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In East Asia, the Second World War remains a controversial issue. Historian Rana Mitter visits Tokyo to explore how Japan remembers the conflict - through its movies. Rana talks to leading directors including Harada Masato, Katabuchi Sunao, Arai Haruhiko and Tsukamoto Shinya, to film critics, and to a new generation of young Japanese viewers. And along the way he explores how the war looks from the perspective of modern Chinese cinema.
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00:06Japan today is prosperous, lively, and enjoying the upside of over 70 years of peace.
00:13But in the 1930s and early 40s, Japanese forces swept across first China and then the Pacific,
00:21until finally they were driven slowly back towards the Japanese mainland and destruction.
00:27Hiroshima was completely hidden by an impenetrable cloud of smoke and dust.
00:33In East Asia, the Second World War is still so raw it dominates headlines.
00:39So how the countries of this region tell themselves their war stories really matters.
00:44But as memories of the war die away, what aspects of the conflict remain in focus and what's left out
00:52of the frame?
00:53I'm Rana Mitter, a historian of East Asia, and I've come to Tokyo to find out how today's Japan tells
01:00itself the story of the war through its movies.
01:05Movies that recreate an era of devastation that still shapes this country's relationship with the region and the world.
01:21This museum in central Tokyo is named the Shoakan.
01:25It's a record of the everyday lives of wartime civilians.
01:30Everything from preparing ever scarcer food to sheltering from American bombs.
01:36And it's that perspective on the fate of Japanese civilians that's at the heart of a recent surprise blockbuster.
01:47On its release in 2016, In This Corner of the World seemed to catch some wider public mood and became
01:54a big hit.
01:55It's the story of a young woman named Suzu, starting her married life near Hiroshima.
02:02As the war comes closer to the Japanese home islands, it brings food shortages and worse.
02:10But at first, Suzu responds with youthful creativity.
02:19How do young people watch your film? How do they react to seeing the war period portrayed on screen?
02:27How do they react to the issue of the war?
02:27The young people watch their film in these days why?
02:37How do they react to the war?
02:40What's the role of the young people watch their stories?
02:43The young people watch their stories, what does it mean?
02:47They're on their own experience.
02:49How do they react to their stories?
02:50They're on their own experiences.
02:51They have a lot of interesting experiences.
02:52So, these people find out that they are in it.
02:55They're naturally trying to bring their stories to find people that can't be a big hit.
03:16Finally, Suzu loses her drawing hand and the niece who's holding it to an American bomb.
03:26According to the nuclear weapon, the enemy is one of the top of the nuclear bomb.
03:34But do young people think about movies as a way to understand the war?
03:39I went to meet up with three students, Akane, Yuri and Haruka.
03:44I heard the story about the world, and I didn't have to hear it.
03:52I didn't have to hear it.
03:53The second part of the world was the second part of the world.
04:05Yes.
04:07It's the same thing.
04:10I'm a big fan of Japan.
04:12I think that the world's history is different.
04:19I think that I'm going to teach a lot of people's history.
04:21I'm going to teach a lot to my children on this show.
04:27I think that it's very important to watch the movie.
04:29I think it's the best.
04:32I really feel like I'm really real.
04:34I learned a lot about it.
04:39In the classroom, I was learning a lot about it.
04:45I think that I'm learning a lot about it.
04:46I think that I'm learning a lot more about it.
04:54I think that I'm more likely to be able to play it.
05:01In This Corner of the World stays focused on the suffering inflicted on Japanese people
05:05rather than by them, but that does include glimpses of the hard edge of the regime.
05:15In this scene, the military police, the Kempeitai, accuse Suzu of spying for drawing warships
05:22in the bay.
05:22уб海岸線と海鋭を射線しろった
05:30!環境行為じゃん!こんなこけな顔してどがいに悪らつかつ高地にたけた計画を巡らしとるかわからん
05:48!あの、そうなんですね。一番僕は考えたかったのは、例えばその、憲兵である個人が悪なのかっていうことですね。
05:50It's not true, it's not true, it's not true, it's not true, it's not true, it's true, it's true.
06:01Arai Haruhiko's movie This Country's Sky also tells the story
06:05of a young woman trying to form her personality and ideas,
06:08while surviving the dangers and deprivations of the last year of the war.
06:16Amid the air raids, normal moral strictures loosen,
06:20and 19-year-old Satoko begins a highly unconventional relationship
06:24with her married 30-something neighbour.
06:48It was just a time when we passed,
06:50and I had to do it for the first time when I started teaching him,
06:52but after being taught about it,
06:55so that I had to be taught to the black people,
06:58and I had to be taught by me while I was teaching himself.
07:04I was taught that that the American leaders were taught
07:06how they were taught in a country.
07:08So, after that, I would never forget to talk to him,
07:08and I would never listen to him,
07:10It's like the war, that war, and the war.
07:13That's why I started to do different countries.
07:20I've been thinking about the war that was a country that was the war that was long after 70 years.
07:27I think that now the war was quite hard.
07:29I think that she was a very happy man.
07:32I thought that she was happy to be the war.
07:42I was happy to be able to think about her.
07:45I thought that she was a very happy man.
07:48I thought that she was a very happy man.
07:50I thought that she was a very happy man.
07:54We've heard quite a bit about films that mourn
07:56the Japanese victims of the war.
07:59But some films concentrate on the soldiers,
08:03and they're not just stories of condemnation.
08:06Some recent movies have found aspects of the wartime effort to sympathise with.
08:11I'm heading to a place where the spirits of Japan's war dead are commemorated.
08:17The Yasukuni Shrine is a controversial site
08:21because it doesn't just commemorate the ordinary war dead,
08:24but also leaders who were indicted as Class A war criminals after Japan's defeat.
08:30It's also the place where the souls of kamikaze pilots were inducted after their deaths.
08:36It's become very difficult to film freely inside,
08:39but it's this place that's been invoked by a film
08:42that makes those kamikaze pilots its heroes.
08:48In For Those We Love,
08:50the young men about to fly off and crash their planes into American warships,
08:54as Japan struggled desperately to stall the American advance,
08:58promised to meet each other after death at the Yasukuni Shrine.
09:04The movie was written by the then governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro,
09:08well known for his hardline nationalist views,
09:11and his script insists on the nobility of the pilot's sacrifice.
09:17For Those We Love was not a huge box office success,
09:20but a more recent film about the kamikaze pilots proved a blockbuster hit.
09:26The kamikaze's plane was called The Zero,
09:28and The Eternal Zero was adapted from a novel
09:31by the nationalist author Hyakuta Naoki.
09:34However, the film adaptation took the story in a new direction.
09:38In this electrifying aerial chase sequence,
09:41the protagonist, flight instructor Miyabe,
09:44desperately tries to outmanoeuvre the American fighter plane on his tail.
09:59But when Miyabe is saved by one of his pupils
10:02deliberately crashing into the American plane,
10:04he chides the badly injured young man for risking his life,
10:08in direct contradiction of Japan's wartime insistence on self-sacrifice.
10:13For me, I personally feel like I've lived in the Second World War II,
10:20and I don't have to think about the daily life of my life in the Second World War II.
10:23I mean, when I look at that picture,
10:25I think that I've lived in the past,
10:27and I think that I've lived in the past.
10:29I think that I've lived in the past and that I've lived in the past and that I've lived in
10:37the past.
10:40Some appreciated the film's take on the pilot's noble sacrifice.
10:44Others, not least the film's director, Yamazaki Takashi, saw it as more critical.
10:50The director of that film, Yamazaki, sat down with me.
10:54And, you know, we'd known each other for years, you know.
10:57And I said, you know, people have this perception that this film is pro-war.
11:00I mean, writers are coming out and saying, like, this is our film.
11:04And he said, how can they think that?
11:06You know, the guys in that film, you know, the Kamikaze pilots,
11:10are to be pitied.
11:12Like, the way they die, it's so wasteful, you know.
11:15And how can they even think that?
11:17He was mad, angry.
11:19You know, it's like, he was offended.
11:21And that's what I saw.
11:22The film was really, really impressive.
11:25And it was...
11:26He had thought that, like, we would've seen it for a while.
11:27He was really alive, so it was very much alive.
11:42And he's really alive.
11:43He was alive.
11:43But, you know, it was the time when I was in my life.
11:46But, you know, around the time, it was too much of a thing.
11:47You know, that's a story.
11:47And, like, like, I think he's alive.
11:48And, you know, I'm a big fan.
11:50But, you know, it's really a thing.
11:50I've been, you know, I've been in the past and I've been there.
11:51And so many people, you know.
11:51I felt that he was right, but in that time, I felt that he was wrong.
12:01Finally, Miyabe does set out on a kamikaze mission,
12:04and the film ends with a moment of emotional connection between today's generation and the wartime fighters,
12:11as Miyabe in 1945 comes face to face with his grandson in today's Japan.
12:21But in today's Japan, some worry about how the war is portrayed
12:26now that almost no-one is left who remembers what it was really like,
12:30and that young Japanese are dangerously unaware of the realities of war.
12:36That's why in 2015, a movie called Fires on the Plane confronted audiences with a vision of the war as
12:44hell.
12:44Half-crazed Japanese soldiers commit atrocities as they struggle to survive.
12:52The lead, Tamura, is played by the film's creator, Tsukamoto Shinya.
13:23This is all
13:26We were at the moment we had no time to enter.
13:30But when I entered, we were all in the middle.
13:37When we were at the moment, we had no time to enter into the war.
13:44This was a relief that we were all in the middle.
13:49All of those people who were in jail were having a new experience.
13:53I just wanted to make sure that they weren't able to understand them,
14:02and I felt like it was a big difference.
14:04I felt like I was being able to see the world.
14:09But there's another aspect to what war movies focus on.
14:13The differing memories of the war, in other parts of East Asia.
14:18Japanese movies tend to focus on the war in the Pacific, rather than events like the massacre
14:23carried out by the invading Japanese army in the then-Chinese capital in winter 1937,
14:29an event known in the West as the Rape of Nanking. Although Japanese journalists and academics have
14:36worked extensively and honestly on this, it's not a subject that Japanese filmmakers have dealt with
14:42very much. But their Chinese counterparts have certainly put the subject at the heart of their
14:48treatment of the war on screen. Today, 100 of you, you will be leaving us. I'm so sorry.
15:02Writer-director Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death is a vision of unsparing cruelty,
15:07the Japanese army forcing Chinese women into sexual slavery.
15:25And this film, The Flowers of War, explores very similar themes through the eyes of a young American,
15:31played by Christian Bale. In this scene, he struggles to stop a cultivated Japanese officer
15:38taking away the convent girls he's protecting to a terrible fate.
15:42Sir, they are very young. I'm not sure that it is appropriate for them to attend an adult's party
15:47as their guardian, their protector. That is my responsibility. We thank you very much.
15:58The horrors visited on Nanjing are also at the center of The Girl and the Picture,
16:04a documentary out this year. It focuses on Xia Shukin, who was bayoneted as an eight-year-old
16:11as Japanese occupation forces murdered her family. The film shows her gently passing on her memories
16:17to her curious seven-year-old great-grandson.
16:34That moment to me really is the defining, symbolic, special moment to me because it's this visceral
16:42moment of literally him touching the past.
16:45She was passing on a very valuable lesson to her family and the grandchild, forgiveness.
16:53And that is the purpose of this entire film and exercise. Learn from history so that we can reduce
17:00the possibility of it happening again, but then to move on. There's a moment where he sort of
17:06flinches a little bit and he's concerned about his grandmother. And what I really love is what she
17:12says. She notices that feeling he has and she says, but I survived. Japanese leaders have repeatedly
17:20apologized, but many feel the country has never quite fully reckoned with its war crimes. Some, though,
17:27do suggest that China uses the memory of war crimes to pressure Japan and ignores its more positive roles
17:33since the war. And then few Chinese films confront the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. What's more,
17:40a reluctance to confront difficult history isn't just confined to East Asia. There's no simple British
17:47equivalent to Nanjing, but UK movies don't often tackle difficult subjects like the wartime famine that
17:54British policies helped to cause in Bengal.
18:01This is the legendary Toho Studios, fronted by a statue of their most famous star, Godzilla. I'm here to
18:10meet Harada Masato, who's cutting his latest film, to ask him about his previous film for Shoshiko Studios,
18:17the Emperor in August.
18:33Most of the films we've been looking at have been about civilians or soldiers,
18:37but this one tries to grapple with the responsibility of the top leaders who were ruling Japan at the end
18:44of World War II, and Emperor Hirohito's decision in 1945 that Japan had to surrender.
18:51Harada explained that one reason he wanted to tell this story afresh was because of his worry that
18:57Prime Minister Abe's government wants radically to transform Japan's constitution.
19:03Article 9 of the post-war constitution states Japan will
19:07forever renounce war and the use of force to settle international disputes.
19:12Mr Abe and his supporters considered those words a humiliation forced on Japan by the American victors.
19:20It's a kind of dangerous way of Japan is heading under Abe Shinzo's regime administration,
19:30and I'm afraid of that.
19:31Why do you think making a film about 1945 might address those issues?
19:38Well, it clearly tells how difficult to abandon the army once the Japanese hold this kind of
19:47organization. The Emperor had to come out and speak out, and it made such tremendous effort for
19:57everybody in the cabinet member to finish the war, to end the war, and to abandon this army to save
20:04the nation.
20:05And if Japan moves that way again to form a new type of army, I feel fear of we are
20:15going into a harmless way.
20:17Some, however, think that this is an unnecessarily anxious view of the present Japanese government.
20:22The Soviet Union is a foreign country, and the United States is a non-human country.
20:25To bring about the surrender, Hirohito had to face down resistance
20:36at the top of his government.
20:51And Harada says, portraying the Emperor on the screen today also involved taboos.
20:57When we were in the pre-production, you know, I checked about the safety of making this film,
21:03and asked Mr. Handel, who wrote this book, and he asked some right-wingers and checked the situation.
21:10And then maybe it's safe to show the Emperor a proper way, but to portray the family feud
21:21among the Emperor's family, nobody tasted that water yet.
21:25Maybe Japan, like Britain, can't leave World War II behind, even though it's more than 70 years ago.
21:33There are so many interesting stories and plots not being exposed yet, because in Japan,
21:42like I said before, there are so many taboos, and you can't do this and do that, and it existed.
21:49And it seems like now is the time to show some of those hidden truths.
21:55At the end of the war, the Emperor was living in the secluded palace estate beyond this bridge,
22:02Nijubashi. He then had to cross another bridge, from a warlike Japan that had invaded large parts of Asia,
22:10Asia, to a new country of peace and economic prosperity.
22:16But the legacy of the war years has never really faded. The relationship with China has remained formal and cool.
22:23That bridge has never really been crossed. Both countries are still fighting one another on screen.
22:31Both countries are still mourning the losses of more than seven decades ago.
22:36But they're doing so in relative isolation from one another.
22:40If the two countries are to overcome the enormous chasm between them, they're going to need to learn more
22:46about each other's histories. And perhaps filmmakers can make that crossing a little easier.
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