On the tenth anniversary of the end of World War II, there will be commemorative films and television works in various countries, which reflect the understanding and understanding of the war at different times in various countries, and I am interested in the attitude of our neighbor and the opponent of Japan in World War II.
In 2015, the 70th anniversary of the post-war war, Japan's most iconic work was the TV series "Red Cross – Enlistment Order for Women" launched by TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting Corporation).
Through the war experience of a nurse named Amano Heshidai, the story shows the wartime life and war attitude of ordinary Japanese people.
When Amano was a child, her mother was seriously ill and was saved, and she aspired to become a nurse. When she grew up, she entered the nursing school as she wished, and after graduation, she enlisted in the army and went to the northeast of China to nurse in the battlefield. She remembered her grandfather's teaching: "Chinese and Japanese are all human beings", and also remembered the spirit of the Red Cross taught by the head nurse: no matter the enemy or me, save the life and help the injured.
Amano Heshiro (fourth from left, played by Naoko Matsushima) enlists in the army and travels to Jiamusi, China.
However, she was almost shot by a superior officer for rescuing Chinese anti-Japanese guerrillas. Reality told her that war rejected humanity.
She later married a member of the Pioneer Group and settled in the Northeast. Later in the war, her husband, who was in the army, lost both legs and died in front of her eyes, and her son was separated.
Japan surrendered, the war ended, she still had a country that could not return, was forcibly recruited by the Chinese army, and joined the Northeast Democratic United Army to participate in the Chinese civil war.
In the early 1950s, she returned to Japan and was immediately drafted to work at the Korean War Rear Hospital in Saga, where she accidentally met her long-lost son, who was a prisoner of war of the Chinese Volunteer Army and faced deportation.
The theme of the film is clear: ordinary people do not like and do not need war, but they can only be forced to accept war.
Amano Washidai was drafted into the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army.
The drama has aroused heated discussion in both China and Japan.
Not only because the Japanese film and drama involved the Japanese in the Chinese civil war for the first time, but also surprised that the plot's criticism of militarism was almost ruthless; Chinese surprised that the Japanese had the same critical attitude toward that war as we did. Some people even jokingly called the producer TBS a Japanese adulterer.
In fact, japanese people's reflection and criticism of the war began in the 1950s.
The producers of "Red Cross" are the generation born in the 60s and 70s, which represents the war view of the post-war generation, and I would like to know the attitude of japan's war generation.
In 1954, nine years after the war, China made a war of resistance film "Guerrillas on the Plains", which created a fixed model for telling the story of the War of Resistance in China: the beginning of the low tide, deep into the masses, the people's war, and the end of the high-pitched music - China's victory. This film is a classic of Chinese anti-war films and a model of China's anti-war narrative.
In the same year, the Japanese filmed Twenty-Four Eyes, which is also a classic in the history of Japanese cinema.
Unlike Guerrillas of the Plains, the film does not talk about the war itself, but instead focuses on civilians in the context of the war.
Stills from "Twenty-Four Eyes", Mr. Hisako Oishi and 12 students.
There is a small island in the Seto Inland Sea called Shodoshima, and in 1928, the female teacher Hisako Oishi came to teach at an elementary school on the island, and her students were only 12.
The island is the most nerve ending of the country, and when war comes, the most intense pain is the nerve ending.
The Events in China, pearl harbor, and the war affected the lives of the islands and changed their lives.
After the post-war reunion, Teacher Oishi stepped on the podium to roll call, and some of her students were gone, some were disabled, and the teacher shed tears.
There is a particularly interesting episode in which the students bid farewell to Oishi-sensei before enlisting in the army: "Teacher, I will be loyal to the emperor." "Snap", Teacher Oishi gave him a slap and said: Baga. I want you to come back alive. You still have teachers, and you have parents.
This clearly expresses the war attitude of the Japanese filmmakers in the post-war decade: life and kinship are more important than the emperor. Before and during the war, it was a great honor to be loyal to the emperor.
In the decade after the war, the Japanese people's understanding of the war had departed from the level of patriotism and loyalty.
If Twenty-Four Eyes is too famous to surprise me, then "The Harp of Burma" is a bit of a surprise to me.
The soldier Mizushima became a monk and stayed behind to collect the bodies of the dead Japanese soldiers.
The Harp of Burma was filmed in 1956. The story has a peculiar perspective, with the camera focusing on a group of Japanese prisoners of war.
In late August 1945, a very artistic Japanese army led by officers graduating from the Conservatory of Music retreated from Burma to Thailand, surrounded by Commonwealth troops. They were ordered to lay down their arms: because Japan had surrendered, the war was over.
They laid down their arms and entered the prisoner-of-war camp, but the Japanese troops guarding Triangle Hill, not believing the war was over, refused to surrender. The prisoners of war, Water Island, took the initiative to ask to go to Triangle Mountain to persuade them to surrender, but the defenders refused to surrender, and were eventually blown into meat sauce by British artillery fire, but Water Island lost the news.
One day, the Japanese prisoners of war were building a bridge, and a monk walked silently, and the soldiers were surprised that he was too much like a water island.
In fact, this is the water island. Climbing out of the dead body pile on Triangle Hill, the water island rushed to the prisoner of war camp. On the way, he witnessed the corpses of Japanese soldiers in the wilderness, allowed to be pecked at by birds of prey, and also saw the solemn and solemn British cemetery and the prayers of priests. Mizushima decided to stay, bury the bodies of the dead Japanese soldiers, and wait for the undead, giving them the same dignity as the British soldiers. Before repatriation, he came to the camp, played the harp, and said goodbye to his comrades.
When the prisoners of war boarded the ship and returned home, a letter was handed to the company commander, written by Mizushima, who told the company commander why he wanted to stay.
Humanity and personal dignity in war are luxuries for Chinese cinema. In the fifties, Japanese filmmakers thought of it. You know, it was only a decade after the war, the world has not completely come out of the shadow of World War II, and the Korean War has just ended.
Poster for the movie "Homecoming".
Put each decade of film together, and you will find that over time, the war in people's eyes will gradually deepen.
On the 65th anniversary of the post-war war, the Japanese filmed "Return to Japan", with a surprising perspective and absurd story, showing the new generation of Japanese people's new understanding of war more than 60 years later.
In the early morning of August 15, 2010, in the quiet of Tokyo Station, an old Train from the Second World War slowly entered the station, carrying the japanese military dead who died in the South Pacific during World War II, and on the occasion of the anniversary of the final war, they returned to their homeland, using the hours before dawn to visit their relatives and witness the vicissitudes of the motherland in the past 65 years, and then returned to the South Pacific.
Some of them came to the Yasukuni Shrine, met their former partners, and went together to find the governor of the year and accused him of cowering; some of them looked at the shadows of their former lovers from the paintings of their youth; some returned home and played the piano music with their elderly wives who had been blind; some visited their sister who had been raised and now dying, and killed people for the unfilial piety and indifference of their nephews.
At that time, they rushed to the battlefield for the fate of the motherland, but the motherland was waiting for the atomic bomb attack and the near-100 million jade fragments. The most interesting plot is that before dawn, the undead returned to the station to assemble, and the undead officer who led the team said to his subordinates: What we wanted to get with war but did not get, after the defeat, we got it. We can go back with confidence. This is probably what the Japanese people know about World War II today.
As the initiators and losers of World War II, Germany and Japan are reflecting, and the victorious countries are also reflecting, which are reflected in the film and television works of various countries.