The End

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

One of the more famous examples of alternative endings is _Shina no yoru_ 
(1940), a film about the love affair between a Chinese woman (Ri Koran) 
and a Japanese naval officer (Hasegawa Kazuo).  According to Richie and 
Anderson (_The Japanese Film_, p. 154), there were different endings made 
for the territories it was going to be shown in: the Japanese ending had 
the two die; the Chinese ending had them marry and life happily ever 
after; and the Southeast Asia ending had the hero miraculously reappear 
after false reports of his death.

One can seek narratalogical reasons for alternative endings, but one most 
also consider ideological ones.

Thus Kurosawa's _Drunken Angel_ was, according to Kyoko Hirano, supposed 
to have a different end (where Mifune's body is carried in a car through 
the black market), but the Occupation censors frowned upon that.

Aaron Gerow
YNU