The Study Of Manchuria Studio And Japanese Colonized Films During The Occupation

In 1905,the Russo-Japanese war broke out.Tsarist Russia was defeated and supplanted byJapanese imperialists in the dominant role in Northeast China.Japan gained the managementrights of Changchun-Lvshun railway line and coal mining along it.Japanese invaders renamedthis railway line"South Manchuria Railway",and set up"South Manchuria RailwayCorporation",which is referred to as"Manchuria Railway"for short.In 1923,"ManchuriaRailway"founded a film studio.Members of the puppet regime contended to shootdocumentaries.For a period of time,films had become the popular means of culturalpropaganda.Japanese colonists realized that it was imperative to establish an authoritative filmstudio to propagate the spirit of"harmony among five races"and"benevolent governor andland of promise",in order to prevent anti-Japanese films influencing the masses and infiltrateChinese ideology and culture.This idea was first proposed by Koba Yasi,a major of JapaneseKwangtung Army UnitOn August 21,1937,"Manchuria State Film Studio"("Manchuria Studio"for short) cameinto being,with Amakas Masasiko as the board chairman."Manchuria Studio"was the largest colonial cultural institution.Directly under the StateCouncil of Manchukuo,it was actually controlled by Japanese Kwangtung Army Unit.It alsomonopolized the rights of shooting,releasing and running films in puppet Manchuria.As aspecial product of cultural colonialism,it took up the mission of producing colonial films.Japanese colonists' attitudes towards films switched from negative"examining"to positive"fostering",from simply"forbidding"to"comprehensive"utilizing.Under such circumstances,"Manchuria Studio"had shot a large number of films to spread cultural propaganda.The filmscould be classified into two types,namely,entertaining films and enlightening films.Theformer aimed at amusing people,while the latter attempted to inspire and induce the masses.Those films,however they were grouped,were typical Japanese cultural propagandainstruments with strong colonial colors.On mentioning"Manchuria Studio",it is unavoidable to introduce a full-time actress,called Li Xianglan.Her first movie"Honeymoon Express Train"laid the foundation of hername as"Chinese maiden knowing Japanese".Later,she acted the leading role in several films,which were naked and ultra-reactionary propaganda of the so-called"good will between Japanand Manchuria","harmony among five races"and"benevolent governor and land of promise".During the War of Resistance Against Japan,this woman had appeared on the stage in the name of Li Xianglan,and played Chinese maidens of great variety and diversity.She tried to persuadChinese people to believe that she was a genuine Chinese girl,for the sake of conductingpropaganda easily.With the advancing of Japanese militaries and popularity of Li Xianglan,Japanese colonial authority released"Continent Trilogy",including"The Song of Orchid","The Night of Cina"and"The Swear of Hot Sand",in which Li Xianglan acted as an innocentChinese maiden who fell in love with a Japanese man deeply.On the basis of literature analysis,this paper re-exams the sorted documents of"Manchuria Studio"and probes thoroughly the directors and their films from the humanityangle.This study fills in a gap which hitherto existed in the study of"Manchuria Studio".Meanwhile,it reveals the invasive nature of Japanese colonists through expounding andproving how they manipulated the mass's ideology and culture in Northeast China.Theconclusions are as follows.First,Japanese colonial films did infiltrate the ideology and culture of Chinese people inNortheast China during the enemy-occupied period.However,when viewed as a whole,Japanese authority failed to achieve the set objectives because of the following reasons.Tobegin with,the films were shot to cater to the needs of cultural propaganda.The directors couldnotgive full play to their artistic potential.It stands to reason that the films turned out in a largequantity without any regard for quality.Besides,Chinese people in Manchukuo had no interestin those cultural propaganda films,which consequently reduced the effects of colonization.Finally,the Japanese directors did not understand Chinese customs and practices.Therefore,they failed to do a movie which could attract more Chinese audience.Later,their ideas werechanged,which could reveal the changing ideology of Japanese film circle.Second,it was a great sorrow that film directors had to comply with the directives of theauthorities.Films,the modem artistic form,had to serve the political structures,which furtherillustrated this grieved phenomenon.Third,"Manchuria Studio"provided the illiterate Chinese Northeastemers with the newform of art and view of fancy metropolis.These films served as a"fashionable"and"artificial"enlightenment to some degree.