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ASIAN STUDIES CONFERENCE JAPAN
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ASCJ
Executive Committee |
Summer 2000 ASCJ Conference Details 20.
From Imperial Subjects to
Democratic Citizens:
The
Cinema and the Nation in Japan from the 1930s to the 1950s Organizer and chair: Mariko Hara, Keio University
Governments came to fully appreciate the capacity of film's impact during
the 1930s and 1940s. During
the Fifteen Years War, the Japanese government
used a variety of means to invent and manipulate images in the cause
of nationalism. After the
war, American Occupation authorities also used mass circulated images
(particularly in film) to try to produce a
particular type of "democratic" citizen. Our panel will examine three specific
moments of this political engagement with cinematic images; one drawn
from before, one during, and one from after the war to better understand
the relationship between nation and cinema. Mariko Hara looks at how the Japanese government tried to
portray the Emperor, the ultimate symbol of Japanese nationalism, in the
wartime newsreels. She argues
then that the wartime newsreels helped to create an "imagined
community". Jeffrey
Issacs discusses the history of the deployment of images of poverty in
film in the 1930s. He uses
Kamei Fumio's Kobayashi Issa (1941), a film usually interpreted as an
example of resistance, to argue that gender, geography, and poverty both
confirmed and contested mainstream nationalism. Takeshi Tanikawa re-examines how the US Occupation regime intended
to promote American films to "democratize" the Japanese in the
post-war era. This panel will also explore how governments tried to use
films for their political ends and the extent to which films can be used
as "propaganda" tools. Paper 1: Mariko Hara, Keio University. "The Emperor and His Subjects as Portrayed in Japanese Wartime
Newsreels"
The aim of this paper is to examine how the Japanese government
used the official newsreel
monopoly, "Nihon Nyusu" (1940-45), to forge nationalism during
the Second World War; and in particular, how the Emperor, and the Japanese
people as his loyal subjects, were portrayed in the newsreels. Japanese nationalism at the time was
characterized by the Emperor
system, with the Emperor
himself being the ultimate symbol of officially defined national identity,
kokutai (national polity). The
Japanese were indoctrinated with the idea that every aspect of their life
lay within kokutai. For
this
purpose, the newsreels tried to depict the Emperor as possessing
a
divine, absolute authority, and his loyal subjects as willing to give
their lives for the Emperor. The portrayal of the Emperor will be examined
from various perspectives: his traditional images, the invented traditions
of the imperial court, his relationship with the Imperial Army, and his
relationship with his subjects. An
analysis of the Emperor and his subjects and their representations in the
newsreels yields valuable insights into the history, identity and ethos of
a nation at war. This paper
will then argue that the wartime newsreels helped to create an
"imagined community," using traditional and invented symbols of
the Emperor, and that they were not used simply as propaganda weapons. Paper 2: Jeffrey Isaacs, University of
Chicago. "Historicizing the Aesthetics of Hardship in Japanese Film: Suffering for the Nation in
1941"
During the 1930s a number of Japanese films positioned
representations of poverty and hardship in ways of great ideological
significance. Examples abound among narrative features; from urban
melodramas to jidai-geki, of characters (frequently women) enduring
unthinkable suffering. I am thinking
here
of films by such varied directors as Uchida Tomu, Shimizu Hiroshi, Furumi
Takuji, Itami Mansaku, and Yamanaka Sadao. In any case, whatever can
plausibly
be called upon to motivate a character to accept otherwise unacceptable conditions to satisfy some higher goal has tremendous value on
a
number of levels. First, it can make for gripping entertainment. It is,
for instance, a central feature of the structure of melodrama. And a
prominent feature of narrative film is its status as a commodity.
Second, it has bottomless potential value for the construction of the nation. After
briefly outlining some
aspects of the history of film representations of poverty through the 30s and their part in delineating class, gender and national
boundaries, I will focus attention on a documentary which seems to
reflect
many aspects of that history.
I will present an analysis and close reading of the 1941 film Kobayashi
Issa directed by Kamei Fumio in order to demonstrate the connections
between the narrative strategy seen in Kobayashi
Issa and its immediate non-filmic influences. I will argue, for
example, that the film reflects aspects of the 50 year history of
reportage journalism as well as political sensibilities
awakened by the brief but intense heyday of socialist realist
literature
a decade earlier. All of this is made wonderfully more complex by the fact
that the film was undertaken as a commissioned piece paid for
by the prefectural
government of Nagano in its attempt to promote tourism, and that the film,
produced in 1940, was subject to the stringent new rules governing film established by the Film Law of 1939. Paper 3: Takeshi Tanikawa, Columbia University/Hitotsubashi
University. "The Formulation and Implementation of US Film Policy Toward
Occupied Japan" During World War II, the planning documents for the postwar U.S. policy toward
Japan were prepared chiefly by the State Department staff. Due
to the
unexpected early surrender of Japan, however, most of the these planning
documents
that dealt with specific policy issues, including U.S. film
policy,
were never approved. As a
result, research scholars have tended to view
these documents as unimportant when studying the General Headquarters/Supreme
Commander for the Allied Powersf (GHQ/SCAP) execution of U.S. policy toward occupied Japan.
Based on research of GHQ/SCAP
documents related to film policy, however, I
believe
that the State Department did have a clear channel to execute its
policies
during the occupational era. The
U.S. film policy toward occupied
Japan,
especially the policy of using American motion pictures to
democratize the Japanese
people, was carried out under the collaboration of GHQ/SCAP, the Motion Picture Export Association of America (MPEA), and the
State Department. These three organizations established the Central Motion
Picture Exchange (CMPE) and granted it a monopoly for the distribution of
American films. I have found
several documents which show that the State Department previewed in
advance all films which were sent to the CMPE, at least during early phase
of the occupation. After the war, the State Department also absorbed another
organization that was involved in U.S. film policy, the Office of War
Information (OWI). During the
early phase of the occupation of Japan, some members of the OWI became key
figures in both GHQ/SCAP and CMPE. There
is also a possibility that recommendation sheets written by the staff of
the OWI about individual films were sent to the State Department for the
purpose of choosing which films should be sent to Japan. |
