competing empires in transnational asia 121
of coproductions based on several successful European multilanguage-version
fi lms that were produced in the early 1930s in Europe. The international success
of German producer Erich Pommer encouraged Kawakita to develop a Japanese/
German coproduction entitled The New Earth (Atarashiki tsuchi, 1936).
55
The
New Earth was meant to publicize Japan’s New Order in Asia to the world at a
time when few outside the Axis formally recognized it. Ultimately the fi lm’s fail-
ure to pioneer an international market or to start a new genre of Japanese export
fi lms led Kawakita to search for other strategies, such as the nascent international
fi lm festival circuit.
56
In 1932 General Secretary Luciano De Feo of Italy’s Educational Cinema In-
stitute established the Venice International Film Festival for three purposes: to
introduce Italians to world fi lm, promote Italian fi lm internationally, and spur
the tourism industry. At its inception, the festival organizers wanted to remain
politically and artistically independent of the government and consciously pro-
grammed artistically important fi lms regardless of their national origin. Just two
years later, in 1934, with the implementation of the Italian Film and Theater Law
(Il cinematographo e il teatro nella legislazione fascsita), the state took control
of the festival and required festival organizers to select fi lms according to their
political ideology rather than artistic merit. Eventually, this naturally led to the
preferential treatment of fi lms produced in Axis nations (especially Hitler’s Ger-
many and Franco’s Spain). Such treatment, however, did not necessary translate
into winning the festival’s highest honors.
At the 1937 festival, Kawakita entered two Japanese feature fi lms in the com-
petition: Children of the Storm (Kaze no naka no kodomo, 1937) and Moon Over
the Ruins (Kojo no tsuki, 1937).
57
Although the Japanese entries received unprec-
edented international critical acclaim, Japan’s status as an Axis nation was not, by
itself, enough to ensure victory; both fi lms lost to Julien Duvivier’s Dance Program
(Un Carnet du Bal, 1937). Undaunted, Kawakita returned the next year and en-
tered Five Scouts (Gonin no sekkohei, 1938), a war fi lm set in China that glorifi ed
the Japanese military presence there. Contrary to all expectations, Five Scouts
won the Popular Culture Prize, becoming the fi rst Japanese fi lm to win a major
award at a prestigious international fi lm festival—a full thirteen years before jour-
nalists would make the very same claim for Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon.
58
This success, however, did not necessarily lead to greater Axis cultural interac-
tion. Despite the fact that all the Japanese fi lm entries were favorably reviewed in
the Italian fi lm press, there is no record of whether they were ever sold or exhibited
outside Italy’s main urban centers.
59
However, that same year the German fi lm
Olympia (1938) and the Italian fi lm Luciano Serra, Pilot (Luciano Serra pilota,
1938), jointly won the Mussolini Prize and were widely released in Japan to great
commercial and critical success. Japanese fi lm critics particularly praised Olym-
pia for its outstanding camerawork and rhythmic editing. The fi lm’s enthusiastic
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