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Tokyo Tribunal

August 14th, 2006

I noticed that one of the channels on my satellite connection was airing a 5-hour film called Tokyo Saiban (“Tokyo Tribunal”), so I recorded it. Turns out it is a Japanese film produced in 1983. And considering the first ten minutes of it that I’ve watched so far, when it was made goes a long way in explaining what I saw.

This is, ostensibly, a film about the Tokyo Tribunals, hence the name. Trials held after the end of WWII where Japanese military officers were held accountable for war crimes.

So what was in the first ten minutes? Extended footage of the atomic bombings of Japan, with grisly images of the victims, including a dead baby charred black, and piles of skulls (which I’m not even sure were actually associated with the bombings). Images of the bombings of the Japanese mainland and attacks by American forces of Japanese-held islands. Japanese civilians jumping off of cliffs, and American soldiers spraying Japanese in caves with flame-throwers. Kamikaze pilots, but not images of them hitting ships and killing people, rather the planes being shot down, one after another, by American ships, showing the broken, flaming wrecks spiral into the ocean.

Now, this film being about the war tribunals, one might imagine that relevant footage of evidence of Japanese war crimes might make an appearance. But of course not. Not a single image of what Japan did in China, nothing of the Nanjing Massacre, nor of the results of the Japanese “Three Alls” scorched earth policy. Not a single image of the Japanese concentration camps where western prisoners were starved and worked to death. Not one reference to the crimes that were, in fact, the subject matter of the film. The introduction did show images from Burma–of Japanese soldiers who somehow were starved and emaciated.

So the whole introduction was of what the film’s producers clearly felt were American war crimes committed against Japanese. Ten minutes of images of Japanese suffering and dying. And then, switch to: Americans cheering, celebrating, dancing in the streets.

I don’t have time to watch the whole thing today, and after the first ten minutes I’m not sure that I want to, but I’m keeping the recording and will watch it over what time I can make soon.

But the introduction certainly made a clear statement about the intent of the film, in an unmistakable way. Perhaps the filmmakers were nationalists, but it is just as likely not; in the Japanese mass media, certain subjects simply must be presented in certain ways. Another film from Japan, in 1998, titled Pride: The Fateful Moment, centered on the same topic–the war tribunals–in a different way, as a docu-drama focusing on Hideki Tojo. Tojo, of course, is presented as a kind, patriotic family man who is used as a scapegoat by scheming Americans.

The first ten minutes of Tokyo Saiban does very much make the point that, although Americans also whitewash and revise, that Japan does it more starkly and blatantly than just about anybody else. While Americans protest when exhibits of the Enola Gay are shown with photos and descriptions which suggest the bombings themselves may have been wrong, never have I seen anything on the American side so starkly biased as this from the get-go.

Update: I would say it was a coincidence that I found this new series from Yomiuri, but this is the anniversary period for end-of-WWII events, so I suppose there’s no coincidence at all here. The new series asks who is responsible for WWII, which the newspaper has apparently unilaterally decided to call “The Showa War.” Surprisingly, Yomiuri blames Japan itself:

Some conservatives claim that the war against the United States was a “war of self-defense” for Japan. They base their arguments on the United States’ oil embargo and the Hull note of Nov. 26, 1941, which was considered a de facto ultimatum delivered to Japan by U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull shortly before the start of the war. However, the U.S. pressure on Japan to suspend its military advance in China came about, to a large extent, by Japan’s “misjudgment.” Japan in a sense drove itself over the precipice.

The series of 8 articles goes from the start of the Sino-Japanese war to just before the end of the war in the summer of 1945.

It might not be so surprising to see the Yomiuri, long dedicated to furthering nationalistic agendas, pinning the blame for the war on specific Japanese military and civilian leaders, since the owner of the Yomiuri Corp., Tsuneo Watanabe, six months ago announced a change of heart on such issues. With the help of his hamsters.

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