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Tuesday, September 05, 2006
China's "Tokyo Trial": Jogging Whose Memory?  I remember Samurai soaps, complete with bad beards and wigs, being a staple on Japanese TV. Here in China an "entertainment" constant is WWII drama. There are many styles: and all of them are loaded with cartoonishly evil Japanese soldiers hell-bent on perpetrating atrocities. Only 17% of Japanese polled by one of Japan's largest newspapers even knew there was a war crimes trial in Tokyo and 70% were not aware of the trial's content. In contrast virtually every Chinese student I have met has some knowledge, and predictable hostility, about the war and the subsequent trial of its perpetrators of atrocity. The Japanese collective amnesia and the vigilant recall of the Chinese just got a cinematic shot of Ginkobaloba: The Chinese film, Tokyo Trial has debuted to critical acclaim and the director hopes it will correct past misconceptions and misrepresentations of Japanese war crimes. Tokyo Trial dramatically recreates the two-year trial of the top Japanese war criminals at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East after the war. There may be a lot of historical correction in order for westerners as well: According to China Daily News, Director Gao Qunshu claims it accurately portrays how a Chinese judge swayed opinion on the international panel of 11 judges to narrowly avert a "miscarriage of justice". The Judges from China, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and the Philippines ended the proceedings divided over sentencing issues. However, Chinese judge Mei Ru'ao gave the last speech charging the criminals with stealing Chinese resources and crimes against humanity, securing a majority of six needed to hand down death penalties for the seven class A war criminals, including Hideki Tojo, Kenji Doihara and Koki Hirota. After Tokyo Saiban, the 23-yeard old film by Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi, there was much ado about alleged factual misrepresentations of history. In a 1985 review of the Japanese version, New York Times film critic Drew Middleton wrote: "(The movie) is visually satisfying, but historically empty. Masaki Kobayashi, the director, himself a prisoner of war, has interspersed the trial scenes with bits from World War II archives that, granted the importance of the trial itself, seem largely irrelevant. "Moreover we get little about Japanese atrocities such as the Bataan death march or the Nanjing massacres after the Japanese Army took that city in its campaign against China. We do get the atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The message, to this reviewer, was that the West was worse than the East in terms of atrocities." Some Chinese scholars have effectively said "it's about time" that an accurate film about Japanese war crimes has been made chiding the west for focusing artistic and documentary efforts, as early as 1961, on Nuremburg and Nazi led genocide. But, we have a long history of ignoring the destruction of people of color as countries like Rwanda can attest. Tokyo China politics asia Human Rights Japan WWII Film Cinema Nanjing War Crimes Blogger News Network is advertiser-supported, and your visits to our advertisers help BNN to meet its expenses. Help keep us afloat! posted by Lonnie at 4:45 AM |
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