Yasukuni documentary suppressed

[Aaron Gerow]

This brewed up when I was in Japan last week. The complaint of the  
LDP lawmakers was that the film had gotten funding from the Bunkacho  
(Agency for Cultural Affairs) through the Geijutsu bunka shinko  
kikin. Apparently a stipulation of the fund, which is the main form  
of government funding for filmmaking in Japan, is that the recipient  
film not take up any political position on an issue. The lawmakers  
said that the film, by using some of the higher statistics for  
Nanking Massacre deaths, etc., was taking a political stance. Other  
politicians who saw the film disagreed and found it rather fair minded.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this.

Aaron

On Mar 18, 2008, at 10:36 PM, wgardne1 at swarthmore.edu wrote:

> There was flap about the film last week as well, when several LDP  
> asked
> for an unusual pre-release screening because they had heard that it  
> might
> have have "anti-Japanese" sentiments. The distributor resisted the  
> request
> at first because of justifiable fears of censorship, but later  
> agreed on
> the condition that the screening be open to all Diet lawmakers. I  
> don't
> know if there were any further developments, though, based on what the
> suspicious LDP'ers saw. (Though the T-Joy decision to pull the film in
> Shinjuku may be related...) Has anyone heard anything more about this
> angle?
>
> Here's the story about the special screening from kyodo News/Japan  
> Times--
> http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080313f4.html
>
> Will
>
> On Tue, March 18, 2008 21:53, Mark Nornes wrote:
>> In Variety, Mark Schilling reports that Toei subsidiary T-Joy has
>> pulled Li Ying's Yasukuni from a scheduled screening in Shinjuku in
>> April. A spokesperson said the picture "has a lot of controversy
>> surrounding it. If an incident occurs it will cause trouble and
>> hardship to the other tenants in the building." It will be  
>> interesting
>> to see if the other theaters lined up follow suit.
>>
>> Markus
>