Know Your Enemy: Japan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Know Your Enemy: Japan is an American propaganda film produced on behalf of the U.S. War Department in 1945 as a training film for American soldiers preparing to fight in the Pacific during World War II.
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[edit] History
Just after the war started, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall asked director Frank Capra to produce a series of documentary films to be used during orientation of American soldiers. Capra at first tried to resist, pointing out that he didn’t have any experience in documentaries. Marshall replied, “Capra, I have never been Chief of Staff before. Thousands of young Americans have never had their legs shot off before. Boys are commanding ships today, who a year ago had never seen the ocean before.” Capra apologized to Marshall, and promised to make “the best damned documentary film ever made.”
The series of propaganda films was titled "Why We Fight," and became mandatory viewing material for millions of soldiers. President Franklin Roosevelt thought so highly of the films that he recommended they be shown to the general public. They were, and the first film in the series, “Prelude to War,” won an Academy Award in 1942 for best documentary.
"Know Your Enemy: Japan" was released after the rest of the “Why We Fight” films, on August 9, 1945, which was the day Nagasaki was bombed. The film was taken out of circulation at the end of the month, just weeks after the Japanese surrender, and it wasn’t released again until the 1970’s.
[edit] Purpose
The hour-long film sought to educate American soldiers about their adversary's history and society, particularly the course up to the Pacific War, and the totalitarian nature of the Japanese state. Today, it’s used to show the influence of images and sound over narration, and the portrayal of the Japanese people during World War II.
[edit] Film Summary
Japanese citizens are portrayed as fanatical and brainwashed. Children are raised from a very young age to be soldiers, which was thought to be the “highest human achievement” in Japanese society. Soldiers preferred death over surrender, because they believed soldiers that died in battle became warrior gods.
The film also portrays the Japanese as a formidable foe, who will do anything to achieve world domination. The soldiers are also described as remarkably similar in appearance, “as alike as photographic prints off the same negative.”
The film goes into detail about the Japanese national religion, Shintoism. According to their religion, the Japanese believed that the emperor was a direct descendant of the gods, as was Jimmu, Japan’s first emperor.
Jimmu was credited with the idea of “hakko ichiu,” or that the Japanese should control “the eight corners of the world under one roof,” which, according to the film, was Japan’s national ambition.
Japanese history is then summarized up to the 17th century stating, incorrectly, that the emperor was just a figurehead all this time and that there was a series of civil wars from the late first millennium until the Meiji Restoration. Emphasis is put on the earlier development of Christianity in this period, contrasting it to the supposedly always brutal nature of Japanese society. Christianity is given as the reason for Japan’s isolation between the 17th and mid-19th centuries.
According to the film, Baron Tanaka made a “secret blueprint” for the emperor in 1927, detailing how Japan should take over the world. First it would attack Manchuria, then China and Siberia, followed by Malaysia and the East Indies. Last was the United States, and the baron believed that once the U.S. fell, the rest of the world would fall also.
