支那の夜(China Nights) and Political complexity

支那の夜China Nights:

China nights is a Japanese film released in 1940 by the Manchurian Film Company, directed by Osamu Fushimizu. There are two main characters in this film: Keiran, played by Ri Koran and Hase, played by Haesegawa Kazuo from the Toho Film Company. The main story is about a war time orphan from China, Keiran was helped by a warm hearted Japanese sailor Hase and the love stories that later happened between them. At first, Keiran refused to stay in Hase’s house and hated Japanese, but there was an interesting transition of Keiran’s attitude toward Hase, which led to a love crush on him. Even though everything seemed fine and they got married when they confirmed each others’ willing, it was the war that separated them again. At the end of the movie, because Keiran thought that Hase was already dead on the sea, she intended to commit a suicide and walked into the river. At the same time, Hase showed up and it looked like he ended up just being injured. Then the movie ended in the scene that they were sitting on a little boat traveling through the bridge on the river with back ground theme song “China nights” by Ri Koran.

Speaking of the historical context of this film, I want to mention the second Sino-Japan war in WWII. In 1937, Japan captured Beijing after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, this was also the time point where Japan showed their desire to invade all of China. Then the Mukden Incident happened in 1931, and after that Japan took control of the northeastern three provinces of China and named them Manchuria. By 1939, the war reached a stalemate since Japan couldn't breach the middle part of China because of the precipitous topography. Then on December 7, 1941, Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. 1940 is just in the middle of the war between China and Japan. 

Political Complexity:

This film is not only a simple love story between Japanese and Chinese but a more political propaganda during war time by Japan. The story happened in Shanghai under Japan’s domination.  Even though in this film, Hase and his families were portrayed as friendly and human emotional  contrasting Keiran’s emotion of unfriendly and hate, it was understandable because of that Keiran’s tragedy was caused by Japanese. Her pride couldn't accept a Japanese to have pity on her. The interesting transition happened after Hase slapping on her face. This scene is powerful both on the sense of turning the attitude of Keiran and the sense of implying political massages. Some will argue that this movie is showing Japanese’s “friendship” and their desire of peace. However, on the other side, I think this scene shows Japan’s highest “power” upon China. First of all, in this situation, Keiran was the one who was hurt by Japan’s invasion and stood for the weakness, but Hase slapped her just because she was obeying him. The interesting point is that after Hase slapped her, he seemed really regret and told Keiran to go anywhere she wants. The fact is that there was nowhere that Keiran could go. In the earlier scene where Keiran thought about her families, we can see from the back ground that all buildings were ruined by the war, so did her family. Thus she bagged for forgiveness, holding Hase’s hand and kneeling on the floor. For me this scene is really an irony of Japanese domination of China and political excuse on the war. 

But if we view this film only through the lenses of art of film making, this film is outstanding in showing surrounding environments of characters such as the scene when Keiran was thinking about her family and the reunion scene taken at Suzhou at the end of the film.