It was speculated to be a status mission for Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, a strategy to persuade their folks – and the world at giant – that the newly signed Anti-Comintern Pact was greater than empty phrases. To show that each nations had been certainly Brüdervölker (brother nations), a German and a Japanese filmmaker would collectively create a movie displaying how the 2 nations aligned politically and culturally. So, in 1936, a German crew landed in Yokohama able to make cinema historical past.
The movie can be referred to as Die Tochter des Samurai (‘The Daughter of the Samurai’) and would characteristic a love triangle between a Japanese man, Teruo (the favored actor Kosugi Isamu), his fiancée Mitsuko (Hara Setsuko, who would go on to turn out to be Japan’s most celebrated movie star), and his German lover Gerda (Ruth Eweler). The plot was easy: Teruo returns to Japan after being educated in Germany, his head crammed with fashionable concepts – and Gerda. In Japan he should reconnect along with his Volk (folks), roots, and sense of responsibility, reject Gerda, and discover his manner again to Mitsuko. It ends with Teruo and Mitsuko married with a younger little one as settlers farming in Manchuria, China, whereas a Japanese soldier watches over them.
Germany despatched the filmmaker Arnold Fanck (1889-1974) to Japan on the request of the influential producers Kawakita Nagamasa and Kawakita Kashiko. That they had picked Fanck due to his mountain and sports activities movies, which celebrated proto-fascist ideology by focussing on grandiose nature pictures and heroic exploits. His Japanese counterpart was Itami Mansaku (1900-46), who, in distinction, was a satirical, left-wing filmmaker with a penchant for rigorously crafted psychological portraits and subversive critiques of authority. Fanck selected Mansaku based mostly on his work in interval movies, seemingly unaware of his politics. Itami rejected the provide to work with him thrice earlier than agreeing, probably underneath studio strain or tempted by the prospect to work on a world movie. The 2 males proved to be profoundly mismatched, and their arguments got here to a head when Itami ultimately refused to point out up on set. As an alternative of abandoning the mission, nonetheless, the filmmakers break up and created two movies, utilizing the identical units, actors, and comparable plotlines: The Daughter of the Samurai, shot by Fanck, and The New Earth by Itami had been each launched in 1937.
These movies reveal the conflict between Nazi Germany’s depiction of Japan and Japan’s battle to claim its self-image. Fanck was eager to introduce what he noticed as ‘conventional Japanese tradition’ to his German viewers by together with a medley of Japanese actions and stereotypes, resembling numerous pictures of Mount Fuji, cherry blossom, girls in kimono, a sumō match, and ikebana flower arranging. He additionally nearly completely prevented metropolis scenes, as an alternative focussing on lengthy, aesthetically pleasing pictures of nature. Usually offered with out context or plot relevance, they idealised Japan as a pre-modern, nearly magical place, avoiding its fashionable navy and financial energy. Itami, in distinction, depicted manufacturing facility employees and farmers and pictures of Yokohama and Tokyo, presenting Japan as a contemporary, industrialised state. He additionally purged any point out of Germany from his movie, making Gerda American and changing the Swastika flag that Fanck used liberally with varied worldwide flags, probably to create extra distance from Fanck’s mission, or to enchantment to a world viewers.
But, regardless of these variations, comparable themes run via each movies. Considered one of them is the Volk-ohne-Raum (folks with out house) trope, a central theme in Nazi propaganda that claimed that, following the Treaty of Versailles, the German folks didn’t have sufficient house to reside and develop and needed to broaden to the East. The ideology was intently tied to the thought of bäuerliche Tugenden (peasant virtues) and the sacredness of soil, a frequent topic of Nazi propaganda movies resembling Schimmelreiter (1934), Ein Volksfeind (1937), and Opfergang (1944).
Whereas the Volk-ohne-Raum trope is usually understood as German, Japanese thinkers additionally took it up. By the Thirties it was used to rationalise Japan’s growth into Manchuria and past. Numerous characters all through each movies categorical the priority that, though Japanese soil is sweet, it isn’t sufficient to feed the Volk (minzoku). Teruo explains to Gerda that Manchuria has fertile soil, however no person with the data to domesticate it; Teruo’s father tells him that there’s not sufficient house in Japan and that the Japanese soil can not feed the folks.
Although Itami pushed again towards Fanck’s orientalising depictions of cherry blossoms and Geisha, he advocated for Japanese imperialism in China. All through The New Earth, Manchuria seems devoid of individuals, with its fields, constructing websites, fashionable cities, and streets utterly abandoned – completely appropriate for Japanese resettlement.
Within the model of Fanck’s movie that circulated in Germany, all references to Manchuria had been minimize following a criticism by the Chinese language ambassador in Berlin. The scenes depicting Manchuria remained, however the movie not talked about a particular locale as, by 1937, Nazi Germany had not determined whether or not Japan or China can be the extra fascinating ally.
The Axis nations confirmed nearly absolute religion within the energy of movie, exemplified by the various propaganda movies they produced. For a joint Japanese-German propaganda movie to work, nonetheless, it have to be made first. By displaying their incapability to cooperate, Fanck and Itami unwittingly mirrored the alliance between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and demonstrated the impossibility of making a transnational fascist tradition. Regardless of many claims on the contrary from each side, Japan and Germany’s political partnership was little greater than hole lip service. All sides added secret amendments to their treaties and solid clandestine alliances, resembling Japan’s secret safety protocol within the 1936 Comintern Pact and Germany’s Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviets in 1939. Nevertheless, though the 2 nations had been unwilling to collaborate meaningfully, even on one thing as comparatively easy as a joint movie, they had been blissful to make use of the identical doctrine and means to carve up the world between them. In the end, the ideologies underpinning The Daughter of the Samurai and The New Earth – an aggressive push for growth, racial superiority, and unrestrained militarism – ensured each nations’ destruction.
Christin Bohnke has a PhD in cultural historical past from the College of Toronto with a deal with German-Japanese imperialism.
