collective and mobile script’ (Adams quoted in Sturken 1997: 86) needs a stable form of communication and, with relation to Nanjing, film has become one of the most dominant methods via which multiple voices have sought to be heard on the issue. Secondly, we need to see cultural memory not as an attempt to visualize a historical past but rather as a method of using the historical past as part of an ongoing development of a national, as well as an individual, experience. As Astrid Erll notes ‘cultural memory is not the other of history. Nor is it the opposite of individual remembering. Rather, it is the totality of the context within which such varied cultural phenomena originate’ (2011: 7). Jan Assmann, developing on Maurice Halbwachs’s work, states, The concept of cultural memory comprises that body of reusable texts, images and ritual specific to each society in each epoch, whose ‘cultivation’ serves to stabilise and convey that society’s self-image. Upon such collective knowledge, for the most part (but not exclusively) of the past, each group bases its awareness of unity and particularity. (1995: 132)

Physical sites based in Nanjing itself, such as the Nanjing Memorial Park are all engaged in multiple, simultaneous narratives related to Chinese nationalism, calls for global peace, the need for Japan to apologize, as well as the desire to visualize a historical past. In this way the memorialization of Nanjing operates

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across and between what we construct as culture. Cinema to this end has becomes a trove of the cultural memory including multiple national, as well as international discourses. Where Nanjing is concerned, Pierre Nora’s statement that ‘memory and history, far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fundamental opposition’ (1989: 9) is helpful to consider. For Nora, lieux de mémoire or sites of memory (such as constructed via cultural memory) are often set against milieu de mémoire or real environments of memory that he argues can no longer exist in the post-modern moment. The Imperial period is a splintered collection of memories (all of which are open to claims of accuracy or inaccuracy) with multiple players and a multitude of objectives. Therefore, the tension between history and cultural memory becomes apparent as each interested party seeks to visualize a narrative that supports and confirms their version of events. Within Japan, the debate on Nanjing has been polarized into two key camps. Since its establishment in 1984, the Research Committee on the Nanjing Incident/Nankin jiken chosa kenkyukai has published in-depth studies documenting the events in Nanjing while, in the same time frame, the Japan Association for ‘Nanjing Studies’/Nihon ‘Nankin’ gakkai has zealously published revisionist accounts denying the events at Nanjing since 2000. Seeing the events as a matter of individual memory, and therefore, open to endless mutation, change, and external influence, has been the main source of attack from the far right, as minor errors in remembrance from witnesses have been utilized to justify stating the whole narrative is untrue. History and memory have here come into direct conflict, and returning to Nora, he states that ‘we have seen the tremendous dilation of our very mode of historical perception, which, with the help of the media, has substituted for a memory entwined in the intimacy of a collective heritage, the ephemeral film of current events’ (1989: 8). Images from Nanjing have been transmitted across multimedia and across the globe in a variety of ways. Film, television, art and memorial sites have all played a part in cultivating Nanjing as part of a common lexicon, a byword for the worst of human excess. This not in any way trivializing or refuting the horrific events that took place, rather this chapter focuses on debating how Nanjing has been remembered and why. To this end, we need to see Nanjing via a transcultural lens that has moved beyond a single national framework to become a contact zone where national, regional and international politics are played out. The ongoing battle over Nanjing can be seen across the entire political and cultural arena with legal battles waged from both sides of the debate. While a

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compensation case related to a Chinese woman stabbed nearly forty times by three Japanese soldiers was taking place, across the sea, in Japan, an action was filed to restore the reputations of the two Japanese officers who had allegedly engaged in the infamous 1937 100-man beheading contest. This case was eventually dismissed from court, an event that deeply upset the far right who see the infamous beheading images as fictitious propaganda, and the failure of the court case as another example of anti-Japanese propaganda. For those who see the images as direct proof of collective Imperial aggression against Chinese citizens, the upholding of the events was a victory. As Bob Wakabayashi comments, whether the contest was a fabrication or not, the controversy it created ‘increased the Japanese people’s knowledge of the Atrocity and raised their awareness of being victimizers in a war of imperialist aggression despite efforts to the contrary by conservative revisionists’ (2000: 307). For Nora, the emergence of a ‘history of history’ (1989: 9) is at the heart of the rupture between memory and history and, with Nanjing, the work of the Japanese revisionists has played a controversial and noisy part in the debate. Detractors, a wonderful way coined by Morris-Suzuki of describing them as ‘historiographies of oblivion’ (2005: 224), are, from their point of view at constant war with those who they see as critical of Japanese behaviour. They hold the belief that any ‘bad’ cultural memory will result in significant damage to the Japanese national psyche. The fact that all nations have dark moments in their respective histories is forgotten in favour of a narrative where Japan must remain the eternal victim of Chinese and Western propaganda. The films from this side represent a cinema of the extreme minorities, and as such, it can only attack and defend an entrenched position. When the Chinese film Don’t Cry, Nanjing (1995) had a limited run across Japan, the ‘megaphone minority’ released and promoted Pride: The Moment of Destiny/Puraido: unmei no toki (1998) in response. This film, charting the life and times of Tōjō Hideki, sought to present him as a national hero in the face of unwarranted US aggression. Mizushima Satoru’s Nanjing-denial film, The Truth About Nanjing/Nanjing no Shinjitsu was released in 2007, the same year as Guttentag and Sturman’s internationally successful Nanjing toured global cinemas. For the far right, the visual circulation of ‘their’ version of memory is key in what they see as the propaganda war against Japan. Nakano Kōichi states: They seem to think that they are the sole possessor of ‘truths’ and ‘historical facts’ under siege (by the anti-Japan Chinese among others) and that those

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‘truths’ will prevail, if only they are widely and correctly disseminated in the international community, particularly to the American audience. Of course, they are only deluding themselves, and they end up digging a deeper hole for themselves. (Quoted in MacNeil 2007)

Both Pride: The Moment of Destiny and The Truth About Nanjing had limited success and received much critical derision. However, they do articulate one side of the debate very clearly via their remarkable rewriting of the events of the Imperial period. Cleary not all films that have come from Japan on Nanjing are from the far right. In the last few years, there have been two features made that have sought to refute the narrative provided by the deniers. Torn Memories of Nanjing was released in 2009 and was the culmination of years of research by the former schoolteacher and passionate Nanjing historian Matsuoka Tamaki. Matsuoka, who has devoted a large portion of her adult life presenting the events of Nanjing to the Japanese population, made the film as a direct response to the whitewashing presented by the far right. Interviewing veterans from the Nanjing campaign, the tales are predictably horrific and, for Matsuoka, offer irrefutable proof of Japan’s war crimes. Matsuoka does not take the approach that has dominated Japanese works on this period. She is quite clear and vocal about Japan’s need to acknowledge this specific historical guilt and ensure that the narratives that the far right are telling are completely refuted. Rather predictably, she has come under consistent and sustained online and offline verbal attacks from the far right. For this group, any alternative version of events results in that person been designated the enemy, and as such, it has meant that few people are willing to engage with them due to the sustained hate campaigns they have waged against people such as Matsuoka. The second film to have emerged in that year on the topic of Japanese activities in the war was Silent Shame (2010), the directorial debut by Japaneseborn, American-educated, Izumitani Akiko. The documentary, which toured the international film festival circuits and is now available to watch on Vimeo, focuses on charting Japanese war crimes in East Asia via a series of interviews. The director stated that her inspiration, and indeed many of her interview contacts, came via fellow director Matsui Minoru. Minoru had directed the 2001 documentary Japanese Devils/Riben Guizi that also featured a series of interviews with Japanese soldiers telling the stories of wartime atrocity. These interviewees were soldiers who have been imprisoned and ‘re-educated’ in Chinese labour camps which in itself raised a series of issues which gave the

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far right nationalists a clear pathway to refute the testimonies presented as antiJapanese propaganda. While Silent Shame is an interesting product, not least due to its complete opposition to the mainstream Japanese approach to the war, its impact in Asia, and Japan specifically, was limited. The film is clearly aimed at, promoted to, an overseas audience rather than a home-grown Japanese one as the English-language website, advertising and screening method illustrate. The Vimeo download option means the film is only easily available in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland, India and the Philippines. To watch the film in Japan, Hong Kong, China or Taiwan therefore, one relies on illegal downloads. The audience numbers for films on Nanjing in Japan is limited and, as a result, if a film is hoping to garner larger viewing figures, they need to attempt to access external audiences. Developing on the previous ideas on memory, Andreas Huyssen criticises what he sees as a nationcentred approach promoted by Nora and comments that ‘Lieux de mémoire today function not just in an expanded field but in a field altered by globalisation’ (2003: 97). This is an important idea when you compare Silent Shame to Torn Memories of Nanjing. The latter is specifically hoping to educate the Japanese population, while the former is based on conversing with an international audience. With recent film hits, such as Nanjing and City of Life and Death/Nanjing! Nanjing!, there is a clear market for Nanjing memorializations for the international film-going community. It is this era of globalization that is key, and perhaps gives an indication about one of the reasons why Nanjing has entered into the cinematic space with such vigour in the last two decades. The vast amount of film focusing on Nanjing has unsurprisingly enough been from Chinese-language cinemas primarily from the PRC but also from Hong Kong. The first film on the Nanjing massacre was released in 1987 (Massacre at Nanjing), and since then, China has produced over a dozen features with Nanjing as a narrative focus. These include Don’t Cry Nanjing/Nánjing yī jiuˇ sān qī (1995), Black Sun (1995), May and August/ Ng yuet baat yuet (2002), Tokyo Trial/Dōngjīng Shěnpàn (2006) and 1937 Qixia Temple/Qixia sh 1937 (2005). The reason why Nanjing was not filmed until the late 1980s, given that the Sino-Japanese War had been a firm film topic since 1945, is hard to chart. The closest reason that I can posit is that Nanjing does not tell the tale of Chinese heroism; rather, the real-life events speak of a raped and abused nation. Director of Don’t Cry Nanjing, Wu Ziniu states ‘The rape of Nanjing is China’s national shame, where the Chinese people were slaughtered without putting up any kind of resistance’ (Quoted in Berry 2001: 97).

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For the most part, Chinese versions of events have rather unsurprisingly been the most unambiguous of the filmic engagements, and none more so than the terrible Black Sun. Gruesome recreations based on the reports of the worst excesses are explicitly shown, interspersed with images taken from that time. The audience is shown in graphic detail numerous gang rapes, including that of a nine-year-old and her sixty-year-old grandmother, murders and mutilations, such as the boiling alive of an infant, the bayoneting of a pregnant woman and the castration of a priest. The fictional segments, although all apparently based on tales that emerged from Nanjing, are all filmed in garish Technicolor. These fictional segments are intercut with photographs and inter-titles explaining the events and the findings of the Tokyo tribunal. The photos (such as beheadings and rapes) are then recreated in visceral live-action. As Michael Berry has noted, this film has a curious and problematic circulation history (2001). On one hand, it was distributed as historical testament to the events via its inclusion in Can Japan Say No the Truth collection distributed by the Nanjing Victims Association. On the other hand, the film is widely distributed as exploitation and torture porn. The key problem with Dark Sun can be found in the film’s antecedence. The director F. T.Mou has a confirmed (and well-earned) place in the canon of exploitation film. His previous work had included a hard-core porn (Trilogy of Lust (1995)), a film on an illegal immigrant being sexually and violently abused, (Lost Souls (1980)) and the predecessor to Black Sun, Men Behind the Sun (1988), which focuses on the horror of Unit 731. Together with this legacy, the UK and US version of the film is distributed as part of the Tartan Grindhouse series alongside such titles as Killer Barbies vs. Dracula (2002) and Bride of Re-animator (1989). This label is designed particularly to appeal to those that enjoy graphic films; indeed, the UK Black Sun DVD cover holds the quote that the film is ‘the bestlooking exploitation film I have ever seen’. The intersection of fictional ‘recreation’ with the real-life footage and stills drastically call into question the purpose of the film: is it to reflect the horror of Nanjing or to offer grotesque titillation such as those offered in ‘Nazi Exploitation’ films such as Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (1974). With Black Sun, rather than the recreations acting as accurate reconstructions of the 1937 footage and photographs, the film is almost conducted in reverse with the inclusion of the contemporary and the 1937 material as an excuse for the excessive graphic sexual and physical violence the film contains. Other films such as Don’t Cry Nanjing and May and August and 1937 Qixia Temple, while clearly still violent, aim to move away from the horror of Black

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Sun and present films which appeal to a more globalized audience via specific story arcs that can offer a sense of bravery, enlightenment and hope amid the horror. In Don’t Cry Nanjing we follow the story of a Chinese man and his pregnant Japanese wife, who get caught up in the massacre when the family flees to Nanjing since they mistakenly believe they will be safer there. 1937 Qixia Temple focuses on a group of monks led by Master Jiran, who protected over 20,000 refugees during this period. May and August follows the lives of two girls as they struggle to survive the violence after the death of their parents at the hands of the Japanese. Internationally released a year after the Chinese Olympics, City of Life and Death/Nanjing! Nanjing! has to date been the most successful film to have focused on the events in Nanjing. The film follows the interlinked stories of several people on both sides of the conflict as they struggle to survive both physically and mentally in the midst of the trauma, and Chinese audiences have flocked to the movie. According to the China Film Group, a state-run company that is one of the film’s main investors, it was seen by almost one million people in its first nineteen days making it the second biggest opener in 2009 (after the second part of John Woo’s Red Cliff/Chi Bi). It was designated as one of the ten movies to help commemorate 60 years of Communist rule and an edited version of the film is to be shown in Chinese schools. On the international stage, the film did very well with hearty praise from critics and extremely good box office and DVD earnings. The film even premiered in Japan in 2011 in a limited screening run in Shinjuku. Why was this film so successful? The key funder after China Film was the Media Asia Group, one of the most successful production companies in Asia. Based in Hong Kong, Media Asia has links with production and distribution houses all over East and South East Asia. The films they make, although catering to the PRC market, is specifically designed to have a life beyond the boundaries of Hong Kong and PRC. To this end the City of Life and Death/Nanjing! Nanjing! trod a careful line between appealing to PRC’s official narrative of Nanjing and  the international desire for a more balanced and nuanced retelling of a tale – especially one that would not completely alienate the Japanese markets for future products. The figure of Kadokawa and the dramatic vision the troops dancing around Nanjing towards the end of the film are clearly indicative of the group mentality and the dehumanization of the war process that the young Japanese troops underwent. The film focuses on the collectively that the troops were encouraged

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to maintain via their gang rapes and murders, the family units they seem to have recreated among themselves in their makeshift base and the endless rhetoric of Japan fighting the rest of the world. At the end of the film, the victory dance brings all these ideas together as the troops move in one united group among the ruins of the city they have destroyed. As they dance, the relentless beating drum helps them, as well as the audience, to engage in an affective response to a process via which the individual becomes part of a group. The drum and the dance brings everyone into the same moment and we see the anti-war Kadokawa for the first time move in unison with his fellow soldiers. Even the violence and cruel Commander Ida is shown as having doubts and some form of guilt. He shoots a woman he has raped when he finds her a raving lunatic in the ruins stating, ‘she was so beautiful before’, indicating that he is, at some level, disturbed by what he as destroyed. This reluctance to come to faceto-face with the ramifications of his actions is seen again when he closes his eyes and turns away from translator Tang’s execution. This vision of Japanese soldiers who were not without feeling and a sense of guilt, however small, was not without contention. Lu had to wait six months for the censors to approve his original script and another six months for approval of the final cut. The positive vision of the emotionally tortured Japanese soldier, Kadokawa in particular, led to criticism within China for the pro-Japanese sentiment and there were even threats towards the director. What all these recent Chinese films share are two key elements. The first is procreation. All the films show children and pregnant women been killed or brutally attacked while balancing the need for some characters to survive. Dark Sun is the most graphic via the most horrific scene of a foetus been removed via bayonet from its mother, yet unlike Dark Sun, the other films, for the most part, focus on the survival of the younger generation. In Don’t Cry Nanjing, Reiko is pregnant by her Chinese husband when she arrives in the city and, despite the assault at the hands of both Chinese citizens and Japanese soldiers, the child is born and she insists he is named Nankin. A child born of China and Japan functions therefore as a living entity that symbolized both Japan’s responsibility for her actions in China as well as the ability of China to survive them. In City of Life and Death, after he has lost his small daughter to a brutal act of violence by a Japanese soldier, Tang goes to his death noting to Ida that his wife, who has escaped on board the docked American ship, was pregnant; so, despite Ida’s effort, the nation will live on. The young boy Xiaodouzi is allowed to walk away at the end of the film despite Kadokawa’s order to shoot him and the film tells

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us that Xiaodouzi lives to a ripe old age as a further testament to the power of survival. The other important addition is the use of both video and photographic footage as a means of implying the truth of the event being shown. As stated, Black Sun used photographs extensively, and the same photographys and contemporary footage are either shown or recreated in some way throughout the other films. In 1937 Qixia Temple two characters, an American missionary Mr Martin and his translator, do all they can to preserve the footage of the Japanese atrocities to allow the world to learn about the events that have taken place. In Don't Cry Nanjing we see the beheadings, the rapes and the safety zone all presented as the documentation from the time stamps. Michal Berry argued that this focus on footage and recreation is to a large extent China’s response to the Japanese refusal to admit to the events (2011). Via a constant stream of material that seeks to ‘authenticate and prove’, the films focus on offering narratives that blend the recorded events together with a patriotic narrative of bravery and survival in the face of adversity. The year 2010 saw another filmic version of Nanjing emerging from China when Zhang Yimou’s adaptation of Yan Gelling’s bestselling novel Flowers of War/ Jinling Shisan Chai had its global release. Starring the Hollywood star Christian Bale, Flowers of War charts the relationship between a group of schoolgirls and a group of prostitutes and John Miller, an American fortune hunter. The film is set in Nanjing and involves the initially heartless Miller learning to love and care for the women and girls who surround him. When a local Japanese commander gives him the order to turn over the schoolgirls to be gang raped on the eve of the victory celebration, he and the prostitutes forge a plan to save them via the sacrifice of the prostitutes. This film is highly problematic product for multiple reasons. Although Yimou’s claimed that Flowers of War was unique since it focused on the female experience, it is worth noting that the film is presented via Miller who acts as witness and interpreter to the events that take place. These fallen women are only granted a status worthy of admiration via their willingness to sacrifice themselves to save the young and innocent virgin daughters of China personified by the schoolgirls. Far from a female-centred narrative, Flowers of War does nothing more than repeat age-old strategies of worthy versus unworthy female subjects. The film deliberately holds an ever-increasing interest in the bodies and sexualities of both the schoolgirls and the prostitutes. From the soldiers chasing the screaming girls around an abandoned church to the gang rape of one of the

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women by a group of soldiers, through to the lead prostitute’s decision to sleep with Miller, the film has a fascination with the sexualities and physicality’s of the female subjects. Yimou’s films have succeeded on the international stage via the process of self-exoticization (Chow 1995) that they undertake to appeal to a global audience. Flowers of War takes this position and relocates it to Nanjing in an uncomfortable blend of spectacle, eroticism, and horror. Arguably, the most problematic scene in the film is actually one of the least violent. As the prostitutes prepare to sacrifice themselves, they dress up and perform a song of the Qin Huai River brothels. As the girls watch them, the scene takes on hyperreal qualities, as the women walk towards the camera. As they sing, they are doused in non-natural colour with their clothes, hair, and images taking on a brilliant and luminous shine. The need to appeal to the global audience, which has dominated the Chinese film industry in the last few decades, has resulted in specially created products which, like Hero/Yīngxióng (2002), House of Flying Daggers/Shí Miàn Mái Fú (2004). These aesthetics of heightened and glamourized Asian femininity (Figure 17) are designed to attract and stimulate the senses, and, when placed into the horror of Nanjing, results in a spectacle equally as problematic as Dark Sun’s visceral horror.

Figure 17  Bright colours and seductive poses mark the female bodies in Flowers of War (2011).

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Writing about contemporary Chinese cinema, Shelly Kraicer notes that: Like any one-party state, though, absent democratic institutions, the legitimacy question is constantly at issue and therefore needs constantly to be reinforced. There's not much room for deviation in official cultural discourse. Films (and other forms of culture) that repeat and reinforce the horrors of the past, that masochistically spectacularize Chinese suffering and safely locate it in the pre-1949 era, are more politically necessary now than ever. (2014)

To this end, the cinematic (re)production of Nanjing serves the wider political desires related to Chinese nationhood and their image in the wider global stage. The need to place Chinese suffering in an earlier time period (with a clear enemy to blame) results in the pre-1949 era set as a popular period for films to engage with. Nanjing, as a clear byword for Chinese suffering, allows for the establishment of a clear idea of nationhood based on a shared past sorrow that, at the same time, allows for a positive reflection on the present.

Looking West: UK, USA and German visions of Nanjing China and Japan are not the only nations to have inserted themselves into the Nanjing narratives. The German film, City of War, deals with the figure of John Rabe, one of the main leaders of the Nanjing protective zone. This was an area that ultimately saved hundreds, if not thousands of Chinese lives using the international citizens as voluntary human shields. City of War focuses on the clear idea that not all Germans in this period were rabid Nazis. The film operates, like Schindler’s List (1993), to both reveal the wartime events and offer a hero for the international audience to identify with. The aim of City of War is to focus on the life of a remarkable individual, in short, the good Nazi. Throughout the film we see Rabe use his citizenship to protect and defend against Japanese aggression. At one point in the film Rabe instructs fleeing citizens to hide under a giant Nazi flag since he believes, correctly, it will dissuade the Japanese planes from bombing the factory. In a stretch of the imagination, we have half-Jewish German diplomat, played by heartthrob Daniel Bruhl, who is utilized to make clear links between the situation in China and the state of Germany. He associates his father’s disenfranchisement within the Nazi state to the Chinese citizens in Nanjing. His disruptive moment, when, facing Japanese troops, he shouts ‘Hail Shitler’ serves to illustrate his anti-Nazi stance.

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By the actions of these two characters, an alternative narrative to Nazism is presented where common humanity wins the day. The need to present a positive picture of German engagement is hardly surprising. While Germany has openly and wholeheartedly (bar from a few extremists), admitted culpability to the events of the Second World War, the desire for a positive vision of German nationhood in the period finds a natural home in the story of Rabe. This is not to discount the real heroism and good that the international community did in Nanjing; rather, the minoritization of the Chinese stories in favour of the Western ones references a continual problematic euro-centrism within the global film sphere. This approach can also be seen in UK cinematic productions. The Children of Huang Shi (also known as the Escape from Huang Shi or Children of the Silk Road) was released in 2008 and focuses on the story of George Hogg, a British journalist, who saved a group of sixty Chinese orphans by leading them 700 miles to Shandan in the remote Gansu province. Directed by Roger Sportiswoode, Children of Huang Shi offers a story of a Westerner undergoing a journey of discovery and personal realization in the ravages of war-torn China. While we do have Chinese citizens in the narrative via the presence of Chow Yun-fat as a communist rebel and the various orphans, the film cannot move away from a sense of paternalism towards China. Love-interest Lee, who operates as an unqualified nurse in the region, tells Hogg she can travel safely in China as everyone knows she carries tetanus jabs. This approach to placing the ability for medical aid into the hands of an untrained Westerner effectively removes the ability of self-care from the local population and implies a hierarchy of capability that confirms existing East/West dynamics. For some in Australia, the film also presented a clear illustration of postImperial bias from a UK director against its former territory. Renwi Alley the Australian Communist who probably did more than Hogg to save the children is removed altogether and American Lee is ostensibly based on the real-life New Zealand nurse, Cathleen Hall, who aided Hogg and Alley. Whether anti-colony bias was the reason or whether it was simply that an American character was seen as required to appeal to the all-important US market is hard to chart. However, Imperial and neo-Imperial dialogues beyond the China/Japan dynamic are clearly present and influential in these global products. One of the most globally successfully film on Nanjing in the last decade was the American Nanjing (2007), The film is a mixture of interviews with real-life witnesses and well-known actors reading excerpts from the diaries of John Rabe, Minnie Vautrin, Robert Wilson and other contemporary subjects including a Japanese commander. The film implies that the use of contemporary eyewitness

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accounts (therefore presented as completely honest and true), told via western Chinese and Japanese actors, gives an impression of objective representation. Once again this is not to detract from the power and effectiveness of the film (arguably it is one of the strongest ones on the Nanjing events to have been released) but to illustrate once again the wider political influences taking place. Despite the director’s and the producer’s belief in the film’s even-handedness, the journal extracts chosen, the footage displayed and the particular interviews with witnesses were not picked at in random. There were over 80 hours of interview footage shot with the Chinese survivors and witnesses, and yet, only a very small percentage made it into the actual film. The Japanese soldiers who participated in the film were found through members of the Japanese peace movement. By the nature of their alignment with this movement, the men that we hear speak are already making a stand on the issue (needless to say, it is not the opinion of the Nanjing deniers). Therefore, the notion that the film is objective and apolitical is inaccurate. The wider historical events in the moment of release also need to be considered. The film was released internationally in the period following the Abu Ghraib footage – an event that can clearly be seen as a low point in America’s reputation on the global stage. In the press pack, Guttenbeg and Sturman make a comment that they found it remarkable that the actions of the Nanjing Safety Committee saw some Americans ‘raised to the level of Gods’ in the local imagination. The need to see the United States as a site of heroism (in the same way Germany desires positive figures from the Second World War period) is quite understandable. However, the need to posit the United States into the memory site of Nanjing in a positive light is as much about contemporary Western concerns as about the events of Nanjing. Chen’s comment that ‘if modern colonialism has been shaped by the West, then the postcolonial enterprise is still operating within the limits of colonial history and has not yet gone beyond a parasitic form of critique’ (Chen 2010: 2) is clearly illustrated with regard to Nanjing. The desire for ‘white-saviour narratives’ among Anglo-American-European audiences still exists and these visualizations of Nanjing, despite their well-meaning aims, fall into this trap all too often.

Conclusion The events of Nanjing reflect a global engagement with this period as there is a complex interplay between industry pressures, personal desire, political opinion

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and the relentless need to entertain. Regardless of the topic, films are open to aesthetic and generic conventions and, ultimately, film will only be successful if there is an audience. Who the audience is results in specific products and where, in some cases, you have very powerful political motivations and aims, memory becomes a tool in the global memory war. In the global media arena, images circulate and recirculate entering into the modern memory-scape from various angles and with various impacts. This is not the post-modern process of repetition without meaning; rather, the meanings are open to multiple engagements and motivations. In short, I would argue that position from which people and nations have inserted themselves into Nanjing narrative needs as much examination as the end products.

Note 1 By the Japanese far right I am referencing the large number of organizations that come under the Uyoku dantai banner, including the more radical illegal (and often violent) ones, and the more socially acceptable face of the far right such as Nippon Kaigi.

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As discussed in the previous chapters, how the colonies and Japan have individually remembered the Imperial period is as complex as the Empire itself. Until Japan accepts (and atones) for her Imperial past, relations with her former colonies and territories will doubtless remain strained. However, the process of Empire is, and always was, a transnational entity. A full understanding of the Japanese Empire is located in the general as well as in the specific. While a close examination of the individual nations is vital, it is equally important to see the Empire as a far-reaching nexus that saw multiple nations share a common Imperial discourse. Outside of the political sphere, the cultural interaction between Japan and the wider East Asian community has continued.1 The transnational dimensions of Imperial Japan meant that the links between Japan and her colonies did not abruptly and completely end in August 1945. Both private companies and individuals maintained and developed the relationships established in the Imperial period in the following decades. This chapter is both the conclusion and a debate for the future. With new global technologies and communication systems becoming part of everyday life (Krewani 2014), the question of East Asian cooperation has come to the fore like never before. I will explore how the legacy of ideas of pan-Asianism has been articulated in the modern-day cinematic field in relation to stardom and co-production. Just as the Japanese Empire aimed to create Imperial subjects via their visions of an Empire that hopefully appealed to the masses, contemporary Asian cinema needs to move beyond national and/or linguistic boundaries to find new audiences. The need to compete with the Hollywood products that have proven so successful at operating on a global stage has resulted in East Asian nations reviewing the best methods to face down the dominance of Western products.

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Co-production as cooperation Co-production in the contemporary period has become an important strategy in both the mainstream and the non-mainstream cinema markets of both East Asia and South East Asia. For non-mainstream cinema, co-productions, often with European or American companies, allows for the possibility to make alternative products that may not be granted space in the home environment. For the mainstream companies, co-production allows access to alternative markets and funding sources. The Shaw Brothers used this approach in the 1960s when they used co-production to expand their influence across East Asia and since 2000 the number of co-productions has significantly increased. As discussed in previous chapters, there were a series of co-productions between Japanese and Korean film-makers that took place throughout the colonial period. While the decades following 1945 saw cinematic cooperation between the two nations reduced to zero, bar a few actors and directors, since 2000 there have been several co-produced films, including Asako in Ruby Shoes/Sunaebo (2000), Seoul (2000), Virgin Snow/Hatsuyuki no koi (2007) and Boat (2009). As Doobo Shim comments Japanese/Korean exchange can also be the found in remakes that both nations undertook of their respective products (2013: 62). Japanese director Miiki Takashi’s Happiness of the Katakuris/Katakuri-ke no Kōfuku (2001) was a remake of the Korean film The Quiet Family/Joyonghan Gajok (1998), and Japanese hit products such as The Ring (1998) were also remade for the Korean market. The internationally co-directed film Visitors (2009) made direct reference to the idea of Asian border crossing via the interlinking of three stories. Funded as part of the Jeonju Digital Project,2 Visitors was the collaboration between Naomi Kawase (Japan), Hong Sang-soo (South Korea) and Lav Diaz (Philippines). The three films operate on the common themes of cross-cultural and crossgenerational communication. Kawases’s section, in particular, references the legacy of the Empire via the actions of a young Korean man returning a scroll, a gift given over seventy years ago by a Japanese colonial subject, to its ancestral home in Japan. Entitled, ‘Koma’ Kawase’s film is both a nod to the past and a hope for a cooperative and happy future between Japan and Korea. The inclusion of Diaz operates to expand the boundaries of East Asia to include those lessdiscussed former Imperial territories. The interplay between South East Asia and East Asia has become another notable feature to both the cultural and the filmic landscape of the last few

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decades. Collaboration between East Asia, Japan specifically, and South East Asian cinematic units is becoming a more common occurrence across the Asian spectrum and rather surprisingly they were, in fact, taking place as far back as the early 1950s. This was/is motivated by the ostensible desire to resist Hollywood domination but also acts to open up a wide range of local markets. The South East Asian Motion Picture Producers Association was established as early as 1953 as a collaboration between Hong Kong Shaw Brothers Studio and Japanese film producer Nagata Masaichi. A statement of intent makes its ambitions clear: The objectives … shall be to promote the interest of the motion picture industry in the countries of territories of Asia-Pacific; to elevate the artistic standard of motion pictures; and to ensure the dissemination and interchange of culture in the area through motion pictures, thereby contributing to the development of friendly relations among the participating nations. (Eiga nenkan 1954: 40–2)

Yau makes the clear link between this association and the colonial period. Nagata had first proposed such an association in the 1930s and in a 1954 interview Nagata made it clear that the old ethos of Japan as head of Asia was still alive and well – at least in his mind. In the interview, he stated, ‘We will replace the western domination of Asian cinema to Japanese domination first; then we will develop local Asian production capacities’ (1954: 77–8). However, Tezuka Yoshiharu (2012) refutes Yau’s reading and states that Nagata’s desires were based more on Cold-War politics that saw Japan transformed into a firm ally of the United States in the war against communism. Therefore, for Tezuka, ‘Japanese individuals [such as Nagata], were marked and subjectivised as part of the West, at the same time as being positioned above the rest of Asian in the cartography of the cold war’ (59). I think the similarity between Nagata’s aims in the 1930s and the 1950s are too close to not be related to the Imperial period. However, despite his background (and potential jingoism), his working relationship with Shaw Brothers and their joint plans to expand a Japan-led cinema into South East Asia clearly appealed to the business side of the film industry. This fact alone illustrates the complexity of East Asian relations in the post-war period and poses a further challenge to postcolonial and post-Imperial studies in the region. Economics and other political dynamics wield great influence, and it important to remember that during the Cold War Japan was considered an ally for many of her former territories government (if not the general population). Through people such as Nagata, Japan and Hong Kong continued to have a long and productive working relationship throughout the 1950s and

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1960s. Many of the working relations came via the behemoth that was Shaw Brothers. Inoue Umetsugu directed a series of musicals in the late 1960s and cameraman Tadashi Nishimoto spent years working for Shaw. Despite his role in the occupation cinema, Nagamasa Kawakita maintained a life-long working relationship with directors and companies in Hong Kong. This period of interworking ended in the 1970s with the end of Shaw, but in the contemporary period, Japan and Hong Kong have seen a series of collaborative ventures that have crossed genres and markets.3 However, cinematic relations between the two territories have changed in the last few decades since, as Iwabuchi Koichi argues, Japan has moved away from the West once more to experience a ‘cultural return to Asia’ in the 1990s. However, this ‘cultural return’ did not see Japan dominate the Asian box office as they desired. Katzenstein’s argues that the Japanese film industry remains hierarchical and inflexible compared to the new modes of Chinese filmmaking structures that are ‘open, flexible and disposable’ (Borrus cited in Katzenstein 1997: 39). This, Katzenstein argues, is why Japanese-led co-productions have for the most part failed to perform at the box office – not because of any old colonial or Imperial grudge – but as a result of outdated production practices. While they may have been less successful than desired, the fact that PRC and Japan, despite the continual animosity between the two nations, have had examples of filmic cooperation is perhaps remarkable. The now bankrupt Japanese company Movie-Eye Entertainment (perhaps proving Katzenstein’s point) made a series of features with Shanghai Film Studio including Last Love, First Love/Zui hou de ai, zui chu de ai (2003), About Love (2005 – also made with Taiwan), and The Longest Night in Shanghai/Yoru no Shanghai/(2007). The latter was the most commercially successful of the features gaining an international release. The film focuses on the developing relationship between a Japanese – man and a Chinese woman as she ferries him about Shanghai in her taxi. The film posits Shanghai as a ‘trans-linguistic and trans-cultural space welcoming and accessible to anyone, regardless of cultural origin or social status’ (Li 2011: 105). This de-politicization of the city scape of Shanghai is the ideal vision of the new and modern China. The film offers a light-hearted look into JapaneseChinese relations as existing in this new global community, with little reference to past histories. If anything we have a reference to a perceived potential future (from the Chinese point of view, if not Japanese) as we see the lively Chinese girl invigorate the jaded and tired young Japanese businessman. This reversal of China as the great modernizer see the dialogues of the 1930s and 1940s

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inverted, as it is now the old former Imperial ruler who will rely on China for a new lease of life. Alongside the processes of individual co-productions, East Asia has seen the rise of actual pan-Asian film companies. A notable one is Applause Pictures, which was established by Peter Chan to operate specifically as a pan-Asian production unit. Applause features such as Jan Dara (2001), The Eye (2002), One Fine Spring Day/Bomnaleun ganda (2001), Perhaps Love/Ru guo Ai (2005), The Eye (2003), The Eye 2 (2004), The Eye 3 (2008) have been released across East Asia and beyond. Three Extremes (2002) perhaps personified this desire for pan-Asian success with each of the three segments being directed and set in Korea (Kim Ji-un), Thailand (Nozee Niminbutr) and Hong Kong (Peter Chan), respectively. Perhaps Love (2005) opened simultaneously in five major East Asian Cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Taipei). Starring multilingual Ryukyuan/Taiwanese actor Kaneshiro Takeshi, Korean television star Ji Jin-hee and Hong-Kongers Jackie Chung and Zhou Xun, the film’s cast was as pan-Asian as its funding, screening, and reception. Filmed in Mainland China, funded by TVB (Hong Kong) and Astro Shaw (Malaysia), the film was distributed across Asia by Hong Kong-based Celestial Pictures. Film festivals have played an important part in encouraging and promoting Asia-wide cooperation. Ostrowaska states that the notion of world cinema, the banner under which a large percentage of East Asian products are sold to the global market, ‘is a product of the transnational film festival circuit, which is driven by the art house cinema ethos, and for which the most important exhibition circuit is film festival’ (2010: 164). This has worked in two ways. First, the number and scale of film festivals in East Asia have skyrocketed with the most notable festivals, Shanghai International Film Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival, and Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) attracting international submissions. Secondly, the establishment of what can best be described as the ‘Creative Industries’ in East Asia means that the creative output is increasingly being produced as part of national economic growth and development. China, South Korea and Japan have all seen government units put in place to help support and cultivate their creative economies. Whether these top-down initiatives will ultimately be successful remains to be seen, but they make clear reference to a new creative paradigm, which sees the cultural and communication sectors as ‘the new leading growth section of the economy’ (Garnham 2005: 24). Another key development has been an increasing presence of East Asian directors on the global cinema circuits. Many established names such as

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Kim Ki-Duk, Jia Zhangke and Apichatpong Weerasethakul often bypass a local presentation of their work and instead release products directly to a global market. In some cases, the international film market and the local film market are very distinct. Mainland China consistently exports art cinema and historical blockbusters to the global markets as part of specific government policy related to Chinese soft power, and yet, the home-grown audiences tend to prefer romantic comedies that rarely leave the shores of Mainland China. In 2012, for example, the second biggest box-office hit in Mainland China was a slapstick comedy Lost in Thailand/Ren zai jiong tu: Tai jiong. Making over 1 billion yen, Lost in Thailand was clear proof that Chinese films do not need an international market to financially succeed. In the same year the Chinese nomination to the Academy Awards was Caught the Web/Sōusuoˇ. Chen Kaige’s contemporary thriller had failed to ignite interest in the home market but was seen as a suitable candidate for international release. What this indicates is that we are not seeing a move towards a completely integrated Asia-wide film market. Ideas of the local, the national and the international still maintain important relevance. The local cultural material still plays an important role and indeed the ‘East Asian market’ has become a key focus of the film production companies. The need to ‘break into Hollywood’ is no longer seen a requirement for a film hit. The East Asian market is vast, and success, particularly among Chinese-speaking communities, means that a film will turn a healthy profit. This is not to say that marketization is a completely positive thing. As with all industries, a wider field offers just as many problems as it does benefits. Issues include concerns around intellectual property, government censorship, and open markets potentially allowing the already dominant Hollywood even more scope. The positives are, in turn, that Asia-wide co-production, promotion, and receivership offers new spaces of exploration, creation and connection.

Travelling symbols: East Asian transnational stardom The most visible method of inter-Asian cinematic communication can be found in the bodies of the transnational stars who have emerged across the former Empire. Film studies in the last thirty years have turned its gaze to the power and importance of the star with studies by Richard Dyer (1979), Christine Gledhill (1991), Ginette Vincendeau (2000), Susan Hayward (2004)

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and Jackie  Stacy  (1994). These studies articulate how the star is embedded throughout the whole filmic process from the site of production through to audience consumption. Stars have been vital components of cinema since the very early days and play an ever-increasing part in a film’s marketability. East Asian stars are becoming an increasingly bankable commodity, not only in the cinema of East Asia but as part of a transnational cinema industry including Hollywood (Willis and Leung 2014). Hong Kong stars such as Chow Yun-fat and Jackie Chan have broken successfully into the Anglo-American market. Away from cinema, the ‘Winter Sonata effect’ saw Korean actor Bae Yong-Joon being launched across East Asia. As hundreds of Japanese and, later, Taiwanese, Singaporean and Thai housewives screamed his name, Bae helped to begin the whole Hallyu phenomenon. The previously mentioned Perhaps Love (2004) featured a series of Asian stars who cross both linguistic and cultural borders. Jackie Cheung enjoys wide fame across East Asia for his music and acting skills. Zhou Xun is a known actress in Hong Kong and Mainland China and Ji Jin-hee is a familiar face from Korean television drama. The other lead player, Kaneshiro Takeshi, has his pan-Asian identity as his key selling point. He is starred in a series of films from around Asia, including Hong Kong (Confessions of Pain/Seung Sing (2006)), China (House of Flying Daggers), Taiwan (Schooldays/Xuéxiào Bàwáng (1995) and The Warlords/Tóu Míng Zhuàng (2008), Wu Xia (2011), and The Crossing/Tai Ping Lun (2014)), and Taiwanese-Chinese co-productions (Trouble Maker/La bi xiao xiao sheng (1995)). Eve Tsai’s study of Kaneshiro notes that different facets of this star’s body engage with the various Asian nations in which it performs in different but linked ways (2005). He is both a colonial symbol (Japanese via his Okinawan father) and a postcolonial one (due to his Taiwanese mother). His roles are highly diverse and appeal to multiple audiences, and Kaneshiro operates as a sign of success on the international stage for both Japan and Taiwan, and for Chinese-speaking audiences, he signals the vast diversity and reach of Chinese-language cinema. Likewise, Japanese star Asano Tadanobu and Hong Kong star Tony Leung work consistently across East and South East Asia. Both Leung and Tadanobu are notable for their ability to cross genres and language regardless of their own linguist ability. Leung has performed non-speaking roles in both Vietnamese

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Cyclo (1995) and Taiwanese features (City of Sadness). Tadanobu took the role of Genghis Khan in the Russian film Mongol despite not speaking a word of Mongolian. Reminiscent of the cultural mimicry that the colonial actors were all too frequently asked to undergo, these new pan-Asian cinema stars are required to be able to perform as multiple nationalities via a suspension of national and linguistic codes in favour of an often unidentifiable vision of cinematic Asia. Rob Wilson sees this phenomenon as part of a potential ‘global production [that] would send the transpacific local culture offshore and worldwide, resolving the tensions of Imperial history and global imbalance into mongrel fantasy, soft spectacle and present serving myths’ (2006: 343). I would argue that these stars rather than whitewashing the Imperial past operate as a significant method via which active and self-aware audiences can work through the past through their own specific engagement with the star bodies. This identity is in a constant state of negotiation and flux, with the audience as active and knowledgeable participants. This point is best illustrated by returning to one of the original pan-Asian stars Yamaguchi Yoshiko. In the post-war period, she would continue to be a beloved singer in both Chinese-speaking and South East Asian communities. She experienced a huge resurgence into the late 1990s and early 2000s (and again at her death in 2014) with many of her Man’ei songs been replayed and re-recorded. Songs such as ‘Shouzhou Serenade’ from China Nights and ‘He’ri jun zai lai’ from Song of White Orchid, despite their Imperial antecedence, continued to be heard and performed across East Asia. Arguable the high quality of Yamaguchi’s songs is what allows her to be remembered/enjoyed, not for the Imperial ethos she personified, but for the artistry and power of her singing. Yimen Wang has developed this argument fully, noting Li’s audiences and fans throughout the twentieth century had to constantly negotiate with national/transnational politics on the one hand, and Li’s performative affect on the other. The late twentieth-century comeback of the ‘Li Xianglan’ icon derived precisely from the collective taste shift toward the apolitical aestheticization that defies and transcends political supremacism. To that extent, what had been experienced as Li’s universal musical affect became naturalized and celebrated in isolation from Li’s political circumstances and subtext. (2005: 161)

Wang continues to compare Yamaguchi to film director and photographer Leni Riefenstahl. Like Yamaguchi, Riefenstahl was a clear representative of a highly negative ethos (Nazism), and yet, she has seen some rehabilitation, as

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people are more willing accept that the individual exists as part of the cycle of complex history and that the artist’s achievement can stand outside the political framework in which they are made. As a star body Yamaguchi was always marked by ambiguity (Was she Chinese? Was she Japanese? Was she Ri-Koran, Li Xianglan, Yamaguchi Yoshiko or Shirley Yamaguchi? Was she innocent or was she guilty?), and this ambiguity, in a similar fashion to the modern-day star bodies, allowed individuals to engage with her songs and films as part of their own specific discourses that did not always agree with the cultural setting that the products originated in. Yamaguchi was initially sold as a pan-Asian star and this served her well in the decades that followed. Her sincere apologizing for her actions in Imperial China, which she blamed on her youth and naivety, allowed Yamaguchi to be rehabilitated in the eyes of East Asia in a fashion that Japan as a nation has failed to do.

Conclusion As has been explored, the cinematic Japanese Empire was a large, diverse and complex structure. The narratives and infrastructures that were established in this period were not always a top-down imposition but which mutated and integrated themselves into local communities. Korean cinema evidently suffered under Japanese occupation but it also grew and developed in size with input and help from the better resources available via established Japanese studios, directors and producers. The Taiwanese landscape was reconstructed to suit the Japanese imagination but, conversely, Japan’s desire to chart and maintain local arts and traditions helped Taiwanese culture to develop away from Japan into a clearer idea of her own standing as a nation state. The compressed drive for modernity that Japan implemented in Korea and Taiwan would later be repeated via their own governments throughout the 1960s–1980s industrial booms. The success of Taiwan and Korea, in that sense, can be traced back in some small way to the rapid modernization undergone between 1890 and 1945. This is not to condone colonialism but rather it is important to emphasize that the contemporary is built on the colonial past. Inside Japan, the former colonies continue to exert an influence via politics and economics, but also through cultural dialogues such as media, food, sport and tourism. Modernday East Asian cinema systems are in their own ‘cinema of attractions’, sending

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their products out to both on an intra-Asian and on a global scale. The Empire prefigured this idea over eighty years earlier with their desire to build and maintain a Greater East Asian Film sphere. Yoshimoto and Teo in their respective work have both debated and considered the term ‘Asian cinema’. Yoshimoto sees Asian cinema as a recent invention that ‘did not exist as a distinct entity but rather in the form of different national cinemas’ (2003: 452). Teo furthers this debate when he articulates the tensions between terms such as world cinema, national cinema and third world cinema (Teo 2013: 219). He concludes that seeing Asian cinema as an ‘encountering and countering force’ is the way forward. He notes, ‘Ultimately Asian cinema is that force which engages these entities and concepts and comes into its own by virtue of its spirit of give and take’ (225). This process of encounter and adaptation is important in the debate on the influence that the Japanese cinematic empire exerted on both her former territories and across Asia more broadly. This is not seeing Asian cinema as issuing from, and dependent upon, Japan. Rather what become clear is that contemporary Asian cinema, as a very entity, cannot be read without an acknowledgment to its previous (and highly problematic) Imperial incarnations. Japan’s East Asian Film Sphere was not a collective working process based on harmony and mutual respect. However, it did articulate a vision of a specifically East Asian cinema that continues to exert impact if only via the desire not to repeat the pattern. In short, the Empire forged Japan as much as Japan forged the Empire.

Notes 1 I am not going to repeat here the debates on the influence of Japanese popular culture across East Asia other than to note that Japanese cultural influence continues to be strong across Asia, regardless of events at the government and foreign policy level. 2 This is an initiative run via the Jeonju International Film Festival where grants are given for original works to premiere at the festival. 3 These are charted in great detail in Yau’s study Japanese and Hong Kong Film Industries: Understating the origins of the East Asian film networks (2010).

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Selected Filmography 1937 Qixia Temple/Qixia sh 1937. Dir. Zhang Fangnan, China, 2005. 2009 Lost Memories/2009 Loseutu-memorijeu. Dir. Lee Si-myung, South Korea, 2002. Angels on the Streets/Chib-eobneun cheonsa. Dir Choi In-kyu, Korea, 1941. Arirang. Dir. Na Woon-gyu, Korea, 1926. Attack on Hong Kong/Honkon kōryaku Eikoku kuzururu no hi. Dir. Tanaka Shigeo, Japan, 1942. Banana Paradise/Xiang jiao tian tang. Dir. Wang Toon, Taiwan, 1989. Battle under Orion/Manatsu no Orion. Dir. Shinohara Tetsuo, Japan, 2009. Black Sun: The Massacre at Nanjing. Dir. Mou Tun-fei, Hong Kong, 1995. Blood and Bones/Chi to Hone. Dir. Sai Yōichi, Japan, 2004. Blue Brave: Fomosa in 1895. Dir. Hung Chih-yu, Taiwan, 2008. Buddha’s Eyes/Buddah no hitomi. Dir. Tanaka Kinshi, Japan, 1924. Cape No 7/Haijiao Qi Hao. Dir. Wei Te-sheng, Taiwan, 2008. Children of the Sun/Tae-yang-ui a-ideul. Dir. Choi In-gyu, Korea, 1944. China Nights/Shina no Yoru. Dir. Osamu Fushimizu, Japan, 1940. City of Life and Death/Nanjing! Nanjing!. Dir. Lu Chuan, China, 2009 City of Sadness/Beiqing Changshi. Dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan, 1989. City of War/John Rabe. Dir. Florian Gallenberger, Germany/China/France, 2010. Currents of Youth/Seishun no kiryu. Dir. Osama Fushimizu, Japan, 1942. Dawn Light/Reimie kokyo. Dir. Tamauchi Eizo, Japan, 1940. Dawn of Freedom Fire on the Flag/Ano hata o ute?. Dir. Abe Yutaka, Japan,1944. Day of Glory/Eikō no hi. Japan/Korea, 1943. Dear Soldier/Byeong jeongnim. Dir. Baek Un-haeng, Korea, 1944. Death By Hanging/Kōshikei. Dir. Oshia Nagisa, Japan, 1968. Devils on the Doorstep/Guizi Laile. Dir. Jiang Wen, China, 2000. Don’t Cry, Nanjing/Nanjing 1937. Dir. Wu Ziniu, China, 1995. Dousan/Dousan: A borrowed life. Dir. Wu Nien-chen, Taiwan, 1994. Embum. Dir. Erma Fatima, Malaysia, 2002. Endless Expanse of Fertile Soil/Yodo banri. Dir. Kurata Bunjin, Japan, 1940. Escape at Dawn/Akatsuki no dassō. Dir. Taniguchi Senkichi, Japan, 1950. Eternity/Wanshi liufang. Dir. Bu Wancang, Zhu Shilin, Yang, Xiaozong, China, 1943. Famous Scenic Sights of Taiwan/Taiwan fūkō meishō, Dir. Unknown, Taiwan/Japan, 1936. Farewell/Jal Issgeola. Dir. Na Woon-gyu, Korea, 1927. Fisherman’s Fire/Eohwa. Dir. Ahn Chul-yeong, 1939.

224

Selected Filmography

Flowers of War/Jinling Shisan Chai. Dir. Zhang Yimou, China, 2011. For Those we Love/Ore wa, kimi no tame ni koso shini ni iku. Dir. Shinjō Taku, Japan, 2007. Frontier/Guk-gyeong. Dir. Choi In-kyu, Korea, 1939. Good Men, Good Woman/Haonan Haonü. Dir.Hou Hsian-Hsien, Japan, 1995. Hong Kong Reborn/Shinsei no Honkon, Dir. Aoyama Yuiitsu, Japan, 1942. Hong Kong. Dir. Aoyama Yuiitsu, Japan, 1942. Hurrah! For Freedom!/Jayu manse. Dir. Choi In Kyu, Korea, 1946. I want to be a shellfish/Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai. Dir Fukuzawa Katsuo, Japan, 2008. I want to be a shellfish/Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai. Dir. Hashimoto Shonobu, Japan, 1959. I Will Go!/Naneun ganda. Dir. Park Gi-chae, Korea, 1942. Incident of the 7th Bamboo Flute/Chilbeontong sosageon. Dir. Na Woon-gyu, Korea, 1936. Kacedas and Subon. Dir. Miyamoto Nobuhito, Japan, 1932. Kano. Dir. Umn Boya, Taiwan, 2014. Leftenan Adnan. Dir. Aziz M. Osman, Malaysia, 2000. Look Up at the Blue Sky/Uleuleola changgong. Dir. Kim Yeong-hwa, Korea, 1943. Lorelei/Rōrerai. Dir. Higuchi Shinji, Japan, 2005. Lust Caution/Se, Jie. Dir. Ang Lee, Taiwan/China, 2007. May and August/Ng yuet baat yuet. Dir. Raymond To, China, 2002. Military Train/Gun-yong-yeolcha. Dir. Seo Gwang-je, Korea, 1938. Modern Boy. Dir. Jung Ji-woo, Korea, 2008. Modern Japan/Xiandai Riben. Dir. Unknown, Japan, 1940. My Way. Dir. Kang Je-gyu, Korea, 2011. Nanjing. Dir. Bill Guttentag and Bill Sturman, USA, 2007. Nongjungjo. Dir. Na Woon-guy, 1926. Ōhinata Village/Ōhinata Mura. Dir. Toyoda Shiro, Japan, 1940. Paiwan. Dir. Miyamoto Nobuhito, Japan, 1928. Paloh. Dir. Adman Salleh, Malaysia, 2003. Portrait of Youth/Wakaki sugata. Dir. Toyodo Shiro, Korea, 1943. Pride: The Moment of Destiny/Puraido: unmei no toki .Dir. Itō Shunya, Japan, 1998. Purple Butterfly – Zi Hudie, Dir. Lou Ye, China, 2003. Purple Sunset/Ziri. Dir. Feng Xiaoning, China, 2001. Righteous Go Hō/Gijin Gohō aka The Story of Wu Fong (1932) Rikidozen/Yeokdosan. Dir. Song He-sung, Korea/Japan, 2004. Road to Peace in the Orient/Toyo heiwa no michi. Dir. Towa Shoji, Japan, 1938. Sayon’s Bell/Sayon no Kane. Dir. Shimizu Hiroshi, Japan, 1943. Sea without Exit/Deguchi no nai umi. Dir. Sasabe Kiyoshi, Japan, 2006. Secret Story/Malmot-hal Sajung. Dir Na Woon-gye, Korea, 1930. Seediq Bale. Dir. Wei Te-Sheng, Taiwan, 2011. Silent Shame. Dir. Izumitani Akiko, Japan, 2010.

Selected Filmography

225

Sketch of Taiwanese Natives/Tansagozoku o egaku. Dir. Unknown, Taiwan/Japan, 1939. Soldier of Fortune/Pung-un-a. Dir. Na Woon-gyu, Korea, 1926. Song of Sadness/Ai no kyoku. Dir. Edamasa Yoshiro, Taiwan, 1919. Song of White Orchid/Byakuran no uta. Dir. Watanabe Kunio, Japan, 1939. Spring of the Korean Peninsula/Bando-ui bom. Dir. Lee Byeong-il, Korea, 1941. Story of a Prostitute/Shunpuden. Dir. Suzuki Seijun, Japan, 1965. Straits of Chosun/Joeson Haehyup Dir. Park Gi-chae, Korea, 1943. Suicide Troops on the Watchtower/Bōrō no Kesshitai. Dir. Imai Tadashi, Japan, 1943. Sunset at Chaophraya/Khu Kam. Dir. Euthana Mukdasanit, Thailand, 1996. Sweet Dream/Mimong. Dir. Yang Ju-nam, Korea, 1936. Tatlong Maria. Dir. Gerardo de Leon, Philippines, 1944. The Border/Guggyeong. Dir. Kim Do-san, Korea, 1923. The Children of Huang Shi/Escape from Huang Shi or Children of the Silk Road. Dir. Roger Spottiswoode, UK, China, Germany, 2008. The Eternal Zero/Eien no Zero. Dir. Tamazaki Takashi, Japan, 2013. The Firefly/Hotaru. Dir. Furuhata Yasuo, Japan, 2001. The Good, the Bad and the Weird/Jo-eun nom, nappeun nom, isanghan nom. Dir. Kim Jee-Woon, Korea, 2008. The Green Earth/Midori no daichi (1942). The Green Earth/Midori no daichi. Dir. Sasaki Yasushi, Japan, 1942. The Grief of Geumgan/Geumganghan. Dir. Na Woon-gyu, Korea, 1931. The Message/Fengsheng. Dir. Chen Kuo-Fu and Gao Qunshu, China, 2009. The New Earth/Atarashi tsuchi/Die Tochter des Samurai, Dir. Arnold Fanck and Itami Mansuku, Japan/Germany, 1937. The Nineteenth Year of Showa/Shōwa jūkūnen. Dir. Morinaga Kenjirō, Japan, 1943. The Promise under the Moon/Wolhaui Maengse. Dir. Yun Baek-nam, 1923. The Puppetmaster/Xi meng renshen. Dir. Hou hsiao-hsien, Taiwan, 1993. The Sea Knows/Hyeonhaetaneun algoitta. Dir. Kim Ki-young, Korea, 1961. The Silenced/Gyeongseonghakyoo: Sarajin Sonyeodeul. Dir. Lee Hae-young, Korea, 2015. The Story of Chunhyang/Chunhyang-jeon. Dir. Lee Myeong-u, Korea, 1935. The Tower of Lilies/Himeyuri no tō. Dir. Imai Tadashi, Japan, 1953. The Truth About Nanjing/Nankin no shinjitsu. Dir. Mizushima Satoru, Japan, 2007. Tiger of Malaya/Marai no tora. Dir. Koga Masato, Japan, 1943. Torn Memories of Nanjing. Dir. Tamaki Matsuoka, Japan, 2010. Tuition/Su-eop-ryo. Dir. Choi In-gyu, Baek Un-haeng, Korea, 1940. Vagabond/Yu-rang. Dir. Kim Yu-yeong, Korea, 1928. Victory Garden/Seungi ui tdeul/Shori no niwa. Dir. Pang Han-jun, Korea, 1940. Visitors: Butterflies have no Memories. Dir. Lav Diaz, Korea, 2009. Visitors: Koma. Dir. Naomi Kawase, Korea, 2009. Visitors: Lost in the Mountains. Dir. Hong Sang-so, Korea, 2009. Volunteer/Jiwonbyeong. Dir. Ahn Seokyuong, Korea, 1940 (released 1941).

226

Selected Filmography

Vow in the Desert/Nessa no chikai. Dir. Watanabe Kunio, Japan, 1940. Vow of Love/Sa-rang-uimaeng-seo. Dir. Choi In-kyu, Korea, 1945. When the Sun rises/Meondong-i teul ttae. Dir. Shim Hoon, Korea, 1927. Winter Jasmine/Yingchun Hua. Dir. Yasushi Sasaki, Japan, 1942. Yamato/Otoko-tachi no Yamato. Dir. Sato Junya, Japan, 2005. Yellow River/Huanghe. Dir. Zhou Xiaobo, China, 1942. You and I/Kimi to boku. Dir. Eitaro Hinatsu, Tamotake Tasaka, Korea/Japan, 1941.

Index Abel, Jonathan  11 Abelmann, Nancy  112 Abe Shinzō  170 Abe Yutaka  52 About Love/Guan Yu Ai (2004, 2005)  137, 198 Abu Grahid footage  193 Academy Awards  200 Adventures of Dankichi/Boken Dankichi, The  51 After the Imperial Turn (2003)  4 Age of Shadows/Miljeong (2016)  144–5 All-Asianism/Zen Ajiashugi 21 Alley, Renwi  192 All Taiwan Film Research Association, The/Zen Taiwan eiga kenkyū kai  28 All under the moon/suki wa dotchi ni dete iru (1993)  175–6 Althusser, Louis  99 Amakasu Masahiko  44, 54 n.1 Anarchists/Anakiseuteu (2000)  142 Anderson, Benedict  67 Anderson, Joseph L.  166 Angels on the Streets/Chib-eobneun cheonsa (1941)  36, 69–70, 74, 109, 110, 112 anthropological films  60–1, 79 anti-Japanese activities  149–50 Aoyagi Tsunatarō  21 Apichatpong Weerasethakul  200 Applause Pictures  199 Archives de la planète (1909–31)  61 Arirang (1926)  32–3, 66 Asako in Ruby Shoes/Sunaebo (2000)  196 Ashcroft, Bill  38 Assassination/Amsal (2015)  144 assimilation/dōka  36 Assmann, Jan  181 Astro Shaw (Malaysia)  199 Atari Kōsuke  135 Attractive Empire (Baskett)  12, 17, 88, 98

Bae Yong-Joon  201 Baida Film Productions  27 Bale, Christian  189 Banana Paradise/Xiang jiao tian tang (1989) 134 Barlow, Tani  10 Baskett, Michael  12–13, 24, 26, 45, 51, 68, 88, 108 battlefield films  84 Battle under Orion/Mantetsu no Orion (2009) 167–8 benzi (commentators of silent films)  28 Berry, Michael  127, 186, 189 beyonsa/live narrator  31–2 Bhabha, Homi  24, 37–8, 97, 131 BIFF. See Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) bildungsroman 69 Blackburn, Kevin  155 black masculinity  97 Black Sun (1995)  185–7, 189 Blood and Bones/Chi To Hon (2002)  176–8 Blood Splashes on Baoshan Fortress/Xie jian bao shan cheng (1938)  50 Blood Stains/Xie hen (1930)  27 Blue Brave: Formosa in 1895 (2008)  136 Blue Swallow/Cheung Yeon (2005)  144 Boat (2009)  196 Boer War  53 Border/Guggyeong, The (1923)  32 borderless fantasy  106 Boundaries of ‘Japanessness’ (Oguma)  160 box-office  25, 27, 32, 85, 101 n.2, 134–6, 139, 142–3, 167, 200 Boys Club Magazine/Shōnen Karabu  54 n.3 Break Through!/Pacchigi! (2005)  175 Bride of Re-animator (1989)  186 Bruhl, Daniel  191 Buddha’s Eyes/Buddha no hitomi (1924) 26

228 Burma, Fires on the Plains/Nobi (1959) 165 Burning of the Red Lotus Temple/Huoshao honglian (1928)  29 Burton, Antoinette  4 Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) 199 Bushidō 93 Butler, Judith  93 Byun Young-joo  157 cadre sociaux (colonial period)  139 Café Lumier (2005)  137 Can Japan Say No the Truth  186 Cannadine, David  8 Cannes  179 n.1 Cape No 7/Haijiao Qi Hao (2008)  135–6 capitalism  8, 75, 127–8 Caprioni, Giovanni  171 Captured Film Collection  6 Caught the Web/Sōusuo  200 Celestial Pictures  199 censorship  11, 29–39, 50–1, 134, 149, 151, 162–4, 200 Chakrabarty, Dipesh  4 Chan, Peter  199 Chapman, James  53 Chen Kaige  200 Chen Kuan-Shing  4 Chen Ru-shou Robert  12 Chiang Bi-Yu  133 Chia-ning Chang  54 n.2 Children of Huang Shi, The (2008)  192 Children of the Silk Road. See The Children of Huang Shi Children of the Sun/Tae-yang-ui a-ideul (1944) 84 China Film Company Limited, The  48 China Film Group  152, 187 China Nights/Shina no Yoru (1940)  46, 53, 80, 106–7, 202 China-Russo Cold War  150 Chinese and Japanese Films of the Second World War (Tam, Tsu and Wilsons)  12, 127 Chinese cinema  148–54, 180–94 development of  48 Imperial cinema  42–54

Index and Manchurian landscape  75–81 Chi-Shin Showroom Cinema  158 n.3 Chiu Kuei-fen  12 A Chivalrous Man named Kim Du-han/ Hyeobgaeg Kim Du-han (1981)  141 Choi Chungmoo  38, 103, 109 Chōsen Eiga Kabushikigaisha. See Korean Motion Picture Production Corporation Chosun, Our Rear Base/Joseon, uri ui hubang (1940)  39, 119 Chou Tzu-yu  134 Chow, Rey  152 Chowdhry, Prem  120 Chow Yun-fat  192, 201 Christianity 25 Chungmoo Choi  129 Chunhyang/Chunhyangjeon  116, 118 Cinema at the Crossroads (2014)  5, 127 cinema of attractions  24 cinematic landscape/territories  55–81 and anthropological films  60–1 and gender role  69 and Manchurian landscape  75–81 and mass media  78 modern city and rural Korea  65–70 and railways/trains  71–5 Taiwanese aborigines  58–65 cinematic nationhood  31–2 City of Life and Death/Nanjing! Nanjing!  185, 187–8 City of Sadness Beiqing changshi (1989)  132, 202 City of War  191 Cold War  12, 128, 134, 150, 159, 169, 197 collaborative working patterns  84–6, 196–7 collective amnesia  160 colonial fantasy  56 colonialism  1, 3, 5–8, 10, 12, 15, 22–3, 25, 30, 37–9, 58, 75, 79, 94, 99, 103, 106, 111, 113, 129, 132, 139–41, 144–5, 155, 166, 178, 193, 203 colonial modernity  23–30 colonial territories. See cinematic landscape/territories Communist China  148 Confessions of Pain/Seung Sing (2006)  201

Index Construction Work/Kensetsu kōji (1939) 76–7 Cooper, Frederick  8 co-production  13, 33, 47, 49–50, 52, 86, 104, 137, 195–9 cosmetic multiculturalism  173 Creative Industries  199 The Crossing/Tai Ping Lun (2014)  201 Cruel Story of Youth/Seishun Zankoku Monogatari (1960)  165 Cruz, Jose Esperanza  53 Cull, Nicholas J.  53 Cultural Integration of the Japanese Empire, The (Komagome)  160 cultural memory  181–2 cultural rule/bunka seiji  30 Currents of Youth/Seishun no kiryu (1942) 53 Cyclo (1995)  202 Daejung Yeonghwa  31 Daiei 85 Dai Nippon  53 Daitōa Kyōeiken /Greater East Asian Coprosperity 43 dark period (amhukki)  39 Dark Sun  186, 188, 190 Daughters of China/Zhonghua nuer (1949) 148 Davies, Darrell William  12 Dawn Light/Reimie kokyo (1940)  80 Dawn of Freedom aka Fire on the Flag/Ano hata o ute (1944)  52 Daybreak/Tianming (1933)  110 Day of Glory/Eik ō no hi (1943)  84 Dear Soldier (1945)  84, 90–2, 96–7, 99 Dear Soldier/Byeong jeongnim (1944)  67, 84, 90–2, 96–7, 99 Death and Glory in Chengde/Chang De Da Xue Zhan (2010)  149 Death By Hanging/Kōshikei (1968)  174 decolonization  129, 161, 179 n.2 Delissen, Alain  9 Deng Xiaoping  128 Denis, Claire  178 Desert at Dawn  164–5 Desser, David  164 Devils on the Doorstop/Guizi Laile

229

(2000) 149 Diaochan (1938)  48 Diawara, Manthia  121 Dirks, Nicholas B.  57 Dissanayake, Wimal  129 Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia (Berry and Sawada)  12, 127 divine origins  18 n.5 Divine Work/Seigyō  7 Don’t Cry Nanjing/Nánjing yī jiǔ sān qī (1995)  183, 185–7, 189 Doobo Shim  196 Dou-san (1989)  134 Duara, Prasenjit  9, 43–4, 77, 85, 92 Duus, Peter  38 Dyer, Richard  200 Earth and Soldiers/Tsruhi to Heitai (1939) 84 East Asian cinema. See individual countries East Asian Community/Tōa kyōdōtai  43, 57 East Asian Film networks  13 East Asian Film Sphere  204 East Asian League/Tōa renmei  43, 57 Eckert, Carter  10 Eiga Hyōron  31, 33 Eiga Junpō  31 Eight Hundred Heroes/Badai zhuangshi (1977) 132 Eileen Chang  152 Embum  156 Emperor Meiji (1957)  165 Endless Expanse of Fertile Soil/Yokudo banri (1940) 79 Erll, Astrid  181 Escape at Dawn/Akatsuki no dasso (1950) 163–4 Escape from Huang Shi. See The Children of Huang Shi The Eternal Zero/Eien no Zero (2013) 167–70 Eternity/Wanshi liufang  49 ethnicity 109 ethnographic films  61, 79, 105 Eurocentricism 4 European empires  128

230 Evening Bell/Wanzhong (1988)  148 Everlasting Glory/Ying lie qianqiu (1973) 132 Eve Tsai  201 expansion/bōchōshugi  21 The Eye (2002, 2003)  199 The Eye 2 (2004)  199 The Eye 3 (2008)  199 Faison, Elyssa  115 Famous Scenic Sights of Taiwan/Taiwan fūkō meishō  63 Fanon, Franz  94, 128 Farewell/Jal issgeola (1927)  32, 112 fascism 36 Fascist Italy  90 Fei Mu  47 Female Fighters/Lìrén Xíng (1949)  149 female subjective desire  112–14, 116, 189–90 feminism and education system  108–11 and gender  108–11 and military labour  121 and modernity  111–19 and nationhood  103–11 overview 102–3 feminization/femininity  93–4, 112, 113, 120, 190 fictional films  61 Fighter in the Wind/Baramui paiteo (2004) 144 film festivals  199 filmic space/landscape. See cinematic landscape/territories film/movie magazines  31, 33, 53 Film Pictorial  48 film studies  200–1 Firefly, The/Hotaru (2001)  175, 176 Fire on that Flag  104 First Sino-Japanese War  3 Fischer-Tiné, Harald  7 Fisherman’s Fire/Eohwa  34, 69–70, 74, 114–15 Five Ethnic Groups Living in Harmony/gozuku kyōwa  57 Five Scouts/Gonin no sekkōhei (1938)  84 Flowers of War/Jinling Shisan Chai

Index (2010) 189–90 Forgotten Imperial Army, The/Wasurerareta Kogun (1963)  174 Formosa Republic  136 For Those we Love/Ore wa, kimi no tame ni koso shini ni iku (2007)  167–8 Foucault, Michel  98 Foundation for Reconciliation and Healing, The  157–8 Founding of the Republic, The/Jiàngúo Dà Yè (2009)  149 Francoist Spain  90 Frears, Steven  178 Freema, Elizabeth  120 From the Window of a Train (1942)  71 frozen memories  160 Fujitani Takashi  12, 88, 94, 96 Furuhata Yasuo  175 Fuyajō (1998)  201 gaichi/gaiji (colonies/colonial periphery) 67 Gardner, William  56 Gateward, Frances  140, 142 Gehrmann, Susanne  7 gender dynamics  93, 96, 109 and military labour  119–21 and nationhood  108–11 role, and cinematic landscape  69 General’s Son, The/Janggunui adeul (1990, 1991, 1992)  141 Gerardo de Leon  52 Gerow, Aaron  12, 38, 121, 172–3 Gieselmann, Martin  150 girlhood 145–7 Girls Service Voluntary Labor Act, The (Joshi Kinr ō Teishin Kinr ō Rei) 119 Gi-Wook Shin  8, 10 Gledhill, Christine  200 Go (2001)  175 Goddess/Shennü, The (1934)  29, 110 Good, the Bad and The Weird, The/ Joheunnom Nabbeunnom Isanghannom (2008)  143 Good Earth, The  105 Good Men, Good Woman/Haonan Haonü (1995) 132–3

Index goodwill films  108 Gosfilmfond archive  6, 39 Goto Ken’ichi  50 Goto Shimpei  26 Gozuku kyōwa (five ethnic groups living in harmony) 44–5 Grave of the Fireflies  170 greater Asia/Dai Ajiashugi 21 Greater East Asian cinema  49 Greater East Asian Co-prosperity sphere/Dao-Tōa Kyōeiken  7, 14, 18 n.5, 57 Greater East Asian Film  204 Greater East Asian Film Sphere, The  7 Greater East Asian War/Daitōa Sensō  2, 162, 166 Greater Empire of Japan, The/Dai-Nippon teikoku (1983)  167 Great Kanto Earthquake  54 n.1 Great Russo-Japanese War, The/Shintōhō’s Meiji Tennō to Nichiro Daisensō (1957) 165 Great Wall of China  76 Green Earth, The/Midori no daichi (1942)  76, 80 Grief of Geumgan, The/Geumganghan (1931) 112 Guerrillas on the Plain/Pingyuan youji dui (1955) 148 Guohua studio  48, 49 Habitual Sadness/Na-jeun Moak-so-ri 2 (1997) 157 Hack, Karl  155 Haggis, Jane  102 Hagiya Kenzō  26 hakkō ichiu  42, 57 Halbwachs, Maurice  139, 181 Hall, Cathleen  192 Hall, Stuart  129 Hallyu phenomenon  142 Hansen, Janine  78 hantōjin (peninsulars)  88 Happiness of the Katakuris/Katakuri-ke no Kō fuku (2001)  196 Harootunian, Harry  1, 178 Harper, Graeme  62 Harp of Burma/Biruma no tategoto

231

(1956) 163 Hattori Tomiko  106–7 Hayward, Susan  200 heichi banjin (plains)  60 Heidenröselein (Schubert)  135 Henry, Todd  11, 23 ‘He’ri jun zai lai’ (song)  202 Heroes of the Eastern Skies/Jiàn Qiáo Yīng Liè Zhuàn (1977)  132 Hero/Yīngxióng (2002)  190 High, Peter B.  36, 84 Higuchi Yuichi  87 Hinatsu Eitarō (Heo Yeoung)  85–6 Hirano Kyoko  162 Hiratsuka Raishō  122 n.1 Hiroshima  139, 180 Hogg, George  192 Hokuman no Hakkei Rojin/White Russian Wanderer in Northern Mongolia, Part 1  82 n.7 Hollywood  17, 25, 44, 47, 52, 54, 116, 189, 195, 197, 200–1 Hong Guo-Juin  12, 22, 28 Hong Kong cinema  47–50 Hong Kong/Honkon kōryaku Eikoku kuzururu no hi (1942)  50 Hong Kong Reborn/Shinsei no Honkon (1942) 50 Hong Kong Shaw Brothers Studio 197 Hong Sang-soo  196 hooks, bell  103, 121 Horiguchi, J. Noriko  122 n.1 Hotaru  176 Hotel Hibiscus/Hoteru haibisukasu (2002) 173 Hou Hsiao-Hsien  132–3 House of Flying Daggers/Shí Miàn Mái Fú (2004)  190, 201 Huaying 48 Hulme, Peter  4, 58 Human Condition Trilogy, The/Ningen no jōken (1959, 1959, 1961)  162 Human Torpedo Sacrifice/Ningen Gyorai Kaiten (1955)  165 Hunt for the Red October  169 Hurrah! For Freedom!/Jayu manse (1946)  1, 139

232

Index

Huyssen, Andreas  142, 186 Hyam, Ronald  8 Hyon Joo Yoo  5, 130 hyoonmo yangcho (good wife)  109 hypermasculinity  94, 120 Ichikawa Fusae  122 n.1 Ichikawa Kon  165 Iijima Tadashi  86, 101 n.2 Ikebe Ryō  164 Ikeda, Kyle  171 Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (1974)  186 Imai Tadashi  172 Im Kwon-taek  141 Imperial Army. See Japanese Army Imperialism  1, 4–6, 8, 9, 11–12, 14–15, 17, 24–5, 38, 42, 44, 58, 61, 71, 105, 108, 122, 138, 153, 154, 156, 175 Imperial Japan  1–2, 15, 38, 40, 45, 51, 53, 56–8, 63, 93, 104, 109, 111, 130, 138, 141, 168, 170, 195 Imperial Manchuria  44, 143 Imperial Shanghai  142 importing films  28–9 Incident of the 7th Bamboo Flute/Chilbeontong sosageon (1936) 112 Inoue Hideko  123 n.5 In the Rear of Chosun/Chong Hu ui Joseon (1937)  39, 119 Introduction to the Actual Conditions in Taiwan/Taiwan jikkō shōkai  26 Ito Hirobumi  138 Ito Noe  54 n.1 Ivy, Marilyn  36 Iwabuchi Koichi  198 Iwanami Press  160 I want to be a shellfish/Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai (1959)  166 Iwasaki Ikira  45 I Will Go!/Naneun ganda (1942)  84, 89 Izumitani Akiko  184 Jackie Chan  201 Jackie Chung  199, 201 Jaikumar, Priya  4, 63 Jan Dara (2001)  199

Japanese Army  15, 43, 52, 68, 83–8, 91–2, 96, 98, 133, 163, 164, 171 Japanese cinema Imperial cinema  42–54 in post-war period  159–63 Japanese Cinema and Otherness  173 Japanese Devils/Riben Guizi (2001)  184 Japanese education system (kokumin gakkō) 115 Japanese Film Archive  6 Japanese film industry  13, 17, 28, 31, 44, 50, 51, 53, 60, 62, 81, 85, 86, 104, 162, 165, 167, 179 n.1, 197, 198 Japanese Imperial Empire  2, 4–6, 8, 14, 15, 17, 28, 38, 42, 46, 50, 56, 60, 64, 74, 85, 90, 102, 103, 106, 127, 128, 136, 148, 195–204 aims and objectives  2–13 censorship and language  30–9 colonial modernity  23–30 and Manchuria  42–7 and Manchurian landscape  75–81 modern city and rural Korea  65–70 and railways/trains  71–5 and space/territories (see cinematic landscape/territories) Japanese Imperialism  9, 38, 42, 71, 122, 138, 154 Japanese masculinity  94, 96, 106 Japanese migration  77–8 Japanese New Wave  165 Japanese Police Officers’ Taiwan Village Inspection/Nihonjin keikan no bansha (1935)  59 Japanese victimhood  163, 166 Japan-Korea volunteer system applicant population  87 collaborative working patterns  84–6 complexities of  87–8 and film narratives  88–92 and gender dynamics  93, 96 overview 83–4 Jeonju Digital Project  196 Jeonju International Film Festival  204 n.2 Jia Zhangke  200 Jie Li  76 Ji Jin-hee  199, 201 Jinhee Choi  147

Index Jose, Ricardo  52 Journey to the East/Dong you ji? (1939)  46 Joyce, James  129 jukuban/ripe aborigines  58 Jung-Bong Choi  8 Cho Jung-rae  158 n.3 kaban/acculturated aborigines  58 Kacedas and Subon (1932)  60 Kahn, Albert  61 Kaneshiro Takeshi  201 Kannaai (short story)  66 Kano (2014)  138 Kanto Earthquake  170, 171 Katō Norihiro  160 Katushiko Endō  12 Katzenstein, Peter J.  198 Kawakita Nagamasa  49 Kawazu Kiyosaburō  86 KCCU films  32 Kentarō Oishi  169 Khu Kam/Fated Couple  154 Killer Barbies vs Dracula (2002)  186 Kim Du-han  141–2 Kim Du-han and Brother Shirasoni/Kim Du-han hyeong Shirasoni hyeong (1981) 141 Kim Jee-woon  145 Kim Ki-Duk  200 Kim Ki-young  140 Kim Kyung-hyun  141 Kim Sin-jae  86 Kinema Junpō  179 n.1 Kinema Junpō  31 King, Richard  12 Kingdom of Tungning  41 n.4 Kinoshita Keisuke  122 Kishimoto Satoru  27 K30 Legend of the Mask (2008)  201 KMPC Toho  44, 85, 86 KMT  133–5, 149 Kodak 27 KOFA 33 KOFIC. See Korean Film Council (KOFIC) Koji Kanada  63 Koma  196 Komagome Takeshi  160 kōminka (imperialisation) policy  30,

233

36–7 Korean cinema  12, 32–4, 40, 85–6, 112, 114, 121, 138–48, 150, 203 censorship and language  30–9 colonial modernity  23–30 history of  22–3 modern city and rural Korea  65–70 and nationhood  31–2 and racial rules  31 and trains/railways  72–5 Korean Colonial Cinema Unit/Chosen sotofuku kinema  31 Korean Film Council (KOFIC)  5 Korean masculinity  83–4, 92, 97, 102, 139, 140 Korean Motion Picture Production Corporation  85, 101 n.1 Korean Security Law of 1907  30 Korean Special Volunteer Soldier system 86 Korean War  128, 140 Kosugi Isamu  86 kozan banjin (uplands)  60 Kraicer, Shelly  191 Kristeva, Julia  113 Kuan-Hsing Chen  129 Kuomintang  128 Kushner, Barack  11 language, cinematic  30–9, 45 Last Love, First Love/Zui hou de ai, zui chu de ai (2003)  198 Lav Diaz  196 League of Nations  43 Lee, Ang  151 Lee Daw-Ming  22 Lee Hae-myeong  143 Leung, Tony  201 Lefebvre, Martin  55 Leftenam Adnan  155 Leo Ching  60, 64 Letter with a Feather/Ji Mao Xin (1954)  149 Library of Congress  6 Liddle, Joanna  120 lieux de mémoire (sites of memory)  142, 182, 185 Light of the Spade: Building Greater East Asia/Suki no hikari–daitōa no

234

Index

kensetsue (1937)  79 Lim, David  156 Linwayway  53 Li Shu  27 Li Tian-lu  12, 133 Liu Xiyang  27 Li Xianglan/Li Hsiang-lan (China). See Yamaguchi Yoshiko Locomotive Pashiha/kikansha pashiha (1939) 76–7 Longest Night in Shanghai, The/Yoru no Shanghai (2007)  198 Look Up at the Blue Sky/Uleuleola changgong (1943)  84, 89 Lorelei/Rōrerai (2005)  167 Lost in Thailand/Ren zaijiong tu: Taijiong (2012) 200 Lost Souls (1980)  186 Love of Vow/Sa-rang-uimaeng-seo (1945) 84 Lust Caution/Se, Jie (2007)  150–3 McClintock, Anne  3, 7, 93, 129 McHugh, Kathleen  112 mainstream cinema  34, 166–7, 171, 178, 196 Malaysian cinema  155–6 male gaze  116 Man’ei cinema  30, 43–5, 50, 54, 79, 150 Mantetsu. See South Manchuria Railway Company/minami manshū tetsudō kabushikigaisha Manchsū Masume/‘Manchurian Girl’ (song) 106 Manchukuo/Manshū. See Manchuria Manchuria  8–12, 15, 17 n.1, 29–30, 42–8, 53, 55–6, 71, 82 n.6, 102–3, 105–8, 143, 163 Manchurian landscape  75–81 Manchurian Christ/Manshū no kirisutokyōson  82 n.7 Manchurian Railway documentaries  12 Manchurian Settlement Policy, The  77 Mansfield, Katherine  129 March of the Guerrillas/Youji jinxing qu (1938) 50 Mariko Asano Tamanoi  12 Marker, Chris  178

martial law  134 masculinity  15, 91–4, 99, 120, 127, 140–1 Japanese  94, 96, 106 Korean  83–4, 92, 97, 102, 139, 140 Massacre at Nanjing (1987)  185 Matsui Minoru  184 Matsuda Masao  172 Matsuda, Hiroko  11 Matsumoto Takenori  10 Matsuoka Tamaki  184 May and August/Ng yuet baat yuet (2002) 185–5 Media Asia Group  187 Meiji period  22, 109 Memmi, Albert  46 mémoire collective (collective memory)  139 Men Behind the Sun (1988)  186 Mercer, Kobena  96 Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence/Senjōno Merī Kurisumasu (1983)  167 Message, The/Fengsheng (2009)  150, 153 Miao Miao (2008)  137 Mignolo, Walter  113 Mihara Junko  42 Miiki Takashi  196 Mike Ko  173 milieu de mémoire (real environments of memory) 182 militarism (gunkokushugi) 22 military recruitment films  83–6 military rule (budan seiji) 30 Military Train/Gun-yong-yeolcha (1938)  34, 72, 74, 110 Millennium Mambo/Qiānxī Mànbō (2001) 137 mimicry 37–9 Mitchell, W. J. T.  58 Mitter, Rana  11 Miyabe Kyūzō  169 Miyake Kuniko  86 Miyamoro Nobuhito  60 Miyazaki Hayao  170 mobilization of military troops  64, 84–5, 88, 90 and railways/trains  71–5 of women  100, 115, 119–20, 123 n.8 Modern Boy (2008)  142–3

Index modernity 10–11 colonial 23–30 and feminism  111–19 modern city and rural Korea  65–70 Modern Japan/Xiandai Riben (1940)  46, 160 Mōko ryōki/Mongolian Horseback Hunters  82 n.7 Mongol  202 Mori, Dr. Ōgai  136 Mori, Takemaro  10 moribund masculinity  127 Mother of Fatherland/jogukui Omoni (1949) 139 Mou, F. T.  186 Movie Distribution Company/Eiga Haikyū sha  51 Movie-Eye Entertainment  198 Mulan Joins the Army/Mulan congjun (1938) 48 Mulan joins the Army/Mulan congjun (1928) 29 multicultural Taiwanese identity  134–6 Mum Ye-bong  86 Murai Yoshinori  85 The Murmuring/Na-jeun Moak-so-ri (1995) 157 mutual dependence  40 n.1 My Own Breathing Na-jeun Moak-so-ri 3 (1999) 157 Nabi’s Love  173 naeseon ilche/naisen ittai  92, 98 Nagamasa Kawakita  198 Nagasaki  139, 180 Nagata Masaichi  197 naichi (homeland)  98 naiji (metropole)  67 Nair, Mira  178 Nakajima, Sachiko  120 Nakamura Aketo  154 Nakano Kōichi  183 Nanjing massacre films  180–94 Nanjing Massacre Memorial  3 Nanjing Safety Committee  193 Nanjing Victims Association  186 Nanjing (2007)  192 Naoki Sakai  161

235

Naomi Kawase  196 Naruse Mikio  122 ‘national language’ (kokugo) 37 National Mobilization Law/Kokka sōdōin hō  30 national parks  63 nationhood and education  108–11 and gender  108–11 Korean cinematic  31–2 objects of  103–11 Navy/Kaigun (1940)  53 Na woon-gyu  32–3, 41 n.8 Nazism/Nazi Germany  84, 90, 170, 171, 191–2 Neri, Corrado  137 New Earth, The/Atarashi tsuchi (1937)  49 New Order of Asia  51 Newspaper Law of 1907  30 Newspaper Regulations of 1908  30 newsreels  6, 25, 26, 30–1, 39, 52, 53, 55, 59–61, 63, 64, 71, 77–8, 84, 105, 119–20 Newsweek  2 New Woman  111 Night and Fog in Japan/Nihon no Yoru to Kiri (1960)  165 Nihon Eiga  31 1931 Manchurian Incident  29 1937 Qixia Temple/Qixia sh 1937 (2005)  185–7, 189 Nineteenth Year of Showa, The/Shōwa jūkūnen (1943)  84 Nishiki Motosada  33 Nokseong  31 Nonjungo (1926)  112 Nora, Pierre  182–3, 185 occupation period  47, 49–50, 61 Oguma Eiji  38, 160, 166, 179 n.2 Ōhinata Village/Ōhinata Mura (1940)  78 Okinawa 171–4 Okinawan Boom  173 Old Mao  135 Once Upon a Time (2008)  143 ‘one body’ narrative  66–7 180-degree rule  34, 116 One Fine Spring Day/Bomnaleun ganda

236

Index

(2001) 199 Opium War  49 Orientalism  93, 128–30 Orphan Island period  47–8 Orphan Rescues Grandfather/Gu’er jiuzu (1923) 29 Orr, James J.  160 Oshima Nagisa  174–5 Osugi Sakeo  54 n.1 Otherness 130 Our Rear Base  119 Pacific War  1, 3, 6, 13, 52, 100, 132, 162, 172, 180 Paiwan (1928)  60 Paiwan ceremonial customs  60 Palmer, Brandon  87 Paloh (2003)  156 pan-Asia/Han Ajiashugi 21 pan-Asianism  7, 21, 40 n.1, 195 Paradise View/Paradaisu byū  173 Park Guen-hye  157–8 Passage, The/Jing guo (2004)  137 Patriots Day in Chosen/Joseon ui aegugil (1939) 39 ‘Peace in Asia’/Tôyô heiwa no uta (song) 106 Pearl Harbour  162 Peppermint Candy/Bakha Satang (1999) 141 Perhaps Love/Ruguo Ai (2005)  199, 201 Peterson, Lynne  58 Philippines cinema/Filipino cinema  51–3 Pigs and Battleship/Buta to gunkan (1961) 165 Pioneering Troops/Kaitaku totsugekitai  79 Pleasure Trip/Tanoshii tabiji (1943)  71 Poole, Janet  10, 39 Portrait of Youth/Wakaki sugata (1943)  84, 85, 89, 91 Posek Fu  11, 48, 49 Postcolonial Cinema Studies (Ponzanesi and Waller) 4 Postcolonial Film: History Empire and Resistance (Weaver-Hightower and Hulme) 4 postcolonialism/postcolonial cinema  3–6, 15, 23, 28, 40, 58, 70, 94, 127–30,

134–5, 137, 140, 141, 156–8, 161, 173–4, 178, 193, 197, 201 post-Imperialism  6, 127–8, 140, 153, 157–8, 170, 192, 197 post-war Japanese cinema  159–65 Poulton, Cody  12 Pratt, Mary Louise  61, 166, 170 Pride: The Moment of Destiny/Puraido: unmei no toki (1998)  183–4 Princess of Asia under War Clouds/Sen’un Aija no joō (1957)  165 Profound Desire of the Gods/Kamigami no Fukaki Yokubō (1968)  173 prokino film movement  45 Promise under the moon/Wolha ui maengso (1923)  32, 66 Publication Law of 1909  30 Puppetmaster, The/Xi mengrenshen (1993)  132, 133 Purple Butterfly – Zi Hudie (2003)  150–3 Purple Sunset/Ziri (2001)  149–50 Qing dynasty  41 n.4, 42 Quiet Family, The/Joyonghan Gajok (1998) 196 Rabe, John  191–2 Radio Dayz (2008)  143 railways/trains, and cinematic landscape 71–5 Rakudo shinmōko/New Mongolian Paradise  82 n.7 Rape of Nanjing  180–6 raw aborigines (seiban) 58 Rayner, Jonathan  62 Reconnaissance across the Yangtze/Dujiang Zhenchaiji (1974)  148 recycling film prints  29 Red Cliff /Chi Bi  187 Red Sorghum/Hóng gā oliáng (1987)  149 refraction, notion of  24 Republic of Manchukuo  43 Research Committee on the Nanjing Incident/Nankin jiken chosa kenkyukai  182 riban jigyõ  59 Richie, Richie  166 Riefenstahl, Leni  202

Index Rikidozen/Yeokdosan (2004)  144 Ring, The (1998)  196 River of the Stranger, The/Ihōjin no kawa (1975) 175 Rizal, Jose  104 Road to Peace in the Orient/Toyo heiwa no michi (1938)  49, 80 Robinson, Michael  8, 10, 30 Romanovka Village/Romanovka mura  82 n.7 Russo-Sino Japanese War  43 ryōsai kenbo (wise mother)  16, 109 Saaler, Sven  40 n.1 Said, Edward  61, 128–9 Saidi, Adnan bin  155 Sai Yōichi  176 Samsheolli  31 Sato Tadao  45 Sawada Chiho  127 Sayon’s Bell/Sayon no Kane (1943)  64–5, 121 Scenes from Eastern Mongolia/Higashi Mōko fūbutsu hen, Part 2  82 n.7 Schindler’s List (1993)  191 Schmid, Andre  9 Schooldays/Xuéxiào Bàwáng (1995)  201 Scott, David  65 Sea Knows, The/Hyeonhaetaneun algo itda (1961) 140 Sea of Japan  81 n.4 Sea of Joseon  81 n.4 Sea without Exit/Deguchi no nai umi (2006)  167, 168 Second Sino-Japanese War  47 Secret Story/Malmot-hal Sajung (1930)  33 Seediq Bale/Warriors of the Rainbow (2011) 136 Seodaedum prison  3 Seoul (2000)  196 sexuality  7, 111, 118, 137, 153 Shanghai cinema  45, 47–50 Shanghai Film Studio  198 Shanghai International Film Festival 199 Shanghai Rhapsody/Shanhai bansu kingu (1984) 167 Sharp, Jasper  81 n.3

237

Shaw Brothers  196, 198 Shimizu Hiroshi  64, 81 n.3 Shinko Kinema  86 shinryaku/aggression 21 Shin-Toho studio  165–7 Shinzō, Abe  157 Shizuka, Annie Inoh  133 Shochiku  44, 85, 86 shōhachikashi  82 n.7 Shohat, Ella  8 ‘Shouzhou Serenade’ (song)  202 Shrines of Eastern Mongolian Lamaism/Higashi Mōko ramabyō hen  82 n.7 Shunpunden (Taijiro)  163 Silverberg, Miriam  68 Silenced, The/Yeongseong Hakgyo: Sarajin Sonyeodeul (2015)  145, 148 Silent Battlefield at Dawn, The/Shizuka nari akatsuki no senjō (1959)  165 silent era/silent golden age  31–3 Silent Shame (2010)  184–5 Sino-Japanese War  22, 29, 43, 83, 87, 100, 132, 185 sinp’a (kr)/shinpa (j) theatrical style  112 Sinyoja /New Woman (journal)  123 n.7 Sketch of Taiwanese Natives/Tansagozoku o egaku (1939)  61 Slyuter, Andrew  58 Soldier of Fortune/Pung-un-a (1926) 112 Somewhere I have never traveled (2009) 137 Song of Sadness/Ai no kyoku (1919)  61 Song of the Fisherman, The/Yu guang qu (1934) 29 Song of White Orchid/Byakuran no uta (1939)  80, 121, 202 Sons and Daughters of the World/Söhne und Töchter der Welt (1941)  47 Sons of Shōhachi Osomura, The  82 n.7 Sopyonje (2003)  141 sound recording  34 South East Asian cinema  50–3, 154–7 South East Asian Motion Picture Producers Association 197 South Korean national cinema  141

238

Index

South Korean War Memorial Museum  3 South Manchuria Railway Company/minami manshû tetsudō kabushiki-kaisha  44, 71 Soviet Union  128 Space Travelers/Supōsutoraberōzu (2000) 201 spectatorship 121 Spirits Homecoming (2015)  158 n.3 Sportiswoode, Roger  192 Spring in my Home Town/Areumdawoon sheejul (1998)  141 Spring of the Korean Peninsula/Bando-ui bom (1941)  67, 68, 116–19 Stacy, Jackie  201 Stam, Robert  8 Steedman, Carolyn  120 Stegewens, Dick  165 Stephenson, Shelley  106 Stoler, Laura Ann  8, 23, 102, 111 Story of a Prostitute/Shunpuden (1965) 164–5 Story of Chunhyang, The/Chunhyang-jeon (1935)  33, 66 Story of Wu Fong, The/Go Hō/Gijin Gohō (1932) 62 Straits of Chosun/Joseon Haehyup (1943)  84, 90, 91, 96, 120–1 Street Angels/Malu tianshi (1937)  29, 110 Studio Ghibli  170 Sugamo no haha/Mothers of the Sugamo Prison (1952)  166 Suicide Troops on the Watchtower/Bōrō no Kesshitai (1943)  67–8, 84, 85, 90, 94, 96, 121 Summer of the Moonlight Sonata/Gekkō no natsu (1993)  167 Sunset at Chaophraya  154–5 Suzuki Seijun  164 Sweet Dream/Mimong (1936)  34, 67, 112–14 Szpilman, Christopher  40 n.1 Tadahito Mochinaga  45 Tadanobu Asano  201–2 Tadashi Nishimoto  198 Taebaek Mountains, The/Taebaek Sanmaek (1994) 141

Tagalog 52 Taijiro Tamura  163–4 Taipei Cinema League/Taihoki  28 Taiwan Cinema Association  27 Taiwan Cinema Study Association/Taiwan Eiga kenkyū kai  27 Taiwan Douzinsha/Dōjinsha  41 n.4 Taiwan Education Society  26 Taiwanese cinema  131–8 and cinematic landscape  58–65 colonial modernity  23–30 and education  26–7 history of  22–3 and land aborigines  58–65 and trains/railways  72 Taiwanese from Taizhong Tour the Homeland/Taichūshū tansagozoku no naichi kankō (1936)  63 Taiwanese Republic  40 n.2 Taiwan Film Association/Taiwan eiga kyōkai  30 Takakura Ken  175 Takamatsu Toyojirō  25–6 Takamine Gō  173 Takamure Itsue  122 n.1 Takashi Kaneshiro  199 Takeda Seiji  161 Takeuchi Yoshimi  21 Tale of Two Sisters (2005)  147 Tanaka Chigaku  42 Tanaka Kinishi  26 Tanaka Picture company  26 Tan’ei. See Taiwan Film Association/Taiwan eiga kyōkai Tarling, Nicholas  50 Tartan Grindhouse  186 Tasaka Tomotake  86, 101 n.2 Tatlong Maria (1944)  53, 104, 105 Technicolor 186 Teo, Stephen  204 terra nullius policy  59 textbook reform movement/Atarashii rekishi-kyōkasho wo tsukuru kai  3 Tezuka Yoshiharu  197 Thai cinema  154–3 Thought War, The (Kushner)  11 Three Extremes (2002)  199 Tierney, Robert  62

Index Tiger of Malaya/Marai no Tora (1943) 104 tokkōtai/kamikaze 167–70 Tokyo International Film Festival  199 Tokyo Trial/Dōngjīng Shěnpàn (2006)  185 Tokyo tribunal  186 Tomiyama Ichiro  161 Torn Memories of Nanjing  184–5 touring cinema  32 Tower of Lilies, The/Himeyuri no tō (1953) 172 Toys/Ziao wanyi (1933)  29 transnational phenomenon  9, 13, 17, 24–5, 43, 47, 74, 105, 110, 195, 199–203 traveling exhibitions/travelling exhibitions 28–9 Trilogy of Lust (1995)  186 tropical exotic landscapes  63 Trouble Maker/La bi xiao xiao sheng (1995) 201 True story of Kim Du-Han, The/Sillog Kim Du-han (1974)  141 Truth About Nanjing, The  184–5 Tsurumi Kazuko  120 Tsutumo Sawamura  52 Tuition/u-eop-ryo (1940)  110 TVB (Hong Kong)  199 Twenty Four Eyes/Nijū -shi no Hitomi (1952) 162 TWICE (band)  158 n.1 2009 Lost Memories (2002)  122, 138–9 Uchida Tomu  44 Ueno Chizuka  122 n.1 Ukai Satoshi  161 Umetsugu Inoue  198 Uncle Kruger/Ohm Krüge (1941)  53 Under the Black Umbrella (Kang)  10 Under the Flag of the Rising Sun/Gunki hatameku moto ni (1972)  165 Untamagirū  173 Utsumi Akiko  85 Uyoku dantai  194 n.1 Vagabond/Yu-rang (1928)  32 Vautrin, Minnie  192 Vergès, Françoise  99

239

Victory Garden/Seungi ui tdeul (1940) 84 Victory Song of the Orient/Tōyō no Gaika (1942) 52 Vimeo 185 Vincendeau, Ginette  200 Virgin Snow/Hatsuyuki no koi (2007)  196 vision of chrononormativity  120 Visitors (2009)  196 visual culture  180–1 Volunteer, You and I/Kimi to boku (1941)  84, 88–9, 94, 96–8, 110 volunteer films  83–4, 86–9, 98–9 Volunteer/Jiwonbyeong (1940)  67 Vow in the Desert/Nessa no chikai (1940)  46, 76, 80 Vow of Love  85, 90 Wang, Sharon  137 Warlords, The/Tou Ming Zhuang (2008) 201 War Memorial Park  3 wartime responsibility  160 Weiner, Michael  93 West, Cornel  94 When the Sun rises/Meondong-i teul ttae (1927) 32 Whispering Corridors (1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2009) series  147 White Terror  133 Whose Mistake is it/Dare no kashitsu/Shui zhi guo (1925)  27 Wilson, Robert  192, 202 Wilson, Sandra  8–10 Wind Rises, The/Kaze Tachinu  170–1 Wings of a Man/Ningen no stubasa (1995) 167 Winter Jasmine/Yingchun Hua (1942)  107 Winter Migration/fuyu no ijūchi (1937) 79 Winter Sonata effect  201 womanhood. See feminism Woo, John  187 World War II  160, 192 Wushe incident  63 Wu Xia (2011)  201 wuxia martial arts  29 Wu Ziniu  185

240

Index

Xinhua studio  48, 49 Yamaguchi, Shirley. See Yamaguchi Yoshiko Yamaguchi Yoshiko  12, 86, 105–8, 121–2, 123 nn.3–4, 150, 164, 202–3 Yamato/Otoko-tachi no Yamato (2005) 167–9 Yan Gelling  189 Yang Kyuongjong  144 Yan Sok-il  176–7 Yasakuni Shrine  3 Yasumoto Eichi  92 Yau Shuk-ting  13, 197, 204 n.3 Yellow River  76 Yellow River/Huanghe (1942)  76 Yeonghwa Sida  31 Yiman Wang  108 Yimen Wang  202 YMCA Baseball (2002)  143–4 Yomota Inuhiko  106, 172

Yoo Hyon-joo  127, 133, 165 Yoshiko Yamaguchi  12 Yoshimoto, M.  204 You and I/Kimi to boku (1941)  67, 85, 90, 94, 96 Young, Louise  10, 75 Young and the Dangerous series 142 Yuko Kikuchi  10, 24 Yun Hae-dong  10 zainichi filmmakers  174–7 Zero Fighter Burns/Zerosen moyu (1984) 167 Zhang-ga – A Boy Soldier/Xiao bing zhang ga (1963)  149 Zhang Sunqu  27 Zhang Yimou  189 Zhonglian studio  48 Zhou Xun  199, 201 Zur, Dafna  69