Melting Pot Cinema Part XXX - Japan's Anti-Espionage Campaign

Documentary film-making in Japan, as the case of America during the outbreak of the second World War was a somewhat under-developed area in their brand of cinema. Like the Americans, the Japanese called on their domestic directors to service propaganda requirements. Japan's output of militaristic films was prodigious in the years immediately preceding the global conflict, but these were dramatic introductions rather than bona fide documentaries. Themes were grandiose, heroic and the films made strong appeals to the concept of duty, allocating little stress on the issues at hand and never so much as questioning the true rectitude of Japan's position. These films did manage to veer from the super-heroism of their German counterparts, preferring to depict 'ordinary' fighting men and not shirking the unpleasant realities of death and distress. Earlier, the focus was on the fifth columnists and their code-breaking prowess.

Japanese war films had their own signature; gratuitous use of tracking shots, highly mobile camerawork, striking compositions and grainy images that added a touch of realism to battle scenes. The enemy was almost always unseen and Japanese fighting units often appeared to be operating in a vacuum. 

Tasaka takes on the Sino-Japanese War with 1939's Gonin no Sekkojei

There were few shots of close combat and much use of long-distance panoramic camerawork that gave an impression of victorious advances. In contrast to American techniques, Japanese war films had an affinity for depersonalizing the war to a point which deeply impressed director Frank Capra who went on record with the rebuttal 'We can't beat this kind of thing.'

Tasaka singing his Victory Song, front line, stage left.

Strongly representative of these characteristics were the films of Tomotaka Tasaka (1902-74), notably his fictional and somewhat ambiguous accounts of the Sino-Japanese war with 1939's Gonin no Sekkojei (Five Scouts) and Tsuchi to heitai (Mud And Soldiers), released the same year. Later on in the war, Tasaka reverted to a more conventional format, turning out Kaigun Navy (1943), a depiction of military training in a camp setting.