Page 1 of 2 Lost love
over Yasukuni Shrine By David
McNeill
TOKYO - Neo-nationalists have shut
down a Chinese-directed movie about Japan's
controversial war memorial Yasukuni, the latest in
a string of incidents threatening freedom of
expression in Japan.
Its name translates
as "peaceful country", millions have silently
prayed there for an end to wars, and for much of
the year the loudest sound is the buzzing of
insects and the shuffle of old footsteps to the
hushed main hall. Yet Yasukuni Shrine, which
occupies a single square kilometer of central
Tokyo, is one of the most controversial pieces of
real estate in Asia, resented by millions who
consider it a monument to war, empire, and Japan's
unrepentant and undigested militarism.
A
decade ago when Chinese director Li Ying began
filming there
he didn't know what to
make of his mysterious subject either. Today, as
he watches the official Tokyo launch of his
two-hour movie Yasukuni go down in flames
amid death threats and canceled screenings, he
says the shrine symbolizes a "disease of the
spirit" in Japan. "That I haven't been able to
leave this issue alone for the last 10 years means
that I too am suffering," explained the
44-year-old Guangdong native.
"I didn't
really want to make such a difficult film ... so I
must be sick to do it. The point is to look
directly at the disease."
Li's point
appears to have been lost by Japanese
conservatives, who have branded the movie "Chinese
propaganda", and condemned a decision by the
Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan to award Li a
7.5 million yen (US$75,000) grant. In March, the
film's distributors were forced to give a private
preview to 80 lawmakers after weekly tabloids
launched a campaign against the decision to fund
it. With criticism growing along with the threat
of ultra-right-wing violence, four Tokyo cinemas
have pulled out of an official launch on April 12.
Will the documentary ever flicker on Japan's movie
screens? As of April 6, in the wake of the
cancelations, several cinemas have announced they
intend to screen the documentary.
The
campaign against the movie is led by powerful
Liberal Democrat (LDP) lawmaker Inada Tomomi, who
says it is guilty of "political propaganda". "I
felt the movie's ideological message was that
'Yasukuni' was a device to drive people into an
aggressive war", she told the Asahi newspaper
after the screening, but denied she wanted it
banned. "I have no interest in limiting freedom of
expression or restricting the showing of the
movie. My doubt is about the movie's political
intentions."
Inada can be seen in Li's
documentary speaking at the shrine on the 60th
anniversary of Japan's surrender, August 15, 2005.
"We are committed to rebuilding a proud Japan,
where the prime minister can openly worship at
Yasukuni," she tells the crowd. "We will devote
ourselves to speeding the day when the emperor too
can worship here."
Inada is a leading
historical revisionist and right-wing webcaster
Sakura Channel lists her as a supporter of its
movie The Truth of Nanjing, which argues
that the 1937 rape of the old Chinese capital by
Japanese Imperial troops is a lie. She helped lead
a lawsuit against novelist Oe Kenzaburo, who
angered neo-nationalists by writing about the
military's role in forcing civilians to kill
themselves during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.
In this instance, however, the court has
just exonerated Oe. She is a signatory to a now
famous 2007 Washington Post advertisement arguing
that the sexual enslavement of thousands of Asian
women had no basis in fact, and a member of a
parliamentary group fighting against what it sees
as "masochistic" teaching of history in the
nation's high schools.
In a now familiar
pattern, ultra-nationalists who follow in the
shadow of establishment politicians threatened
retribution against anyone who handled the movie.
Anonymous bloggers posted contact details for the
distribution company, the Japan Arts Council, and
every theatre showing it. Anonymous death threats
have been issued against Dragon Films, the company
that produced Yasukuni.
The burying
of Li's film follows a string of similar
incidents. In February, Tokyo's Grand Prince Hotel
New Takanawa canceled a conference by the Japan
Teachers' Union - a popular ultra-right target -
after learning that 100 right-wing sound trucks
turned up to last year's conference venue. The
hotel's decision has been bitterly attacked by
union officials. Fear of intimidation ensures that
there are still no Japan screenings planned for
any of the dozen or so foreign movies made to
commemorate the anniversary of the 1937 Nanjing
Massacre by the Imperial Japanese Army.
Scholars have also lined up to criticize a
government decision that they say effectively
refused to allow Italian scholar Antonio Negri to
enter the country last month. Negri, an
anti-globalization activist and philosopher who
served a prison sentence in Italy on controversial
charges of "insurrection against the state", had
been scheduled to give a series of lectures at the
universities of Tokyo and Kyoto. He was forced to
abruptly cancel his trip after being told he would
need a permit to entry the country.
"My
sense is that we have entered a very dangerous
period for freedom of expression and press freedom
in this country," says Tajima Yasuhiko, a
professor of journalism in Tokyo's Sophia
University. "That is the background to these
cases. The idea that people are entitled to
express different opinions and views is withering.
That should be common sense, whether one is on the
left or the right."
Why was the movie
canned? The cinemas say they were disturbed by
right-wing threats and the possibility of
"trouble", particularly during the first days of
screening. "We very much regret canceling the
documentary but we felt we had no choice after
considering the safety of our customers," explains
Murayama Yaseyuki, a spokesman for Q-AX Cinema in
Shibuya. But director Li rejects these claims and
says only political pressure explains the sudden
decision by all four Tokyo cinemas to pull the
plug.
"Before the movie was released I
visited the theaters and talked to the managers,"
he says on the phone from China. "Some magazines
had already started discussing the movie, so we
knew that there would be some protests. There was
a very strong sense among everyone then of wanting
to put this movie out and challenge the
protesters. So why have they all suddenly changed
their mind? I can only conclude that pressure was
exerted behind the scenes."
Japan has been
here many times before. Few Japanese have seen
Matsui Minoru's 2001 movie Japanese Devils,
or Paul Schrader's 1985 art-house cinematic
tribute to Yukio Mishima because of right-wing
protests. How many Japanese viewers will ever see
the dozen or so movies made to commemorate the
1937 Nanjing Massacre over the past two years in
Europe, North America and China? The pattern is
often the same: the movies pick at the scabs of
Japan's war history, conservative politicians
express "concern" and the ultra-right goes into
battle because, well, that's what they do.
"Politicians know that when they make
pronouncements about these issues that we will
take action," says Takahashi Yoshisada, who heads
a Tokyo-based ultra-nationalist group. Like most
other ultra-nationalists, including the group that
first spooked the Ginza Cinepathos movie theater
with a visit in March, Takahashi has not seen
Yasukuni, only heard about it from people
like Inada. "They talk, we protest. They know this
because it has happened many times in the past. In
that sense, I think the politicians are using us."
In a recent press conference to foreign
reporters in Tokyo, Councilor Inada defended her
criticism of Li's movie. "Wouldn't China have a
problem if a Japanese company [funded by tax
money] in China created a film conveying the
message of the Dalai Lama?" But the comparison is
rejected by Professor Tajima. "Liberal democratic
nations are not afraid of some criticism.
Expecting everyone to just cheer on the country
and cooperate with the government is more like
North Korea or the situation in Tibet."
Speaking at the Foreign Press Club,
veteran Japan commentator and Keizai University
professor Andrew Horvat said the debate about Li's
movie worried Japan's friends as much as its
enemies. "I'm afraid that Japan's reputation as a
democratic country will come under scrutiny." But
conservatives have cheered the cancelation of the
screenings. "Our tax money should be not spent to
support a film that expresses an anti-Japan
ideology," wrote one right-wing blogger. "This is
just common sense."
The controversy over
the Yasukuni Shrine is not difficult to
understand. Among the 2.46 million war dead
commemorated there, there are over 1,000 war
criminals, including the men who led Japan's
brutal pillage of Asia. A museum on the shrine's
grounds audaciously rewrites history: teenage
suicide bombers (kamikaze) are heroes,
America is the enemy and the emperor, supposedly
reduced to mortal status after World War II, is
still a deity. The Shinto officials who run the
shrine believe they are protecting the "soul of
Japan".
Li's cinematic gaze is
unflinching, and sometimes disturbing. In one
scene, filmed on the 60th anniversary of Japan's
World War II surrender, August 15, 2005, two young
anti-Yasukuni protesters are beaten and chased
from the shrine's grounds by right-wingers who
yell at them to "go back to China". The
protesters, who are Japanese, are later hauled off
by the police. Archive shots show Japanese
soldiers using Yasukuni swords, forged in the
grounds from 1933-1945, to decapitate Chinese
victims.
But much of the movie, which is
narration free, unobtrusively explores the
conflicting sentiments provoked by the memorial
among ordinary Japanese: from the two older women
who recall the battlefield deaths of relatives and
who want the prime minister to pay his respects,
to the Buddhist priest who resents the fact that
his father's soul has been enshrined there against
his will. The movie is hinged around the work of
the shrine's last remaining sword-maker, Kariya
Naoji, a gentle craftsman who offers few insights
into how he helped forge the 8,100 swords that
ended up on the battlefield.
Li, who moved
to Tokyo in 1989 and speaks fluent Japanese,
rejects claims that he is anti-Japanese and
describes his movie as a "love letter" to the
Japanese people. "I live in Japan. How could
something that is anti-Japanese be good for me,
personally? This love letter may be hard to watch,
but that's the form my love takes." He says he was
motivated to start making the movie a decade ago
by the shock of listening to Japanese revisionists
at a conference on the Nanjing Massacre. "When it
comes to history, there's a gap that's so large."
Interview with Li Ying John
Junkerman, an American documentary filmmaker based
in Tokyo, interviews the Li Ying, the Chinese
director of the two-hour documentary
Yasukuni
(Note: This
interview was conducted on March 10, several weeks
before theaters in Tokyo decided to cancel their
screening of the film.)
John
Junkerman: Who is the Diet member who has
raised objections to the film?
Li
Ying: Inada Tomomi is a very famous
lawyer. She was involved in the court case over
the "Hyakunin-giri" affair [the 1937 contest
between two Japanese officers to be the first to
behead 100 Chinese] and in the suit against Oe
Kenzaburo, regarding mass suicides in Okinawa.
She's got very powerful backers. An ordinary Diet
member would not be able to get the Agency for
Cultural Affairs to take action. So it's
intimidating. And now she's influencing people
around her. It's a month until the film opens, and
she can make things difficult for us. We don't
really care if she threatens us personally, we're
prepared for that, but it's the theaters we're
worried about.
The theaters are taking out
insurance, increasing security. And the other
concern is that people who appear in the film
might be threatened. The other day I met with
Kariya Naoji [the Yasukuni swordsmith featured in
the film] and he mentioned that he'd seen reports
that it was an anti-Japanese film. He doesn't
think so himself, but it could be a problem if he
hears that from other people.
JJ: What motivated you to
breach the taboo and make a film about Yasukuni?
Yasukuni and the Nanjing
Massacre LY: It was Nanking.
Some years ago, I was thinking about making a film
on Nanking. In speaking with Japanese, of course
there is always a gap in the perception of
history. And the gap surrounding Nanking is the
widest. So I was interested in Nanking and in 1997
I attended a symposium at Kudan Kaikan in Tokyo on
the 60th anniversary of Nanking. The first event
of the symposium was the screening of a
documentary about Nanking. It was a propaganda
film produced by the Japanese military, and of
course it didn't touch on the massacre at all.
There was a scene of the formal ceremony of the
Japanese military entering the city. And something
happened that I couldn't believe. The audience
applauded, very loudly. It was a shock. It left me
shaking. I couldn't believe it. I felt like I was
standing on a battlefield.
It was a shock
to experience such a scene, here in Japan so many
years after the war. It's unthinkable, that people
still feel a sense of honor and pride toward such
a scene. This is not simply a typical right-wing
problem. It far surpassed what I understood to be
the right wing. Kudan Kaikan is a fancy venue, and
there were more than a thousand people, all
wearing suits and ties. University of Tokyo
professors, members of the Atarashii Kyokasho o
Tsukuru Kai [Japanese Society for History Textbook
Reform]. There are those in Japan who have
documented the massacre, and there are those who
deny it. It was the deniers who were participating
in this symposium. And what is their position?
They dismiss the testimony of those who were in
Nanking, and argue instead that the massacre never
happened. There's no possibility of discussing it
with them.
At the symposium, the daughter
of one of the officers who engaged in the
beheading contest appealed for the restoration of
her father's honor, that he be treated not as a
war criminal but as a heroic soul in Yasukuni. So
that made me wonder what Yasukuni symbolized, this
sacred space that granted heroic status. This was
an issue that had a greater sense of reality.
Nanking is a historical problem, but to take up an
issue that carries reality, you need to film in
Japan, and that meant filming Yasukuni, to bring
the issue into present reality. Yasukuni feels
very real to me. So I began filming then and
continued for 10 years. I didn't know what kind of
film it would turn out to be. I decided I would
just film every time I went to Yasukuni. As I
filmed I would study and learn more, and figure it
out. That's a very time-consuming process, to
start filming without knowing what kind of film it
will turn out to be. But I had a sense that it
raised very real issues.
JJ:
Did people try to prevent you from filming?
Preventing the filming of
Yasukuni LY: My camera
was taken away, videotape was taken, I was
told
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