Empire of “Hope”: Ideal and Reality of Greater East Asia in the Imperial War Films

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

This panel will discuss on the cinematic representation of Greater East Asia, a transnational concept that became the ideological basis of imperial Japan, through investigation of war films from World War II period. The “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere”, as propagandized by Japanese militarists, suggested to the people in the “Sphere” a hopeful vision of empire to be liberated from the West and achieve co-prosperity under Tennō. Cinema became one of the primary media for disseminating this idea around the empire to construct “Greater East Asian Film Sphere”, as Michael Baskett mentioned in Attractive Empire (2008). The concept however is infiltrated with contradictory aspects; while legitimized by “Pan-Asianism” of Japan and espoused by some of the fellow Asian peoples, it also concealed the cruelty and agony of war on the pretext of establishing the sphere.
By delving into that complicated history, where notions of the imperial center and peripheral collide in the form of visual representation, this panel aims to elucidate the multifaceted nature of Greater East Asia caught between its ideal and reality, the legacy of which still leaves its trace in the region. Firstly, Dogase’s paper raises an issue of reality in war films by questioning the realism of spectacles. While Natori explores a possibility of gender subversion in the image of racial contact, Ham examines the rupture of empire through colonial perspective. Joo lastly investigates the view from “within” towards the peripheral through the eyes of a Japanese filmmaker.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing-Diaspora

Session Organizer

• Woojeong Joo, Nagoya University

Chair

• Woojeong Joo, Nagoya University

Individual Presentations

• Concealing with Sunshine: Audio-visual Displacements of Violence in Pre-war Japanese Military Films - Masato Dogase, Chubu University

• Binary Hope of Imperial Japan: Abe Yutaka’s The Dawn of Freedom - Masakazu Natori, Nagoya University

• The Dispersed Desire for “Greater East Asia” and the Divided Perspectives of “Empire” in Colonial Joseon Cinema: In the Case of You and Me (1941) - Chung-beom Ham, Hanyang University

• A Vision of an Imperial Soldier: Ozu Yasujiro at the Chinese Front - Woojeong Joo, Nagoya University