visas & virtue

[Birgit Kellner]

NHK-BS 1 just aired a brief interview with Chris Tashima about his short
film "visas & virtue" (1997), about the Japanese general consul in
Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, who had issued visas to Jewish refugees
against orders from Tokyo during WW II. 

I have not seen the film, nor am I aware of any articles, reviews or
discussions about it. So my first question is to what extent, and on
what background, "visas & virtue" was critically reviewed. 

In the interview on TV right now both the interviewer and the director
(the writer of the screenplay was there, too, I think his name was
Toyama) persistently connected the film with identity-issues of Japanese
in America, and of Japanese-Americans. The interviewer started by asking
how Tashima, though not being Japanese (he is Japanese-American), got
interested in making a film about a Japanese (this came across as if
only Japanese directors could have a legitimate interest, or even have
the right, to make films about Japanese people). The director replied
that he wanted to give Japanese-Americans (like himself) a positive
Japanese role-model to identify with, against the usual depiction of
Japanese as number-one villains. He wanted to show a bona fide Japanese
hero. The interview basically continued along these lines. 

No mention of the historical background, i.e. the fact that Sugihara was
dismissed from diplomatic service as soon as he came back to Japan, and
continued to be ignored and neglected by Japanese authorities. And no
mention of the even larger historical background (Holocaust) at all. In
fact, the continuous reference to internment camps for Japanese in the
US made it seem almost as if the Japanese general consul in Lithuania
would rather have (or should rather have) heroically liberated Japanese
interned in the US, than having saved Jews from a more than probable
death in a Nazi concentration camp. Again, I haven't seen the film, but
I found the way in which the interview was lead, from both sides,
disturbing, bizarre, and occasionally appalling. 


-- 
birgit kellner
department for indian philosophy
hiroshima university