The way to World War II in Asia and the Pacific region was in high degree independent of the conflicts taking place in European. Only the obvious danger of facing certain enemies helped to bring the Axis forces together. The threat, and then the danger of, conflicts in Europe played the most significant part in making opportunities for Japanese people, but perhaps not a determinative one. The Pacific War was caused by Japan’s attempt to encroach to Chinese territories and guard the domination of all directions of Asia. Perhaps the main result of the Japanese attempt was the devastation of the Nationalist regime on the Chinese territory and the greatest overturn in the world history. The phase on the territory of Pacific of World War II was in a great number of ways a specific fight, with powerful methods. The scene of war was the greatest of any in world history. Unlike preceding battles, it was considered largely by fighting in the air space and under the waters of the sea. In a further eccentricity, this sufficiently technological fight between several advanced states took place in localities that were extremely underdeveloped or even absolutely primitive. It would be a mistake to depict the war actions as a Japanese-American conflict, but the crucial struggle was indeed a conflict between ‘the world’s most distant neighbors’. By an irony American forces did not enjoy, they had played a main part in the modernization of Japanese technologies and thus helped make the war actions possible (Dower 3-6). “Japan’s war did not begin with Pearl Harbor. For almost four-and-one-half years before December 7, 1941, Japan and China have been embroiled in an undeclared war of continental proportions”. That very war stretched cruelly from Manchuria in the north regions to the borders in the southern part of the country. The exact point of the beginning of the war can be clearly defined. Beginning with the early years of the 20th century, when the principal authority of the imperia experienced the breakdown, China was seized by chaos, enveloped in flames of the civil conflicts, separated by military regimes, and pillaging by means of encroachments to the foreign territories (Cook 23).
The first wartime film I am going to analyze is “Five Scouts”. “Five Scouts” is the first film which deals with the veiled war with China guided by the Japanese in the 1930s; it has the outstanding goodness of showing more realistic facts rather than bringing propagandistic themes. Five soldiers that differ from one another extremely are sent to fulfill the subversive act behind opponent frontal lines on a mission whose risk they little suppose. After a successful search for the Chinese locations, they are on the way back to camp but are ambuscaded on their way; thus, they lose the youngest and the most inexperienced members of their team. Four of them rove back to the military camp where they transmit the news of their friend’s death. Only after the death of their friend they come to understand how friendly they have become and how fortunate they are to have stayed alive. In the very centre of these images, their young comrade all of a sudden comes back and tells the truth about that he had only lost his way in the fight. The film “Gonin no Sekkohei, or Five Scouts is the most difficult of the films having the propaganda of war made during the Asia Pacific War. The film is directed by Tomotaka Tasaka. This story of a fighting of a group of soldiers in China strengthened the accepted military theme of divergent Japanese coming together to fight a featureless Chinese opponent. But it is commonly represented as a classic of the pro-war films by film historians for its close-to-life description of a military group under pressure. The accepted themes of friendly assistance, heroism, nationalism, and self-sacrifice are all depicted in the film, main features of all films viewed by the military forces during the war actions. Cineastes worked in the conditions of exacting censorship, and the military government acknowledged that this film was a sufficient part of propaganda activities during the period of war. This film “Five Scouts” directed by Tomotaka Tasaka declared the beginning of the genre of war-movie in Japan. Five aviators set out on a mission of searching the locations of Chinese military forces over northern China; the most striking thing happens when only four of them come back to the camp. The film was primary aimed to fulfill propaganda pulp for Japan’s encroachment of China, though the director of the film eventually produced a film less concerned with heroics of military forces than with the feeling of friendship of his characters and the sense of danger they shared altogether. On the territory of Japan the pro-war films were set to the mass production in 1938. One of the earliest films on this theme was “Five Scouts”. Actually, wartime propaganda documentary films, such as “Five Scouts”, emphasized the importance of duty, country, dignity, honor, and freedom for Japanese soldiers, rather than celebrating war or provoking racial enmity.
The second film of the wartime is “Story of a Prostitute” (1965). A woman in desperation, whose husband cheated on her, offers her services of a prostitute for a garrison of military men placed on the Manchurian front in World War II. Soon after that, the commanding officer takes this woman as his own, though she has become infatuated with one of the junior officers of this garrison. The director of this film is Seijun Suzuki. The main roles are played by Yumiko Nogawa, Isao Tamagawa, and Tamio Kawaji. This work of cinematography pays a great tribute oppressed, disobedient ladies of easy virtue. “Story of a Prostitute” is an example of once-ridiculed ‘romantic pornography’. Nevertheless, the films of Seijun Suzuki are full of antimilitaristic themes and propaganda against authoritarian regimes. The film is based on an extremely daring topic of ‘comfort women’ demanded by the Japanese military forces during the World War II to be a kind of sexual slaves for military men. An excessive melodrama assisted by a resourceful wide-screen structure. The story of the film tells the viewers about the impossibility of having romantic relationships between Harumi, a prostitute, and Mikami, a sympathetic Japanese junior officer. It is the story of two people who fell in love during the World War II: he is a soldier who has duty to perform; she is a singer who came to the front to ‘comfort the troops’. There is a third person in this story, in this confused triangle; he is a commanding officer who, because of the strange concurrence of circumstances, falls in love with the same woman as his junior officer. But the woman rejects his feelings, so the only thing he is able to do is to treat this officer cruelly. After all, two lovers escape to the desert, where the commanding officer being a rejected lover declares them to be deserters and shoots them without any compassion. The “Story of a Prostitute” is about a brutal working girl; it is a film whose sensual negativity moves much further. It brightly put at the same status the encroaching military men – this time Japanese – with the ladies of easy virtue who serve them as sexual slaves, both lovers are brutalized by the same despotic commanding officer. There is a certain priceless instant when she odiously takes into consideration the commanding officer and he is grasped in freeze frame, then his reflection is rent in pieces as if being crushed with her furious look, if gazes could murder indeed. The film’s arbitrariness disguises enormous emotions. Negligibility here includes its own vulgar, foolish thoroughness. Certainly the real world is just as irregular as the one Suzuki creates a low-standard and craving and discarded prototypes, simply not so madly good-looking.
I liked both this films, as they both provoke thinking over the importance of security of peace in the whole world. They made me think about the significant impact of the war actions onto the changes in political and economic spheres of life in different countries of the world. The first film tells the story of comrades who share the sense of friendship, honor, friendly assistance, heroism, nationalism, and self-sacrifice, which are all depicted in the film. The second film is about the impossibility of being together of two people, a prostitute and a junior officer; finally they were shot as deserters by the rejected lover, a commanding officer. The historical accuracy of both movies is very high. The film “Five Scouts” emphasizes the importance of friendship, honor, dignity, mutual cooperation during hard trials and tribulations. The film “Story of a Prostitute” emphasizes the impossibility to have romantic relationships during the war actions, and at the same time the crucial importance of being in love and struggling for love, as two people were fighting for their right to be together. These themes arise in these movies because such factors as love, friendship, cooperation, dignity are of crucial importance in everyday life, thereby during the war actions the price of humane actions reaches incredible heights; and it is vitally important not to loose oneself in collisions of life. Both films are not very difficult from the actual history, though the actions of these movies took place a little less than a hundred years ago. The film “Five Scouts” emphasizes the bitterness of loosing people who became very close to you, who are young enough to live many years, but they die, and there is nothing you can do about it, as usually the war deprives people of the ones they love and appreciate. The film “Story of a Prostitute” emphasizes the reality of the depicted events, adherence to principles, loyalty, an urgent desire to be free; everyone has a right to choose, this very choice is conditioned by certain circumstances. The nature of war is irrational, as some philosophers say the wars are made by politicians, and the common people experience cruel results of these conflicts. Both films describe heroic feat of arms. With the help of such movies one can observe the events from the point of view of acommon soldier and of a usual civil man whose habitual way of life was destroyed by the war actions.
Works Cited
Cook, Taya Haruko, and Theodore F. Cook. Japan at War: An Oral History. New York: The New Press,1992.
Dower W. John. War without Mercy. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
Spector, Ronald. Eagle against the Sun. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.