Download or read book Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War written by King-fai Tam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-24 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines representations of the Second World War in postwar Chinese and Japanese cinema. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly disciplines, and analysing a wide range of films, it demonstrates the potential of war movies for understanding contemporary China and Japan. It shows how the war is remembered in both countries, including the demonisation of Japanese soldiers in postwar socialist-era Chinese movies, and the pervasive sense of victimhood in Japanese memories of the war. However, it also shows how some Chinese directors were experimenting with alternatives interpretations of the war from as early as the 1950s, and how, despite the "resurgence of nationalism" in japan since the 1980s, the production of Japanese movies critical of the war has continued.
Download or read book Divided Lenses written by Michael Berry and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017-12-31 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia is the first attempt to explore how the tumultuous years between 1931 and 1953 have been recreated and renegotiated in cinema. This period saw traumatic conflicts such as the Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War, and the Korean War, and pivotal events such as the Rape of Nanjing, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of which left a lasting imprint on East Asia and the world. By bringing together a variety of specialists in the cinemas of East Asia and offering divergent yet complementary perspectives, the book explores how the legacies of war have been reimagined through the lens of film. This turbulent era opened with the Mukden Incident of 1931, which signaled a new page in Japanese militaristic aggression in East Asia, and culminated with the Korean War (1950–1953), a protracted conflict that broke out in the wake of Japan's post–World War II withdrawal from Korea. Divided Lenses explores the ways in which events of the intervening decades have continued to shape politics and popular culture throughout East Asia and the world. The essays in part I examine historical trends at work in various "national" cinemas, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the United States. Those in part 2 focus on specific themes present in the cinema portraying this period—such as comfort women in Chinese film, the Nanjing Massacre, or nationalism—and how they have been depicted or renegotiated in contemporary films. Of particular interest are contributions drawing from other forms of screen culture, such as television and video games. Divided Lenses builds on the growing interest in East Asian cinema by examining how these historic conflicts have been imagined, framed, and revisited through the lens of cinema and screen culture. It will interest later generations living in the shadow of these events, as well as students and scholars in the fields of cinema studies, cultural studies, cold war studies, and World War II history.
Download or read book China s Good War written by Rana Mitter and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese leaders once tried to suppress memories of their nation’s brutal experience during World War II. Now they celebrate the “victory”—a key foundation of China’s rising nationalism. For most of its history, the People’s Republic of China discouraged public discussion of the war against Japan. It was an experience of victimization—and one that saw Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek fighting for the same goals. But now, as China grows more powerful, the meaning of the war is changing. Rana Mitter argues that China’s reassessment of the war years is central to its newfound confidence abroad and to mounting nationalism at home. China’s Good War begins with the academics who shepherded the once-taboo subject into wider discourse. Encouraged by reforms under Deng Xiaoping, they researched the Guomindang war effort, collaboration with the Japanese, and China’s role in forming the post-1945 global order. But interest in the war would not stay confined to scholarly journals. Today public sites of memory—including museums, movies and television shows, street art, popular writing, and social media—define the war as a founding myth for an ascendant China. Wartime China emerges as victor rather than victim. The shifting story has nurtured a number of new views. One rehabilitates Chiang Kai-shek’s war efforts, minimizing the bloody conflicts between him and Mao and aiming to heal the wounds of the Cultural Revolution. Another narrative positions Beijing as creator and protector of the international order that emerged from the war—an order, China argues, under threat today largely from the United States. China’s radical reassessment of its collective memory of the war has created a new foundation for a people destined to shape the world.
Download or read book The Japan America Film Wars written by Abé Mark Nornes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-21 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions from noted critics and film historians from both countries, this book, first published in 1994, examines some of the most innovative and disturbing propaganda ever created. It analyses the conflicting images of these films and their effectiveness in defining public perception of the enemy. It also offers pointed commentary on the power of visual imagery to enhance racial tensions and enforce both positive and negative stereotypes of the Other.
Download or read book Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors written by Amanda Weiss and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-21 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking the “tidal wave” of memory in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century as its starting point, this monograph explores collective memory of World War II in East Asia (1937–1945) through film. Weiss argues that Chinese, Japanese, and American remembrance of World War II is intertwined in what she terms a “memory loop,” the transnational mediation and remediation of war narratives. Gender is central to this process, as the changing representation of male soldiers, political leaders, and patriarchal father figures within these narratives reveals Japanese and Chinese challenges to each other and to the perceived “foundational” American narrative of the war. This process continues to intensify due to the globally visible nature of the memory loop, which drives this cycle of transmission, translation, and reassessment. This volume is the first to bring together a collection of Chinese and Japanese war films that have received little attention in English-language literature. It also produces new readings of popular war memory in East Asia by revealing the gendered dimensions of collective remembrance in these films. “This awesome book shows how Chinese and Japanese films about the Second World War both reflect and shape memories of that conflict. Moreover, by analyzing movies about the war and the ensuing ‘competing masculinities,’ Amanda Weiss skillfully discloses their impact on subsequent conceptions of race, gender, and identity. Highly recommended.” —Kam Louie, University of Hong Kong “Amanda Weiss, who views film as a significant mode of popular memory traveling beyond national border, discovers a loop of mutual interaction in the representation of Chinese and Japanese war films deeply intertwined with the nationalism of both countries. Her skill in capturing the intersection of cross-border memories in visual images such as the Tokyo Trials, warrior, rape, and reconciliation is remarkable. This is a transcendent achievement that could only be accomplished by Weiss, who fully understands both Japanese and Chinese languages and deeply understands the movements of consciousness among the people of these countries during her long stay in Japan and China.” —Shunya Yoshimi, University of Tokyo 日本語原文： 1980年代以降、日本と中国の戦争映画は、まったく異なる方向に向かい、それぞれナショナリスティックな語りを発達させてきたと考えられている。しかし、映画とはトランスナショナルな大衆的記憶の技術であると考えるヴァイスは、この両国のナショナリズムと根深く結びついた戦争映画の表象に、国境を越える相互の作用や反作用のループがあることを発見していく。彼女が東京裁判、戦士の表象、レイプ、和解といった映像イメージの中に国境を越える記憶の交錯を捉える手際は鮮やかである。本書はそれ自体、日中の言語を完全に理解し、日本で長く暮らす中でこの国の人々の意識のうごめきを深く理解し、フィルム・スタディーズはもちろん、アジアの近現代史やカルチュラル・スタディーズ、ジェンダー・スタディーズを知悉したヴァイスでなければできない越境的な達成である。
Download or read book The Good Man of Nanking written by John Rabe and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Good Man of Nanking is a crucial document for understanding one of World War II's most horrific incidents of genocide, one which the Japanese have steadfastly refused to acknowledge. It is also the moving and awe-inspiring record of one man's conscience, courage, and generosity in the face of appalling human brutality. Until the recent emergence of John Rabe's diaries, few people knew abouth the unassuming hero who has been called the Oskar Schindler of China. In Novemgber 1937, as Japanese troops overran the Chinese capital of Nanking and began a campaign of torture, rape, and murder against its citizens, one man-a German who had lived in China for thirty years and who was a loyal follower of Adolph Hitler-put himself at risk and in order to save the lives of 200,000 poor Chinese, 600 of whom he sheltered in his own home.
Download or read book World War II Film and History written by John Whiteclay Chambers II and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-10-10 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The immediacy and perceived truth of the visual image, as well as film and television's ability to propel viewers back into the past, place the genre of the historical film in a special category. War films--including antiwar films--have established the prevailing public image of war in the twentieth century. For American audiences, the dominant image of trench warfare in World War I has been provided by feature films such as All Quiet on the Western Front and Paths of Glory. The image of combat in the Second World War has been shaped by films like Sands of Iwo Jima and The Longest Day. And despite claims for the alleged impact of widespread television coverage of the Vietnam War, it is actually films such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon which have provided the most powerful images of what is seen as the "reality" of that much disputed conflict. But to what degree does history written "with lightning," as Woodrow Wilson allegedly said, represent the reality of the past? To what extent is visual history an oversimplification, or even a distortion of the past? Exploring the relationship between moving images and the society and culture in which they were produced and received, World War II, Film, and History addresses the power these images have had in determining our perception and memories of war. Examining how the public memory of war in the twentieth century has often been created more by a manufactured past than a remembered one, a leading group of historians discusses films dating from the early 1930s through the early 1990s, created by filmmakers the world over, from the United States and Germany to Japan and the former Soviet Union. For example, Freda Freiberg explains how the inter-racial melodramatic Japanese feature film China Nights, in which a manly and protective Japanese naval officer falls in love with a beautiful young Chinese street waif and molds her into a cultured, submissive wife, proved enormously popular with wartime Japanese and helped justify the invasion of China in the minds of many Japanese viewers. Peter Paret assesses the historical accuracy of Kolberg as a depiction of an unsuccessful siege of that German city by a French Army in 1807, and explores how the film, released by Hitler's regime in January 1945, explicitly called for civilian sacrifice and last-ditch resistance. Stephen Ambrose contrasts what we know about the historical reality of the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, with the 1962 release of The Longest Day, in which the major climactic moment in the film never happened at Normandy. Alice Kessler-Harris examines The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, a 1982 film documentary about women defense workers on the American home front in World War II, emphasizing the degree to which the documentary's engaging main characters and its message of the need for fair and equal treatment for women resonates with many contemporary viewers. And Clement Alexander Price contrasts Men of Bronze, William Miles's fine documentary about black American soldiers who fought in France in World War I, with Liberators, the controversial documentary by Miles and Nina Rosenblum which incorrectly claimed that African-American troops liberated Holocaust survivors at Dachau in World War II. In today's visually-oriented world, powerful images, even images of images, are circulated in an eternal cycle, gaining increased acceptance through repetition. History becomes an endless loop, in which repeated images validate and reconfirm each other. Based on archival materials, many of which have become only recently available, World War II, Film, and History offers an informative and a disturbing look at the complex relationship between national myths and filmic memory, as well as the dangers of visual images being transformed into "reality."
Download or read book Divine Work Japanese Colonial Cinema and its Legacy written by Kate Taylor-Jones and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-08-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many East Asian nations, cinema and Japanese Imperialism arrived within a few years of each other. Exploring topics such as landscape, gender, modernity and military recruitment, this study details how the respective national cinemas of Japan's territories struggled under, but also engaged with, the Japanese Imperial structures. Japan was ostensibly committed to an ethos of pan-Asianism and this study explores how this sense of the transnational was conveyed cinematically across the occupied lands. Taylor-Jones traces how cinema in the region post-1945 needs to be understood not only in terms of past colonial relationships, but also in relation to how the post-colonial has engaged with shifting political alliances, the opportunities for technological advancement and knowledge, the promise of larger consumer markets, and specific historical conditions of each decade.
Download or read book The Shock of War written by Sean Kennedy and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Shock of War: Civilian Experiences, 1937-1945, Sean Kennedy shifts the reader's focus from the battlefields of the Second World War to the civilian experience. This short yet comprehensive history complements existing studies of the war that document diplomatic and military operations. While many of these studies acknowledge the significance of the conflict for civilians, The Shock of War places civilians at the centre of events, drawing attention to the many different regions of the world affected by the conflict, and comparing various facets of the civilian experience. Kennedy's fresh approach emphasizes the diverse and complex impact of the war, which was profoundly destructive, yet, in some societies, provided opportunities and the potential for positive change.
Download or read book Overcoming Empire in Post Imperial East Asia written by Barak Kushner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Emperor Hirohito announced defeat in a radio broadcast on 15th August 1945, Japan was not merely a nation; it was a colossal empire stretching from the tip of Alaska to the fringes of Australia grown out of a colonial ideology that continued to pervade East Asian society for years after the end of the Second World War. In Overcoming Empire in Post-Imperial East Asia: Repatriation, Redress and Rebuilding, Barak Kushner and Sherzod Muminov bring together an international team of leading scholars to explore the post-imperial history of the region. From international aid to postwar cinema to chemical warfare, these essays all focus on the aftermath of Japan's aggressive warfare and the new international strategies which Japan, China, Taiwan, North and South Korea utilised following the end of the war and the collapse of Japan's empire. The result is a nuanced analysis of the transformation of postwar national identities, colonial politics, and the reordering of society in East Asia. With its innovative comparative and transnational perspective, this book is essential reading for scholars of modern East Asian history, the cold war, and the history of decolonisation.
Download or read book China and Japan written by Ezra F. Vogel and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China and Japan have cultural and political connections that stretch back 1,500 years. But today they need to reset their strained relationship. Ezra Vogel underscores the need for Japan to offer a thorough apology for its atrocities during WWII, but he also urges China to recognize Japan as a potential vital partner in the region.
Download or read book World War II Film and History written by John Whiteclay Chambers II and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-10-10 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The immediacy and perceived truth of the visual image, as well as film and television's ability to propel viewers back into the past, place the genre of the historical film in a special category. War films--including antiwar films--have established the prevailing public image of war in the twentieth century. For American audiences, the dominant image of trench warfare in World War I has been provided by feature films such as All Quiet on the Western Front and Paths of Glory. The image of combat in the Second World War has been shaped by films like Sands of Iwo Jima and The Longest Day. And despite claims for the alleged impact of widespread television coverage of the Vietnam War, it is actually films such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon which have provided the most powerful images of what is seen as the "reality" of that much disputed conflict. But to what degree does history written "with lightning," as Woodrow Wilson allegedly said, represent the reality of the past? To what extent is visual history an oversimplification, or even a distortion of the past? Exploring the relationship between moving images and the society and culture in which they were produced and received, World War II, Film, and History addresses the power these images have had in determining our perception and memories of war. Examining how the public memory of war in the twentieth century has often been created more by a manufactured past than a remembered one, a leading group of historians discusses films dating from the early 1930s through the early 1990s, created by filmmakers the world over, from the United States and Germany to Japan and the former Soviet Union. For example, Freda Freiberg explains how the inter-racial melodramatic Japanese feature film China Nights, in which a manly and protective Japanese naval officer falls in love with a beautiful young Chinese street waif and molds her into a cultured, submissive wife, proved enormously popular with wartime Japanese and helped justify the invasion of China in the minds of many Japanese viewers. Peter Paret assesses the historical accuracy of Kolberg as a depiction of an unsuccessful siege of that German city by a French Army in 1807, and explores how the film, released by Hitler's regime in January 1945, explicitly called for civilian sacrifice and last-ditch resistance. Stephen Ambrose contrasts what we know about the historical reality of the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, with the 1962 release of The Longest Day, in which the major climactic moment in the film never happened at Normandy. Alice Kessler-Harris examines The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, a 1982 film documentary about women defense workers on the American home front in World War II, emphasizing the degree to which the documentary's engaging main characters and its message of the need for fair and equal treatment for women resonates with many contemporary viewers. And Clement Alexander Price contrasts Men of Bronze, William Miles's fine documentary about black American soldiers who fought in France in World War I, with Liberators, the controversial documentary by Miles and Nina Rosenblum which incorrectly claimed that African-American troops liberated Holocaust survivors at Dachau in World War II. In today's visually-oriented world, powerful images, even images of images, are circulated in an eternal cycle, gaining increased acceptance through repetition. History becomes an endless loop, in which repeated images validate and reconfirm each other. Based on archival materials, many of which have become only recently available, World War II, Film, and History offers an informative and a disturbing look at the complex relationship between national myths and filmic memory, as well as the dangers of visual images being transformed into "reality."
Download or read book What Is Japanese Cinema written by Yomota Inuhiko and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What might Godzilla and Kurosawa have in common? What, if anything, links Ozu’s sparse portraits of domestic life and the colorful worlds of anime? In What Is Japanese Cinema? Yomota Inuhiko provides a concise and lively history of Japanese film that shows how cinema tells the story of Japan’s modern age. Discussing popular works alongside auteurist masterpieces, Yomota considers films in light of both Japanese cultural particularities and cinema as a worldwide art form. He covers the history of Japanese film from the silent era to the rise of J-Horror in its historical, technological, and global contexts. Yomota shows how Japanese film has been shaped by traditonal art forms such as kabuki theater as well as foreign influences spanning Hollywood and Italian neorealism. Along the way, he considers the first golden age of Japanese film; colonial filmmaking in Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan; the impact of World War II and the U.S. occupation; the Japanese film industry’s rise to international prominence during the 1950s and 1960s; and the challenges and technological shifts of recent decades. Alongside a larger thematic discussion of what defines and characterizes Japanese film, Yomota provides insightful readings of canonical directors including Kurosawa, Ozu, Suzuki, and Miyazaki as well as genre movies, documentaries, indie film, and pornography. An incisive and opinionated history, What Is Japanese Cinema? is essential reading for admirers and students of Japan’s contributions to the world of film.
Download or read book The Rape of Nanking written by Iris Chang and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling account of one of history's most brutal—and forgotten—massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China's capital city on the eve of World War II, "piecing together the abundant eyewitness reports into an undeniable tapestry of horror". (Adam Hochschild, Salon) In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang's classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode.
Download or read book Hong Kong Neo Noir written by Esther Yau and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-28 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive collection on the subject of Hong Kong neo-noir cinema, this book examines the way Hong Kong has developed its own unique and culturally specific version of the neo-noir genre, while at the same time drawing on and adapting existing international noir cinemas. With a range of contributions from established and emerging scholars, this book illuminates the origins of Hong Kong neo-noir, its styles and contemporary manifestations, and its connection to mainland China. Case studies include classics such as The Wild Wild Rose (1960) and more recent films like Full Alert (1997) and Exiled (2007), as well as an in-depth look at the careers of iconic figures like Johnnie To and Jackie Chan. By examining at its past and its contemporary development, Hong Kong Neo-Noir also points towards the genre's possible future development.
Download or read book Not Just a Laughing Matter written by King-fai Tam and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-28 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first comprehensive and in-depth exploration of the way Chinese humor fits into broader discourses on Chinese identity and modernity in an increasingly globalized world throughout the period of modern China. It brings together the expertise of scholars from a variety of disciplines – history, literature, linguistics, anthropology, sociology and the study of popular culture – to examine the many forms and modes in which political humor is expressed in modern China: films, cartoons, the visual arts, oral performances and online satire.
Download or read book Imagining Japan in Post war East Asia written by Paul Morris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-26 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades since her defeat in the Second World War, Japan has continued to loom large in the national imagination of many of her East Asian neighbours. While for many, Japan still conjures up images of rampant military brutality, at different times and in different communities, alternative images of the Japanese ‘Other’ have vied for predominance – in ways that remain poorly understood, not least within Japan itself. Imagining Japan in Postwar East Asia analyses the portrayal of Japan in the societies of East and Southeast Asia, and asks how and why this has changed in recent decades, and what these changing images of Japan reveal about the ways in which these societies construct their own identities. It examines the role played by an imagined ‘Japan’ in the construction of national selves across the East Asian region, as mediated through a broad range of media ranging from school curricula and textbooks to film, television, literature and comics. Commencing with an extensive thematic and comparative overview chapter, the volume also includes contributions focusing specifically on Chinese societies (the mainland PRC, Hong Kong and Taiwan), Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. These studies show how changes in the representation of Japan have been related to political, social and cultural shifts within the societies of East Asia – and in particular to the ways in which these societies have imagined or constructed their own identities. Bringing together contributors working in the fields of education, anthropology, history, sociology, political science and media studies, this interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to all students and scholars concerned with issues of identity, politics and culture in the societies of East Asia, and to those seeking a deeper understanding of Japan’s fraught relations with its regional neighbours.
