People's Daily on Pride

Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow onogerow at angel.ne.jp
Sun May 17 08:12:01 EDT 1998


Thanks to David Hopkins for his post on _Pride_.  I agree with him that, 
as consumers, we would be best off ignoring _Pride_, as scholars, there 
are still some issues we might want to pursue further.

The Mainichi this morning ran a rather long special report on the 
controversy.  While covering both sides of the argument, the piece, in 
summarizing the movie, says, "The film, taking the point of view of Tojo, 
emphasizes that Japan was forced into fighting World War Two in order to 
defend itself and to liberate Asia from colonialism, and that the 
treatment of the Nanking Massacre in the Tokyo Trials was based on rumor 
and exaggeration and used by the Allies to censure Japanese militarism."

The film was made for a very large budget of 1,500,000,000 yen to 
commemorate the 30th anniversary of Higashi Nippon Hausu, a housing 
company based on Morioka. HNH paid for 90% of the budget with Toei, which 
is distributing the film, covering only the remaining amount.  HNH's 
former chairman, Nakamura Isao, is the chair of the right-wing political 
party, "Seinen Jiyuto," and started the "Gyokakai" in order to "rethink 
Japanese traditional culture and maintain pride in our history."  The 
film's production committee is headed by the noted right-wing foreign 
policy expert, Kase Hideaki.  The president of HNH, Asano Katsuaki, said 
that "We thought we had a duty to transmit a correct historical 
consciousness and to bring back pride in being Japanese."

However, when Toei's labor union read the script, it declared that the 
film "makes a hero out of Tojo and warps history."  Getting support from 
the industry wide labor union, Eiga Engeki Rodo Kumiai Sorengo, the union 
gained supporters from various fields and launched on April 20th the 
"Society to Criticize the Film Pride" which has called on Toei to cancel 
the release of the film.

Director Ito Shunya has defended himself by saying that "I am neither on 
the right nor the left.  The Tokyo Trials were a continuation of the war 
after the war, and I depicted Tojo from the perspective that he was the 
one who best fought that battle."

The Mainichi underlines in a sidebar that films like _Pride_ are a 
manifestation of the weak position of the film industry.  Despite hits 
last year like _Paradise Lost_ and _Evangelion_, Toei revised its 
projected profits for this year down from 1.8 billion to 800 million yen. 
 In such a state, the industry is more likely to rely on films largely 
paid for by outside sources. Thus Toei released one film last year paid 
for by the dubious religous cult, "Kofuku no Kagaku," and this year 
opened an animated film paid for by the Otani-ha of Jodo Shinshu.  Such 
films make economic sense for Toei: they obtain films for their theaters 
with little risk and often get the producing side to buy up the required 
number of advance tickets.  In the case of _Pride_, HNH bought up 900,000 
advance tickets (which it will presumably sell (or force on) its business 
partners and employees), so that there is absolutely no chance the film 
will not be a box-office success.  (This is another reason to question 
the advance ticket system.)

Aaron Gerow
YNU


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