Ri Ko Ran sympo, etc.

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

Thanks to David for responding and offering his impressions of the 
symposium.  Anyone else?

>I was there and enjoyed the presentations very much. I'm a little confused 
>by Aaron's comment about Ri Ko Ran's "culpability." Exactly what is she 
>supposed to be culpable of? It hardly seems fair to blame an actress under 
>contract for the quality and nature of the scripts she is assigned, and also 
>seems unfair to blame any person for having patriotic feelings during 
>wartime. 

Sorry about my far too terse a summary, which was a product of lack of 
time.  But culpability, or "responsibility" (sekinin), is one of the 
major intellectual issues when discussing the wartime activities of 
cultural figures.  As we all know, the denial of responsibility for the 
war is one of the major clouds hanging over postwar Japanese history and 
still has its effects.  Some, like Takahashi Tetsuya, argue that the 
current inability of politicians and bureaucrats to take responsibility 
for their actions is in some ways an after affect of this denial.  Simply 
put, far too many people used such excuses as "I was just following 
orders," or "I was just under contract" to deny their part in the 
collective march toward war.  Some brave figures like Itamu Mansaku made 
it clear immediately after the war that this was no excuse and that all 
in the film industry were especially guilty for causing and perpetuating 
the war because of the cultural influence of the medium.  Few, however, 
were willing to speak as honestly as Itami.  

Yomota's narrative about Ri Ko Ran and Hara Setsuko includes a contrast 
over this point.  While Yamaguchi Yoshiko later criticized her own role 
in the Manshu propeganda machine, going on to defend the case of the 
Palestinians (which she has likened to that of Chinese in Manshu) and the 
comfort woman, Hara, who travelled to Nazi Germany and appeared in many 
wartime propeganda films, "suddenly" switched to becoming the "goddess of 
postwar democracy" in 1945, without any self-questioning of her own role.

My raising of the issue of "culpability" was in part just a quotation of 
comments made by audience members I talked to.  Especially given that Ri 
Ko Ran, who went to a girls school in Beijing hiding her Japanese birth, 
and was exposed there to intense Communist/Nationalist debates over 
resisting the Japanese, one wonders about her decision to eventually join 
the Japanese propeganda machine.

>As for her postwar work as "conquered by American males," is that 
>the only possible reading? I haven't seen Navy Wife, but I think there is 
>more dignity in J. War Bride than that one phrase allows.

This was just paraphrasing Yomota, though I could have done it better.  
But in some ways the pattern remains.  In the Toho films with Hasegawa 
Kazuo, she is the resistant Chinese girl who is eventually won over by 
the kindness and justness of the Japanese male, thus proving the 
legitimacy of the Japanese cause.  In the postwar American films, her 
union with an American male served to confirm American views about the 
justness of their cause in Japan.  The repetition of this pattern 
deserves more consideration.

Aaron Gerow