Mainichi's Review of PRIDE

[Peter B. High]

 PRIDE, the Toei film which apparently sings the praises of wartime leader Tojo Hideki 
(unfortunately I haven't seen it yet), has come up for discussion several times so 
far. In today's (5/22) Mainichi Shimbun (evening edition) it was reviewed by critic 
Nojima Koichi and I thought readers would be interested to see an example of how the 
Japanese media views this film/phenomenon. Roughly translated, Nojima writes:

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                "'PRIDE'--AN UNDENIABLE SENSE OF AWKWARDNESS"
 Even before its release, PRIDE came under attack from both the Chinese press and  
Toei's own trade union. Of course this is because it has former PM and Class A War   
Criminal Tojo Hideki, probably the most widely-reviled Japanese individual ever, as 
its main character.  The film itself features a scene in which Tojo's grandson is 
forced to stand in front of his elementary school teacher and hear his grandfather 
condemned as "worse than a thief." Not only did Tojo pull Japan into a miserable, 
losing war, he failed to die when he shot himself in a suicide attempt. 
 Clearly the purpose of the movie is to use the Tojo story to shore up the opinion 
that "Japan was not the only villain of the war." 
 The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, in which the Allied forces try the Class A War Criminals, 
dominates the film. Before seeing the film, I wondered why the filmmakers felt it 
necessary to dramatically re-enact the trial, since we already have so much 
documentary footage available and since Kobayashi Masaki's feature-length documentary, 
THE TOKYO WAR CRIMES TRIAL [1983.see Note A below], gives us such a detailed account. 
As it turns out, the trial comes across as a far more powerful sense of drama than we 
get from [Kobayashi's] carefully edited documentary footage. 
 Scott Wilson, as Prosecutor Kenan, puts in a very convincing performance, as does     
Tsugawa Masahiko as Tojo. Kenan asks Tojo, "Do you think that what you did was right?" 
to which the defendant replies, "Most certainly." Next Kenan demands, "And would you 
do it again if you are acquitted?" The highpoint of the film is where he thunders this 
line.
 Still, taken as a whole, the film gives a certain sense of awkwardness. This probably 
comes from the maladroit attempt to intertwine the themes of the Indian independence 
movement [see Note B] and the Trials itself. Apparently the original plan was to  
focus on the independence movement and it was the director, Ito Toshiya's idea to 
incorporate the Trials. As it turns out, the center of the film has shifted to the 
trial, and the Indian independence motif gets enveloped in a mist. It probably would 
have been better boldly to sieze on the Trials as the film's only subject. That way, 
it could have delved more deeply into the issue of Prosecutor Kenan.
 Throughout the trial Tojo maintains a combative stance. When the issue of the Nanjing 
Massacre is raised, he responds, "It is inconceivable that the Imperial Army could 
have carried out such an act." Thus, in this way, the film presents in a very straight 
manner Tojo's own viewpoint. In ordeer to get a more balanced fix on the latter issue, 
viewers might do well to see NANJING 1937.  
 The film is two hours and forty-one minutes in length.
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Note A:  Kobayashi apparently took quite a number of years to work his documentary 
material into a sort of private "thesis" film concerning ther Trials. The point he 
makes is that they were an emotionalized farce in which very little in the way of 
"actual war crimes" was proven. Personally, I was shocked by his bold intercutting of 
footage from the My Lai massacre and of the atomic bombings to demonstrate that 
America was just as "guilty" as Japan. While I agreed that the A-bombing was a serious 
mistake and American actions in Vietnam utterly reprehensible, I felt that Kobayashi 
was consciously attempting to obscure the issues of the Trials and to create an 
apologia for wartime Japan. Just a year before Kobayashi's film came out, 
psychologist/pop essayist Kishida Shu published his famous collection of essays, 
Monogusa Seishin Bunseki, where in one essay he roundly condemns the Trials in a 
similar manner. In a style of foaming-at-the-mouth with righteous indignation (in many 
way he was a fore-runner of Kobayashi Yoshinori's "goman-ism"), he "psychologically 
analyzes" America as a nation shot through with "giman" (self-deception), a condition  
which causes it to believe that its "rhetoric and idealism" makes it in fact morally 
pure, while in fact, from the days of the Puritan's Pequoit War, it has consistently 
engaged in loathsome, genocidal activities. The Trials, he says, were a perfect 
example of this "giman." He ends his essay with the ringing line, "Until America 
becomes ashamed of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials and until America returns the land it 
has stolen from the Indians, I will never trust an American." The book stayed in print 
until 1991.
 Although Kobayashi's America-phohobic stance is far more muted in THE TOKYO WAR 
CRIMES TRIALS, the underlying logic has close similarities. 

Note B:   The issue of Japan's sympathy with and fostering of the Indian independence 
movement became the subject of a major  film during the Pacific War--Kinugasa 
Teinosuke's ADVANCE, FLAG OF INDEPENDENCE (Susume Dokuritsu Ki, Toho, 1943--available 
unsubtitled on video), a syrupy semi-"spy" drama set in 1939 Japan and featuring 
Hasegawa Kazuo as an Indian independence activist refugeeing in Japan. The character 
he plays expresses awe and adoration for Everything Japanese, looking to Japan as the 
potential savior of his people.  When he is kidnapped from a Tokyo street by the 
nefarious British ambassador (Saito Tatsuo) and held captive in the British embassy, 
he commits suicide.  
 Pro-Japanese real-life  Indian independence leader, Chandra Bose, makes a brief 
appearance in the Toho war documentary MALAYAN WAR RECORD (Maraya Senki,  1942) in the 
section depicting the All-Asian Conference called together in Tokyo by Tojo Hideki.

Peter B. High
Nagoya University

--
Peter B. High
j45843a at nucc.cc.nagoya-u.ac.jp