Baskett Michael. The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan (ENG)

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12 the attractive empire

performances of Asian identity in order to examine schisms between Japanese

and non-Japanese imperial subjects.

Chapter four analyzes Japan’s struggle to create and deﬁ ne its empire as a

unique entity vis-à-vis the West. In the ﬁ rst half of the chapter I examine how

Japan clashed with Hollywood for market domination and the “hearts and minds”

of Asians. The rise of Japan’s imperial power in Asia threatened American ﬁ lm

dominance there and led to a ﬁ lm war. Japan restricted access to Asian markets,

censored or banned American ﬁ lms, and ﬁ nally conducted a comprehensive em-

bargo on all Hollywood ﬁ lms. This prohibition led to secret meetings among

Japanese ﬁ lm industry representatives, Hollywood representatives, and the U.S.

Department of Commerce in which the United States threatened to stain Japan’s

national reputation by making Japanese villains in American ﬁ lms. The second

half of the chapter interrogates Japan’s paradoxical status as a member nation

of the Axis at a time when it was preaching anti-Westernism throughout Asia.

Although Japan presented itself to the world as a liberator in Asia, ironically,

Japan could emphasize little in common with its Axis allies other than the fact

that they all shared the status of colony-holding empires. This chapter discusses

a broad range of the ﬁ lm interactions among the cinemas of imperial Japan, Nazi

Germany, and Fascist Italy on the legislative, distribution, and exhibition levels.

Finally, chapter ﬁ ve highlights connections between pre- and postimperial

Japanese ﬁ lm culture with regard to a longing for empire. I examine two ﬁ lms

produced after 1945 and set in the ﬁ nal days of empire that replicate verbatim

the structure of the imperial era “goodwill” ﬁ lms. Not only does the desire for

empire that remains in postwar Japanese society warrant our attention, but also

the representation of hierarchies of power link back to Japan’s imperial past and

suggest areas for further study.

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chapter one

From Film Colony to Film Sphere

Imperial Japanese ﬁ lm culture was complex—its inﬂ uence extended to practi-

cally every area of the empire. In the case of Taiwan, I consider the ways in which

the colonial government used ﬁ lm education programs to assimilate indigenous

Taiwanese populations while at the same time combating the undermining inﬂ u-

ence of Chinese ﬁ lms. For Korea, I investigate the role of colonial ﬁ lm censor-

ship in the struggle to maintain social order and also analyze popular Japanese

perceptions of the Korean ﬁ lm industry in the domestic Japanese market. In the

case of Manchuria, I argue that the local ﬁ lm industry actively sought out ways,

industrial and aesthetic, to distance itself from the Japanese ﬁ lm industry rather

than to merge with it. Finally, I consider how in the ﬁ lm Vow in the Desert (Nessa

no chikai, 1940) ideology shifted away from organized institutional concepts of

Japanese empire to the decidedly more indeterminate idea of the Greater East

Asian Film Sphere. My approach assumes that imperial ﬁ lm culture consisted of

a broad range of participants and was not dictated solely by either the whims of

Japanese ideologues or the personal visions of individual directors.

Taiwan

In 1901 Japanese ﬁ lm exhibitor Takamatsu Yujiro traveled to Taipei and established

a small ﬁ lm company to promote Japanese culture among the island’s indigenous

population. Importing Japanese talent from Japan, Takamatsu also created theater,

dance, rakugo comedy, and Naniwa bushi (a narrative genre accompanied by a

stringed instrument) troupes that precipitated a boom in local interest in Japanese

entertainment. In 1905 Takamatsu raised over 10,000 yen in donations for the

Japanese military through his screenings of short ﬁ lms about the Russo-Japanese

War. Colonial authorities, together with the Taiwan chapter of the Japanese wom-

en’s group the Women’s Patriotic Association (aikoku fujinkai), used newsreels of

the Russo-Japanese War to persuade the unbelieving indigenous population that

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14 the attractive empire

Japan was actually defeating a Western imperial power. Increasing local inter-

est in ﬁ lm stimulated exhibition and sparked construction of ﬁ lm theaters from

1905 until around 1917. During that time each of the major Japanese ﬁ lm studios

established ﬂ agship theaters in Taiwan, and by the end of World War I there were

sixteen permanent theaters in Taipei alone. Until the 1920s, however, many Japa-

nese distributors considered the island colony to be little more than a peripheral

market for Japanese ﬁ lms.

In the early 1910s, Taiwan Colonial Government ofﬁ cials and independent

distributors and exhibitors like Takamatsu believed that ﬁ lm should be used to

improve the lives of the indigenous population by educating them about modern

life in Japan. To that end, both the colonial government and distributors and

exhibitors collaborated on the production of educational ﬁ lms from 1904 to 1905.

These ﬁ lms dovetailed with the Japanese assimilation policies ﬁ rst instituted in

1896 by Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs (and later Japanese Prime Minister) Hara

Kei. Taiwan Colonial Governor Goto Shimpei would later successfully imple-

ment these policies for the purpose of “imperializing” (kominka) the Taiwanese.

Initially based on French models, Goto’s administration transformed assimilation

policies into “extension of Japan” (naichi encho-shugi) policies intended to link

Taiwan as closely as possible to Japan. From 1921 colonial authorities believed

that one way to “raise the cultural level” of the Taiwanese was to produce short

instructional ﬁ lms.

Nearly every major Japanese ﬁ lm studio established branch ofﬁ ces in Taipei

because they expected to expand their share of the Taiwan market. However,

feature ﬁ lm production never managed to develop to any signiﬁ cant degree here.

Only a handful of Japanese feature ﬁ lms, such as The Eye of Buddha (Buddha no

hitomi, production data unknown), Whose Mistake? (Dare no kashitsu (produc-

tion data unknown), and Song of Sadness were shot on location in Taiwan; and

this was mainly for “color,” utilizing the local landscape as little more than an

exotic backdrop.

Taiwan never became a hub of colonial ﬁ lm production in the way that Man-

churia did, perhaps due to its comparatively claustrophobic scenery—Taiwan’s

narrow island vistas failed to capture the Japanese imagination the way China’s

vast plains and romantic frontiers had. A Japanese ﬁ lm critic in 1942 wrote that

the problem with Taiwan was that it was geographically and culturally too close

to the Japanese homeland to be interesting.

Takamatsu noted that Japanese perceptions of Taiwan ran to opposite extremes.

For the average Japanese, Taiwan elicited lurid images of malaria-infested swamps

teeming with murderous natives. Early ﬁ lms manipulated these fears by churning

out exploitative titles such as Current State of Conquering Taiwan’s Native Rebels

(Taiwan dohi seibatsu no jikyo, 1910) and Heroes of the Taiwan Extermination

Squad (Taiwan tobatsutai no yushi, 1910).

On the other hand, Taiwan was also

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from film colony to film sphere 15

viewed as a model colony. Takamatsu and others wanted to educate Japanese au-

diences of this latter image, but even the decades of successful colonial modern-

ization policies that improved Taiwan’s infrastructure, economy, and education

could not easily dispel the general perception in Japan that Taiwan was a savage

island wilderness fraught with danger. As late as 1942, actor Sawamura Kunitaro

described the dread he felt of going to Taiwan to star in the Japanese feature ﬁ lm

Clan of the Sea (Umi no gozoku):

Shooting on location during a time of crisis caused considerable worry. Every

one of our stereotypes about Taiwan—the aborigines, poisonous snakes, ma-

laria, etc.—all came rushing before our eyes as if in a big close-up. We made

Kawata Kimiko as a Taiwanese “aborigine” in Song of Sadness (1919).

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16 the attractive empire

sure to ﬁ ll our suitcases with medicine. We ﬁ lmed mostly in the mountains

of Garanbi on the southern part of the island—the sort of a place that made

you think that something bad is going to happen.

Japanese like Sawamura felt conspicuously distanced from Taiwan and inferred

that for many in Japan Taiwan felt more like a foreign country than a Japanese

colony. The article points out, however, that Sawamura and the rest of the crew

eventually realized that Taiwan was not as dangerous as they had believed it to

be. For example, Sawamura was astonished at the fact that the local people were

nowhere near the “ignorant savages” he imagined. He praised the Taiwanese

cast and crew members for being able to take direction, perform competently,

and, above all, speak Japanese. Sawamura wanted magazine readers in Japan

to know: “This is one example of just how mistaken our cultural knowledge of

Taiwan really was. I’m embarrassed to admit it but you would need to talk to the

local police there if you really want to learn how Japaniﬁ ed the Taiwanese have

become.”

Film magazine articles like this hinted that it was the Japanese who

needed to foster a greater understanding of the Taiwanese, but this was quite rare

in the 1940s. Film journalism in the form of magazines, newspapers, and criti-

cism usually took the opposite approach, that the Taiwanese needed to assimilate,

and it was the colonial government’s job to make sure they did as quickly and

effectively as possible.

The Taiwan Colonial Government believed that of all the modern technolo-

gies, ﬁ lm was the most effective medium for transforming indigenous Taiwanese

into properly educated imperial Japanese subjects. The authorities were fasci-

nated by the prospect of mechanically reproducing a single ﬁ lm ad inﬁ nitum and

projecting it to vast audiences in multiple locations simultaneously. Film, unlike

theater, dance, or literature, did not require an advanced education or linguistic

skills to be understood, making it an ideal medium for disseminating ideological

messages to a mass populace. Taiwan colonial administrators took their cues on

how best to implement ﬁ lm programs from Japan’s Ministry of Education. Using

Japanese models, the Taiwan Colonial Government subsidized ﬁ lm screenings

in schools and at regional facilities in order to educate, edify, and socialize the

Taiwanese.

Colonial authorities actively encouraged educational committees throughout

the island to integrate ﬁ lm into their educational systems and offered govern-

ment subsidies to those organizations that held ofﬁ cially sponsored ﬁ lm lectures.

Typically, screenings consisted of two types: public lectures and classroom screen-

ings. School administrators worked in collaboration with government ofﬁ cials to

conduct classroom screenings for students in large lecture halls in public schools.

Government ofﬁ cials considered these screenings one way to protect children

from “the harmful inﬂ uences of vulgar ﬁ lms and the ﬁ lm theater environment.”

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from film colony to film sphere 17

These screenings resembled the “balanced program” format, which generally

started with the screening of an educational ﬁ lm (kyoiku eiga), followed by a how-

to ﬁ lm (jitsuyo eiga), and subsequently a feature ﬁ lm (geki eiga). Film distributors

in Taiwan imported a variety of Japanese educational ﬁ lms that included such

ﬁ lms as Cherry Blossoms (Sakura), Nara, Talking about Volcanoes (Kazan no ha-

nashi), Kamakura and Enoshima, Tokyo, and Our National Anthem (Kokka), all

of which taught local audiences what Japanese life and culture actually looked

like.

Classroom screenings also focused on speciﬁ c school subjects such as spell-

ing, ethics, and geography. As one colonial administrator stated, educational ﬁ lms

helped make “curricula that were difﬁ cult to explain verbally easier to understand

through ﬁ lm images.”

Various social organizations organized lecture screenings, often employing

traveling projection units, a system that was also widely used throughout rural

Japan as well as the Chinese interior. Before a screening, short lectures instructed

viewers on how to properly interpret the ﬁ lm. After the screening, the government

lecturers conducted short discussions in order to gauge audience reaction and

ascertain whether the ﬁ lm had been understood properly. Colonial administra-

tors placed a high value on lecture screenings and classroom screenings, for they

believed these were the most effective ways to reach audiences like children,

farmers, and peasants, who normally would not or could not attend screenings

in regular ﬁ lm theaters.

Films about daily colonial life, such as Japanese Police Supervise a Taiwanese

Village (Nihon keikan no hansha shisatsu, 1935), were constructed very much in

the vein of early Lumière ﬁ lms. These ﬁ lms normalized colonial power structures

by presenting ﬁ gures of authority, like teachers and colonial police, as civilizing

forces who educated the masses and held real power.

In both content and form

these ﬁ lms linked the Japanese empire to its Euro-American counterparts, but

Japanese ﬁ lms were not just imitations of those produced in the West. Japanese

ﬁ lms about the Japanese empire clearly presented Japan as a “civilizing” presence,

but they lacked much of the blatant racism found in Western colonial ideology.

Ediﬁ cation and socialization were two key themes in the proper imperialization

of Japanese subjects, who, when they had become imperialized, would gladly

ﬁ ght and die for Japan’s empire.

Taiwan Colonial Government ofﬁ cials felt that assimilation programs were

especially necessary in Taiwan where Chinese inﬂ uence had begun earlier and

was far more prevalent than Japan’s. Colonial administrators hoped that institu-

tionalizing policies of imperialization—or Japanization (nihonka) as the evolv-

ing concept would later be named—would deter Taiwanese interest in Chinese

culture and bring the local population into closer proximity with Japan. The

idea that Taiwanese needed to be assimilated into Japanese culture gained wide

credence in Japan, and by the late 1930s Japanese ﬁ lm industry leaders also began

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18 the attractive empire

to take more serious notice of Taiwan as a prospective market. The thought of

Chinese culture possibly overwhelming Japanese culture troubled both govern-

ment and industry ofﬁ cials and had the effect of galvanizing them in opposition

to the Chinese “threat.”

Japanese ﬁ lm distributor Ichikawa Sai speculated that the Taiwanese prefer-

ence for Chinese culture was a “natural result” of colonization by both Fujian and

Guangdong provinces in China.

Ichikawa’s interpretation of the historical pres-

ence of China in Taiwan is instructive because it imagined Chinese immigration

to Taiwan in the language of the current vernacular of colonialism. Ichikawa was

only one of many in Japan who deemphasized the Chinese inﬂ uence in Taiwan

by claiming that the Chinese had exercised remarkably little ofﬁ cial interest in

or control over Taiwan until the late 1880s when France and Japan began to vie

for the island. Ichikawa claimed that many Chinese immigrants came to Taiwan

to escape crop failures on the mainland rather than as part of any formal plan to

colonize the islands. Ichikawa dehistoricizes China’s loose colonization of Tai-

wan by characterizing the Chinese model of empire as antiquated and obsolete

and validates Japanese colonialism as a modern enterprise that will, along with

European models, inevitably replace the old world order.

Japanese colonial administrators in Taiwan speciﬁ cally singled out Chinese

ﬁ lm as a barometer signaling the extent to which Taiwanese preferred Chinese

culture. These ofﬁ cials considered Chinese ﬁ lm a signiﬁ cant obstacle to the

smooth Japanese imperialization of Taiwan and were shocked to think that local

audiences might actually prefer Chinese ﬁ lms to Japanese ones. The threat of a

ﬁ lm war in Taiwan is another reason why colonial ofﬁ cials supported ofﬁ cial ﬁ lm

programs. Film in colonial Taiwan was more than just an effective medium to

instruct and socialize, it was also a cultural weapon manipulated by the coloniz-

ers to defend the indigenous population against the transnational ﬂ ow of Chinese

culture and thought.

At the time the Chinese were beginning to produce ﬁ lms in 1905, the Japa-

nese had already tightened their grip over ﬁ lm distribution on Taiwan, making

it impossible for Chinese ﬁ lm studios to vertically integrate their operations as

smoothly as they had in Hong Kong or Singapore. However, Taiwan became a

lucrative exhibition market for Chinese ﬁ lms after 1924, and local Taiwanese

audiences preferred Chinese-produced ﬁ lms to Japanese ones almost from the

beginning. Colonial administrators and local Japanese exhibitors found the pros-

pect of Japanese ﬁ lms being shut out of their own market a continued source of

vexation. By the end of the 1920s, colonial ofﬁ cials who had at ﬁ rst worried only

very generally about the effects of Chinese culture on the Taiwanese now had

to deal with the potentially catastrophic impact of a burgeoning Chinese ﬁ lm

culture. Film often portrays language, fashions, lifestyles, music, and assump-

tions about authority. Partially due to the popularity of Chinese ﬁ lms, it became

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from film colony to film sphere 19

a fashionable trend in Taiwan from the late 1920s to wear Chinese-style clothes.

The problem, as the Japanese saw it, was deeper than either fashion or ﬁ lm. The

Japanese feared that unless it was countered, the onslaught of Chinese culture

would undermine the entire base of Japanese colonialism that Goto and other

colonial administrators had established. In a roundtable discussion on the topic,

Japanese ﬁ lm promoter Fuchigami Sansei commented on Taiwanese dress and

acting Chinese: “These people are not Chinese, they are Japanese. Obviously we

didn’t force them to Japanize their dress, speech, or all matters of good taste in

their everyday lives—we bestowed all of these things to them as a privilege.”

After the 1931 Manchurian Incident, and especially the 1932 Shanghai Incident,

Chinese ﬁ lms, especially those produced in Shanghai, became more overtly anti-

Japanese in tone. Taiwan distributors imported some of these ﬁ lms and screened

them together with other mainstream Chinese feature ﬁ lms. Taiwan colonial of-

ﬁ cials immediately took three steps to halt the ﬂ ow of these ideologically “danger-

ous” ﬁ lms. First, they drastically reduced the number of Chinese ﬁ lms that could

be imported. Second, ofﬁ cials implemented a mandatory “reeducation” program

for everyone who imported ﬁ lms. Last, the colonial government exercised its of-

ﬁ cial and informal clout to quash any advertising for the Chinese ﬁ lms that still

managed to enter the market. Ofﬁ cials made the already oppressive ﬁ lm censor-

ship procedures even more arduous by raising censorship fees and complicating

bureaucratic red tape. The colonial government also drastically consolidated the

entire ﬁ lm industry in Taiwan, taking steps to keep anyone they had not approved

from working in the ﬁ lm industry in any capacity.

Even with such formidable barriers and increased stringency, the colonial

government was unable to shut Chinese ﬁ lm out of the Taiwan market entirely,

where it retained an audience despite its being ofﬁ cially branded as “enemy cin-

ema” by the Japanese in the 1930s. This does not necessarily indicate that Tai-

wanese audiences preferred Chinese ﬁ lms over Japanese ones for any qualitative

reasons. It is quite possible that many Taiwanese simply could understand ﬁ lms

in Chinese better than those in Japanese. Japanese ofﬁ cials in Taiwan sometimes

screened Japanese-language ﬁ lms without Chinese subtitles to encourage the

study of Japanese. The idea was that audiences frustrated with the inability to

understand the plot would naturally seek out Japanese language instruction. It

was not until the last two years of the Paciﬁ c War, when either pressure applied

by the Japanese colonial authorities or poor business management shut down

most of Taiwan’s local theaters, that colonial administrators were ﬁ nally freed of

the Chinese ﬁ lm threat.

That the Japanese would spend untold hours fretting about the corrosive inﬂ u-

ence of Chinese ﬁ lms is intriguing when we consider that the number of Hol-

lywood ﬁ lms shown in Taiwan actually outnumbered Chinese ﬁ lms. After the

entry of the American ﬁ lm studios into the Taiwan ﬁ lm market in the 1920s, an

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20 the attractive empire

American ﬁ lm invasion seemed far more imminent than a Chinese one

(see

Table 1).

Ironically, since the end of colonialism and especially since the 1980s it has

been Taiwan’s ﬁ lm industry that has offered some of the more positive repre-

sentations of Japan’s imperial legacy. Hou Hsiao Hsien, one of Taiwan’s leading

directors, frequently cites his admiration of Japanese ﬁ lmmaking in general and

the works of director Ozu Yasujiro in particular. In 1994 New Taiwan Cinema

director Wu Nien-Jen produced A Borrowed Life (Duo-sang, 1994), a powerful,

semiautobiographical depiction of the lingering inﬂ uence that the Japanese em-

pire had on the daily lives of an entire generation of Taiwanese. Directors like

Hou and Wu are speaking directly to the experience of colonialism and indicate

that the long-term effects of imperial Japanese ﬁ lm culture were wide-ranging,

although they varied by region and over time.

Korea (Chosen)

The Korean colonial ﬁ lm market differed from that in Taiwan because Korea

had an indigenous ﬁ lm distribution system before Japanese annexation in 1910.

Due to this precolonial history Korean ﬁ lm historians claim that Japan hijacked

the normal developmental trajectory of Korean ﬁ lm. Nationalist Korean ﬁ lm

historians also maintain that throughout the colonial era Korean ﬁ lm personnel

actively resisted attempts by the Korean Colonial Government to create a pro-

Japanese ﬁ lm culture. Film historians also disagree as to who the ﬁ rst person

was who introduced motion pictures to Korea, but sources clearly show that as

Table 1: Source of Films Screened in Taiwan

Year

Japan

America

China

1925–1928 70 25 4

1929 80 14 4

1930 78 10 10

1931 83 10 5

1932 78 10 10

1933 75 15 8

1934 70 19 9

1935 63 18 6

Total % over 60 under 30 under 10

Source: Ya-wen Hung, “Taiwan sotokufu ni yoru eiga seisaku,” Eiga gaku, no. 12

(1998): 135.

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from film colony to film sphere 21

early as 1903 Japanese ﬁ lm promotion companies like Yoshizawa Shoten actively

competed with Western ﬁ lm studios in Korea.

Japanese interest in Korea peaked during the Russo-Japanese War when tens of

thousands of Japanese fought in and around the peninsula. Newsreel exhibition

in Korea was commonplace by the time of the 1905 Portsmouth Treaty, which an-

nounced Russia’s defeat. Five years later, when Japan formally colonized Korea,

ﬁ lm audiences across the empire clamored for ﬁ lms about Korea. Increased in-

terest in Korea inspired the major Japanese ﬁ lm studios to begin constructing

theaters there, which further strengthened the vertical integration of these com-

panies. The major Japanese ﬁ lm studios took a far more active role in Korea than

they had in Taiwan, quickly establishing branch ofﬁ ces in Seoul to handle ﬁ lm

exhibition, distribution, and later production. Nikkatsu was the ﬁ rst to establish

its branch ofﬁ ce in 1918, followed by Shochiku in 1920, and Teikine in 1921.

Japanese ﬁ lm companies faced formidable competition from foreign, mostly

American, ﬁ lms. The Korean Colonial Government was slow to enact ofﬁ cial

ﬁ lm legislation, and ﬁ lm imports remained unregulated until 1916, when the

ﬁ rst censorship laws were created. The authorities enacted nationwide censor-

ship laws in part to curb unsupervised ﬁ lm censorship by local and regional

colonial police agencies. Ofﬁ cials implemented the new laws to help contain a

growing tide of illegal ﬁ lm imports. Colonial ofﬁ cials eventually realized, how-

ever, that consolidation of the ﬁ lm industry, which had been an effective means

of control in the Japanese home islands, was a far more effective way of gain-

ing and maintaining control over ﬁ lm production. They hoped that by strictly

limiting the importation, distribution, and exhibition of ﬁ lms to those who were

licensed by the Korean Colonial Government to distribute and exhibit ﬁ lms that

the number of “undesirable” ﬁ lms entering the colony would decline. As in the

case of Taiwan, however, it became apparent that even the most stringent legisla-

tive measures were no guarantee against ﬁ lm serving as a source of conﬂ ict and

contestation.

One site of conﬂ ict occurred in a Seoul ﬁ lm theater just two years after Japa-

nese annexation in 1912. The program consisted of several short ﬁ lms, including

travelogues and military parades, but the main feature was a match between a

Western boxer and a Japanese judo wrestler. The 600-seat theater was divided

into two sections—the Japanese sat on cushions on matted ﬂ oors in the balcony,

while the Koreans sat in chairs on the ﬁ rst ﬂ oor. Many in the audience had come

to listen to the performance of the Korean pyon’sa, or ﬁ lm narrator, who was

often as popular or even more so than the ﬁ lm itself.

Pyon’sa performances

were more than narration. The most effective performances added an emotion

and excitement to onscreen events that produced a fervor hard for modern audi-

ences to imagine. The pyon’sa’s passionate oration was a key factor in polarizing

the audience into two factions: Koreans, who supported the Western boxer, and

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