Cosmopolitan Dream, Colonial Hegemony: The Manchurian Motion Picture Corporation and the Production of My Nightingale (1943)

• In Event: 3449 - Historicizing Concepts: Cosmopolitanism, Legitimacy, and Intellectual Property

Abstract

This research contributes to the emerging sociological studies on cosmopolitanism by presenting a historical and institutional analysis of the production (and to a lesser extent reception) of an arguably “cosmopolitan” film, My Nightingale (Watashi no uguisu, dir. Shimazu Yasujiro, 1943), produced at the height of Japan’s ethnic-nationalist period during WWII. I ask the following three research questions: 1) Which aspects, if any, of the film text entail cosmopolitanism?; 2) How and why did the possibly cosmopolitan aspects of the film text emerge under the existence of ethnic-nationalist policies, institutions, attitudes, and behavior in the Japanese colonial empire?; 3) What implications does this case study have on the ongoing debate on cosmopolitanism? By providing answers to these questions, I argue that ahistorical, normative call for cosmopolitanism hinders our grasp of a possibility that some claims to cosmopolitanism may entail the rationality of narrow ethnocentric nationalism. As a historical hindsight, it is easy to dismiss Manchuria’s slogan of gozoku kyōwa (peaceful co-existence of the five nationalities) and ōdo rakudo (heavenly place of virtuous rule) as simple political propaganda. But it may also be the case that this apparently cosmopolitan justification might have strengthened the repressiveness and discrimination of the Japanese colonial rule in Manchuria. In other words, I contend that the case study of the Manchurian Motion Picture Corporation and the production of My Nightingale suggests the possible co-existence of cosmopolitanism and hegemony.

Author

• Seio Nakajima, Waseda University