Cultural minefield - Daughter of the Samurai

There's just so much odd with Arnold Fanck's venture into Japanese cinema it's hard to know where to start, but that very strangeness yields insights into the way different cultures view each other  Fanck's Daughter of the Samurai was made about a decade after his masterpieces like The Holy Mountain (1926) and The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929)  By this stage in his life, Fanck wasn't "free". He had to do what the Third Reich wanted, or else. Compared with Leni Riefenstahl's films, like The Triumph of the Will,  Daughter of the Samurai is not a "Nazi" film as some suggest. On the contrary, it's film by a European who doesn't know much about Japanese culture, or Japanese cinema, but does know mountains.

Fanck created Bergfilm: poetic, esoteric movies filmed in the Alps, with actors and cameramen who did their own climbing, often in dangerous conditions, with little of the equipment climbers rely upon today. This sense of first person danger permeates the films. Fanck was a geologist who knew how mountains were formed  and how powerful they were. In Bergfilms, mountains are the real stars, towering majestically over all else, including the actors, auteurs and cameraman. The mountains are highly symbolic, connecting to the intellectual challenges of the late Romantic period. To call them "German westerns" is hopelessly superficial.

Daughter of the Samurai was largely shot in the studio, though there are wonderful shots of Mount Fuji, of terraced rice fields and snow-covered peaks,  showing that Fanck and his cinematographers still had an eye for the patterns of Nature. In this film, they also show shots of industrial processes and stylized dancers. They even respond to the rhythms of rice-planting : like mountain climbing , planting rice is repetitive and physically demanding, but worth doing for an ultimate reward.

The film was made in 1937, when Japan yet again invaded China. Germany and Japan became wartime allies since they had a common enemy: Russia. At the time neither was at war with the west. The Germans were happy to support Japan's invasion of China. Both countries wanted Lebensraum.  In Daughter of the Samurai, a Japanese man who speaks German and a German woman who speaks Japanese  meet on board ship. Teruo Yamato (whose name means "Japan") is played by Isamu Kosugi, a star and director in the Japanese film industry which was as sophisticated and active as anything in Europe.  Therein lies some of the tension in the background. In theory the film was a joint Gertman/Japanese venture, but the Germans won. Daughter of the Samurai is totally Eurocentric. It is not racist, because the Japanese are treated with sympathy, but not as equals. There are good shots of Japanese progress, eg modern buildings, fast trains, neon lights etc, but like most foreigners the film-makers fall back on clichés like cherry blossom and lanterns. Swastika flag and the Rising Sun flags fly together for a brief moment but that's about as political as the film gets. Perhaps the Germans  just didn't know how advanced the Japanese cinema industry really was, even then. The film isn't deliberately offensive, but it sustains colonialist ideas. No surprise that the Japanese weren't amused.

Setsuko Hara plays Mitsuko, Terou's dutiful wife. She too was a big star in  Japan and, like Kosugi, international in the sense that she travelled a lot in the west. Teruo's father is played by Sessue Hayakawa,  who emigrated to the US  and made his name in American movies. Had he stayed in Hollywood during the war years, he would have been interned in the notorious camps for Nisei, where thousands perished.  So it's ironic to see him in this film funded by the Nazi regime.  That's him in the photo above with Ruth Eweier, the German blonde whom Mitsuko  fears will take her husband away. Here's a good shot of the two women in a modern kitchen. A sophisticate like Hara probably had a western kitchen (she's still alive, aged 95) but you can understand the pointed cultural tension.

Being a daughter of samurai, Mitsuko decides to kill herself. Teruo, realizing what she's doing, jumps into his fancy car, driving on hairpin bends on a  cliffside. The road collapses round a lake. He then swims the whole way across, and climbs a volcano, burning his feet. Amazingly, he meets Mitsuko at the summit though she left their house and walked all the way, dressed in a kimono. Nonetheless, we get to see good shots of cliffs and mountains - traces of Bergfilm, after all.  Some scenes are quite spectacular. .The volcano erupts, destroying the Yamato farmhouse in the valley. Somehow, though, Teruo and Mitsuko survive. His feet are bandaged but she's in full Geisha regalia.  Unlike Fanck's gutsy heroine Leni Riefenstahl, Hara must revert to being an unrealistic "Japanese wife". You can understand why the Japanese director and crew, highly experienced professionals, were annoyed.

Now, it's time to offend the Chinese. Teruo and Mitsuko move to Manchuria, where they farm with tractors, since they're modern, unlike the Chinese peasants whose land they have occupied. Daughter of the Samurai doesn't set out to annoy, any more than many other films of the time, like The Good Earth, made in Hollywood in the same year, and a big hit with non-Asian audiences. These films just represent the way whites looked upon non-whites, which was how things were then. As long as we see Daughter of the Samurai in context, it's OK.

Totally Politically Incorrect 支那の夜

With trepidation, I watched China Nights, Shina no Yoru, the notorious film made during the Japanese occupation of China. For Chinese people, the film has negative connotations because it connects to a brutal period in the Chinese past. For a hundred years, the nation suffered humiliation and then was invaded yet again. Although this was a propganda movie, thousands of people watched it, and the song on which the film is based is ubiquitous. Why, I thought, did people watch it then, when the very mention of it now raises old wounds?

One steamy night in Shanghai, there's a fight. A handsome Japanese (Kazuo Hasegawa) rescues a Chinese woman (Li Xianglan). She says she has nowhere to go so he takes her back to his rooms in a building where many Japanese live. .He makes her take a bath. This is more provocative than it might seem to westerners because the Japanese were fastidious about cleanliness and regarded the Chinese as less so.  The implication is that the Japanese are in China to civilize the Chinese. But he's such a gentleman that he's chaste and respectful.

It's interesting to see how the other Japanese react. The house is "westernized" with typical thirties comforts. Nothing big deal in itself, as many Chinese lived like that too. The Japanese take their meals together on western tables and discuss the "scandal".  But the women are welcoming, even the one who is in love with Hasegawa. Even more significant are the scenes depicting the streets of Shanghai during the 1920's, when the film is set (though it was made in 1940). We see images of western soldiers marching on Chinese streets, western jazz and broadcasts, nightclubs for the rich while the locals struggle in poverty. This is not a film about gender politics as some have suggested. It's plain old-fashioned politics. Shanghai was occupied, too, not just by the Japanese but by western colonial powers who had themselves invaded China to force the country to trade with them. Let's never forget that China was "opened" so British merchants could sell opium. War is not, as has been said, the continuation of politics but the continuation of dirty business interests.
So Hasegawa and Li go shopping in a city where western troops march in the streets and the locals struggle in poverty. Propaganda, perhaps, but the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was a genuine belief in "Asia for Asians", though it was still colonialism, with the Japanese in control instead of Europeans. It's important to remember the relationship between Japan and China : Japan modernized with amazing speed and success. Chinese liberals, including Dr Sun Yat Sen, went to Japan to learn. It's not at all as simple as Chinese hating the Japanese the way westerners demonized the Japanese.  In this film, Miss Li is a metaphor for China, because she's an orphan whose home was destroyed in some unknown battle. She revisits the site of her former mansion, and picks a spray of plum blossom in the ruins. She weeps for her parents, and  Hasegawa comes and comforts her. When she was sick with fever, he nursed her back to health. They fall in love and holiday, blissfully, in the West Lakes.Wonderful shots of Old China, bridges, old boats.

 Miss Li is, however, a partisan whose mission is to infiltrate Japanese circles and collect information.  Hasegawa confronts the Chinese underground and thinks he's saved Miss Li. They marry. She wears a modern wedding dress, but suddenly, he's called back to work. He's some kind of merchant navy security rather than military, which skirts the issue everyone watching the film would have known only too well. The cargo boat he's escorting gets attacked by partisans. Hasegawa goes missing: everyone thinks he's dead. Miss Li goes back to the scenic spot where they'd been so happy and tries to kill herself. But Hasegawa appears and the lovers are reunited.

There are further sub-texts to the film. It's not nearly as simple as it seems. The actress, Li Xianglan, was considered a traitor. It turned out that she was in fact Japanese, though born and raised in China. After the war she returned to Japan and to her Japanese name Yoshiko Yamaguchi. She made more movies and ran as a member of Parliament.  The film, directed by Osamu Fushimizu, was only one of many made for the Japanese market, which was fascinated by anything Chinese. Their military might be in the process of ripping China apart, but like western colonial powers, they thought it was in China's best interests. As so often, those who "love" a place, don't "love" its people other than as tourist fantasy.

Indeed, the film itself "colonizes" and appropriates for itself a song written much earlier by a composer who wrote "serious" western classical music as well as popular music and music for film. The song was first recorded by Hamako Watanabe, 渡辺はま子(1910-1999) (pictured left) who was a real classical music singer, unlike Li Xianglan who was an actress who could carry a tune. Watanabe also sang it in another Japanese movie, which I've seen but which isn't now available. She sang it in a concert setting, with great dignity. Watanabe, who had iconic status, cannot have been too impressed by Li's warbling.  But the real shame was to come later, when the song was further exploited by American GIs who dreamed up offensive, bowdlerized new lyrics that demean women, orientals and anyone else for that matter. "Colonialization" all over again.These things need to be dealt with. They aren't issues of  the past but still happening in different forms all round us.

Please see my post on "Gloomy Sunday" another popular song that bears little resemblance to the original. Also, see my numerous posts on cultural stereotypes, Japan and China, Japanese and Chinese music and film.

Godzilla, remembering the tsunami

It's been a year since the tsunami hit Northern Japan, followed by the emergency at Fukushima. The western news media have moved on, but for many of the Japanese involved, the trauma hasn't ended. Earlier this month, BBC2  TV ran a programme "Children of the Tsunami" (clip here). Kids are more matter of fact than adults, because they're so direct. These kids were positive and upbeat but I suspect they'd be a lot more screwed up if they didn't have good families and a supportive culture which predicates on everyone chipping in together.  One boy was so young he couldn't relate to things and became mute. It's a gradual process and full healing won't come soon. When one of the boys was asked what he'd do to reverse the disaster, he innocently said, "pick it all up and put it back in the sea where it came from". Perfectly logical if you're a kid. And presumably one who's grown up with Japanese ideas of the balance of nature.

Last year I wrote about Ishiro Honda's 1954 film Godzilla (Gojira in Japanese). Godzilla rises from the ocean and wreaks havoc on land. Everyone thinks the world is going to end. Then the scientist hears schoolchildren singing "The Prayer for Peace" and knows what he has to do. The music for the film was composed by Akira Ikufube 伊福部 昭 (1914-2006), himself a victim of radiation, but who lived to a ripe old age. Ikufube's score is evocative when you listen as music, without the film. Godziilla's main theme is poignant and beautiful, though he's a monster. When he stomps on land, and tears up electricity  pylons, the ostinato theme sounds like The Rite of Spring, only more bereft and anguished. Then, when the children sing the Prayer for Peace in a plaintive minor key, you realize it's an adaptation of the main Godzilla theme. Godzilla is much more than a monster movie, it's a parable about the power of nature, an art movie in every sense. DETAILS HERE.  Ikufube's full score is now available minus film so you can enjoy it on both levels. Also a lot of his symphonic music and non-film work. Please see lots more on Japanese film, Japanese composers and music for film on this site.

Hiroshima Nagasaki and the Burmese Harp

Sixty six years ago today, a bomb fell on Hiroshima, and another soon after on Nagasaki. The world changed then, whether some realize it or not. Even now, there are many who don't comprehend what this mass destruction meant, and what we might learn from it. Tsutomo Yamaguchi, who survived both bombs, dedicated his life to helping people understand. "I believe in love, in human beings,” he said. “The reason that I hate the atomic bomb is because of what it does to the dignity of human beings....... When you forget the dignity of individual human beings, that it is when you are heading towards the destruction of the Earth.” (For more please read HERE)

Yamaguchi would have understood The Burmese Harp (ビルマの竪琴 Biruma no tategoto) only too well. This film isn't about war so much as the way simple humanity can overcome horrific trauma. So perhaps it's something we should meditate upon.

A Japanese unit is in Burma. One young soldier, Private Mizushima (Shoji Yasui), has built himself a Burmese harp. He plays it so beautifully that his fellow soldiers are lifted out of their situation. Captain Inōye (Rentaro Mikuni) is young, but the kind of leader who cares deeply for his men. He's also a musician, who keeps up their morale by getting them to sing. The men hear of Hiroshima and the end of the war. Inōye sends Mizushima to tell a unit holed up in a mountain to surrender. The news is so shocking to them that they can't  take it in, but before they can reconsider, they're massacred. Mizushima survives, covered by bodies. His wounds are treated by a Buddhist monk and he dons a monk's robes.

Everywhere he sees the bodies of the dead. Mizushima starts to bury them, but there are too many. He's haunted. He realizes he can't go back to normal life. Meanwhile, the war has ended and the unit is in a POW camp. The soldiers are desperate to know if Mizushima is OK. Captain Inōye has trained a parrot to say "Mizushima, come back to Japan" because the men think Mizushima has deserted.

In his wanderings as a monk, in the Burmese villages, Mizushima  taught a Burmese village boy to play the harp. When the soldiers hear the boy play, they know Mizushima has survived. One day, they're crossing a bridge and pass a monk who turns away. Inōye realizes too late it's Mizushima. A Burmese monk delivers a box with the ashes of the dead.  Who sent it ? Eventually it's time for repatriation. The men release the talking parrot. They sense Mizushima is around. He's hiding inside a giant Burmese Buddha. On board the ship home, Captain Inōye reads the men a letter Mizushima has sent. He's decided to be a monk and wander, penniless, over rivers and mountains, in expiation of something he can't express. Being a monk helps, but sometimes the heartbreak is so great he has to break his vows and play his harp to cope.

"Why must this world have such misery ?" he writes,  "Why must there be such inexplicable pain? ....the answers are not for us humans to know. Our work is simply to have the courage to face suffering and irrationality without fear, to have the strength to create peace by one's own example. "

Simple is often the hardest thing to do. This film (directed by Kon Ichikawa, 1956) means a lot to me. Once in the archives I found a transcript of a testimony by Colonel Doi. He had served in China since 1937 and fought in Malaya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Guadalcanal and Okinawa. Could a man survive all that unscathed, even if he was an officer, not frontline fodder? After the war he became a monk in Japan, praying for the souls of thousands who didn't survive, and for those his actions had killed.  When my father went to Japan he saw a disabled veteran begging outside a temple and instinctively bowed. Why, when his brother and friends were killed in a war crime , possibly connected to Col. Doi's men, though not at his command ?"I don't know" said my Dad, "but the soldier suffered too".

For my piece on Ikuma Dan's Symphony no 6 "Hiroshima" please read HERE. 

Please explore this site, lots of posts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chinese and Japanese culture, films, music and history the Holocaust, anti-war, non-violence and Aung San Suu Kyi. (use labels and search box). Here is a link to Kuroi Ame (Black rain) the film about Hiroshima with music based on Toru Takemitsu and here is a link to Kobayashi's The Human Condition.

Godzilla and the Sendai Tsunami

The Sendai earthquake and tsunami have obliterated  most of the coast of northern Japan. Photos of the disaster liook like Hiroshima and Nagasaki sixty-five years ago.  Ground Zero, all over again. So I felt guilty that I was thinking of Godzilla (Gojira)at a time like this. But one survivor did say, "It's like a horror movie" so maybe I'm not alone. Godzilla films are much deeper than plain schlock.

Godzilla rises from the oceans, part dinosaur, part sea god, leaving a trail of radioactive footprints.  He appears first in an idyllic fishing village - a lot like the Sendai coast -- then marches on to Tokyo which he rips apart with his fiery breath. All the might of the military are tuned on him. Here, he's tearing apart electricity towers. But guns and bombs don't work. Finally, he's killed by a good scientist who sacrifices himself, not to stop Godzilla, but to destroy the dangerous weapon he has invented.The scientist had wanted to save Godzilla to studyhi, but was overruled.

Godzilla is a post-nuclear King Kong, but with far more troubling connotations. The original Godzilla movie (1954) was made less than 10 years after Hiroshima so the implications are obvious. "I don't want it to be like Nagasaki again" says the pretty cub reporter. But it also connects to deep-seated anxieties about military/industrial power. Japan is vulnerable because it has few natural resources other than the drive of its people. By watching these films, audiences could exorcise their fears, rationalizing them in the way nightmares defuse terror. Community spirit is a way in which people can support each other when havoc reigns all round. But the underlying message is clear: don't mess with nature. "I don't think he was the only Gojira" observes the prfessor at the end."As long a man keeps experimenting with weapons, another Gojira will arise, somewhere in the world".

Most people n Japan may live in cramped apartus filled with kitsch, and use metro systems so crammed they have to be pushed on board but the fundamental, ideal aesthetic is harmony. And war is the most obscene distortion of nature. With Fukushima in our minds we should take heed of what Godzilla stands for. He's not a villain. No simple answers. In the film, when Tokyo is destroyed, school girls sing a Hymn of Peace. It's dignified, elegant, an extremely moving expression of hope. At the end, the theme returns as the people salute the scientist who gave his life to protect the community. It's not armies that bring peace, but the altruism of ordinary human beings.

As I was reading up to write this I came across an article in the NY Times on the exact same theme. Read Japan's Long Nuclear Disaster Film by Peter Wynn Kirby who actually lives not far away in Oxford. 

Nagasaki Christians Macau War

This picture looks like desert scrub. In fact it's Nagasaki, after the atomic bomb hit on 9th August 1945. In Hiroshima, a torii in a shrine was partly spared the devastation all round it. In Nagasaki, the Catholic Cathedral was the only structure left standing. (that's it on the hillside) Most of its parishioners didn't survive.

"Why Nagasaki?" some asked, for this was a most westernized, liberal city. Nagasaki was where St Francis Xavier preached to the Japanese, converting hundreds of thousands. Nagasaki began trading with the Portuguese in 1543.   Huge vessels sailed from Lisbon carrying silver and weapons in exchange for silk and porcelain. "The Black Ships" inspired Nanban art. From Nagasaki, many Japanese travelled west, to Macau, to Goa and to Europe.

Japanese Christians built Macau's St Paul's Cathedral, Japanese baroque, mixing Asian and western imagery. Read about it here (photos are mine)  Macanese genes are probably more Japanese than anything else. What an irony! When the Japanese invaded South China,  thousands of Macanese, who'd emigrated to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Canton, were forced back to Macau as refugees. So the circle turns.

Japanese Catholics went underground after their religion was banned early in the 17th century, and re-emerged nearly 300 years later, their faith intact. Because Nagasaki was a Christian centre, many Japanese Christians joined the Navy. There is a story that, weeks after the fall of Hong Kong, the Macanese community were worshipping in Rosary Church. In marched a Japanese naval contingent. Everyone panicked. But it turned out that these Japanese were Catholic, and had just come to hear Mass like everyone else. So much for stereotypes and divisions between people.

 Please take time to explore this blog as there is a lot on Nagasaki. Macau, Japanese and Chinese culture, non violence, war, Hiroshima,  multi cultural things like mixed race communities (beyond Puccini!) .Things on this site you will not find elsewhere. Like THIS, a study of a Buddhist response to the madness of violence, in the film Burmese Harp.