Mainichi's Review of PRIDE

[Mark Schilling]

From: Mark Schilling (schill at gol.com0
To:  KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Date: 5/23/97

Here, for the curious, is my Japan Times review of "Pride," which will
appear in the Tuesday, May 26 edition. 

      Most Japanese movies slip in and out of the theaters while
registering barely a blip on the mental radar screen of the local foreign
community. I wish I had Y100 for every glazed look I've encountered when I
mention "Mononoke Hime" (The Princess Mononoke), the Hayao Miyazaki
animation that shattered all Japanese box office records last year -- I
could buy a ticket to "Titanic," which recently surpassed it as Japan's
biggest-ever box office winner.
      One recent Japanese film, however, is getting the plenty of attention
from outlanders -- nearly all of it negative. That film is "Pride -- Unmei
no Toki" (Pride -- The Fatal Moment), a biopic that focuses on the wartime
career and subsequent war crimes trial of former prime minister Hideki
Tojo. When I first heard about the production of the film, underwritten by
a home developer whose chairman is a notorious rightist, I thought it was
sick joke, comparable to an aging German industrialist with neo-Nazi
sympathies financing a Broadway revival of "Springtime for Hitler" 
      But no, the makers of "Pride" are in deadly earnest and, far from
being a cheap whitewash, their film is a lavish big-budget production with
elaborately realistic period sets (including the gallows from which Toho
and his six fellow war criminals swung), location scenes shot in India with
thousands of extras, and an all-star cast headed by Masahiko Tsugawa,  who
pulls out all stops as Tojo. This formidably gifted veteran, who is best
known abroad for his work in the comedies of Juzo Itami, also bears a
strong physical resemblance to the late wartime leader and has gone on the
promo campaign trail to plump for the film's historical accuracy, while
excoriating his countrymen for losing their Yamato damashi (Japanese
spirit) and forgetting Bushido (the way of the samurai). Clearly for
Tsugawa, as well as for director Shunya Ito and others involved in the
production, "Pride" is not a straight soul-for-cash deal with the devil,
but a labor of conviction, even love. 
       What is that conviction? To put it simply, it is that, far from
being the horned arch-demon of Allied wartime propaganda, Tojo was a
staunch patriot, able leader and warm-hearted family man who personified
the samurai spirit of loyalty and self-sacrifice. Meanwhile, the film
presents the Tokyo Trial, at which an international panel of judges heard
the cases of 28  defendants charged with war crimes, as a little more than
vehicle for victor's revenge, whose death sentence for Tojo was a foregone
conclusion. It also makes the claim that Japan was fighting, not for its
own aggrandizement, but to free the subject peoples of Asia, particularly
Indians, from the yoke of their white colonial masters.  
      Though I sat through "Tokyo Saiban" (Tokyo Trial), Masaki Kobayashi's
exhaustive, if exhausting,  four-and-a-hour 1983 documentary, I cannot
claim to be an expert on either Tojo or his trial. What I can say, after
rummaging through yellowed clips and poking about World War II tomes to
refresh my memory, is that the film is not totally off the mark. Tojo did
have more than a few admirable qualities, including a rock-solid integrity
of a kind in short supply among today's bureaucrats and politicians, and a
razor-sharp mind that tore many of his prosecutors' ill-informed arguments
to shreds. Also, the film's portrayal of his trial is, as far it goes,
faithfully follows the outline of the historical record, including the
refusal of GHQ authorities to permit publication of the minority opinion of
Indian jurist Rabhabinod Pal, the only judge to find the defendants
innocent of all charges (and who is, not incidentally, the film's sole
non-Japanese hero).  
      "Pride" is not content, however, to correct errors and distortions
that have crystallized, over the decades, into received opinion. Instead,
it presents a one-sided view of its hero and his deeds that may have many
cinematic precedents -- the Japanese film industry has been releasing
nationalistic war films for decades -- but goes beyond most in its
unapologetic revisionism. Given that growing numbers of Japanese are
subscribing to that revisionism, thanks in part to Ministry of Education
censorship that has made proper instruction in World War II history all but
impossible, "Pride" is a film that deserves serious attention, not casual
dismissal. 
      One could take issue with the way the film massages its depictions of
events to fit its particular mold. More important, however, are its glaring
omissions. The film presents Tojo as the embodiment of traditional Japanese
virtue, who stoically undermines his own defense to save his Emperor. We
never see the blinkered, rigid ultranationalist who failed to fully
calculate the costs of the war or the chances of success, to the grief of
millions. 
       It portrays chief prosecutor Joseph Keenan as an arrogant, ignorant,
politically motivated score settler whose case against Tojo depended on
fragmentary anecdotes and baseless insinuations. It conveniently omits
testimony by prosecution witnesses, including eyewitnesses to the Rape of
Nanjing, that offered irrefutable evidence of Japanese aggression and
brutality. 
      It gives us scenes of pure-hearted Japanese soldiers and their Indian
allies, led by Subhas Chandras Bose, advancing gloriously against the
British imperialists on the India-Burma border in 1944. It does not show us
the outcome: confused retreat, despite direct orders from Tokyo to hold
ground, followed by disease, suicide, and a complete breakdown in
discipline. It also does not present the fruits of Japanese "liberation" in
Asia -- a hatred and distrust of Japan that endures among survivors and
their descendants to this day. 
      What is really needed to counter "Pride," however, is not outraged
reviews in English-language newspapers, but a film that presents the whole
truth about Tojo and his co-defendants, that effectively revises the
revisionists. But who would finance it and film it, especially to the tune
of "Pride"'s Y1.5 billion? Hard to imagine anyone being so foolish, isn't?.
There's a market for "Pride," but not a nation's shame.  




----------
> From: Peter B. High <j45843a at nucc.cc.nagoya-u.ac.jp>
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Re: Mainichi's Review of PRIDE
> Date: Friday, May 22, 1998 10:11 PM
> 
>  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:
> 
>
****************************************************************************
*********
>                 "'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.
>
****************************************************************************
*****
> 
> 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