The famous Japanese director Shinji Fukasaku, who is famous for violent films such as "Battle Royale", shot many films with deep themes in his early years, of which "Under the Fluttering Military Flag" in 1972 was one of his representative works from the beginning of film.
The film tells the story of the doubtful truth behind the death of her husband, the widow of the Japanese army, Fumitsu Kene, who was investigated, in a manner similar to "Rashomon", and finally found out that her husband was executed for resisting the wrong military order to kill his boss by mistake.
With its profound ideological core and distinct anti-war attitude, the movie "Under the Fluttering Military Banner" won the second place in the annual top ten films of the "Film Shunbao", which is known as the Japanese Oscar. As a work competing for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film that year, the film was well received by the Japanese film and television industry and audiences, and became a classic of Japanese anti-war films.
Directed by Shinji Fukasaku
The reflections on war, sympathy for the fate of small people, and the exploration of humanitarian spirit in "Under the Fluttering Flag" epitomize Japan's reflection on the war of aggression during the Cold War. It is like a mirror, reflecting the multi-layered spectrum and many limitations of Japan's war reflection, and is a representative and typical anti-combat work.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Japanese anti-war film focusing on the fate of small people, highlighting humanitarian care and reflection</h1>
"Under the Fluttering Military Flag" tells a story full of suspense and tragedy: Tomitsuki Kene's husband, Katsuo Tomiki, a Japanese army soldier during World War II, died in the Battle of New Guinea. However, the death notice did not state the cause of her husband's death. Based on the rumors that Katsuo Fuki died in military law, Tomitsuki found several veterans who had intersected with her husband and tried to investigate the truth of her husband's death.
The heroine, Kene Fuki
After repeated investigations, Tomitsuki found that her husband's squad was still forced by the squad leader to launch a suicide attack on the Allies after receiving news that Japan had surrendered. Her husband, Katsuo Tomiki, and others refused to carry out the order, and then clashed with the squad leader and killed him by mistake. Tomiki Katsuo and others fabricated the lie that the squad leader committed suicide in order to survive, but they were discovered by their superiors and sentenced to death.
The whole film is permeated with a gray and mournful atmosphere, shrouded in an atmosphere of indictment of the ruthless destruction of the individual by war. The film's character image, theme ideas, and expression methods all bear the distinctive characteristics of Japanese anti-war films during the Cold War period, and are a typical Japanese anti-war film.
First of all, the protagonists and supporting characters of the story are all small people. The protagonist, Katsuo Tomitsuki, is no more than a cobia (about the equivalent of a non-commissioned officer), and the other supporting characters, the largest of whom is a battalion-level officer. Therefore, this film does not start the story from the perspective of big people such as generals and politicians, but completely focuses on the fate of small people in wartime and after the war.
The male protagonist, Katsuo Fumiki
Using the fate of small people to depict the war was a common routine in many Japanese anti-war films at that time. For example, in "The Underworld in the Army", the roles in it are basically non-commissioned officers and soldiers, and they are all grass-roots officers and soldiers.
Secondly, the film deeply depicts the suffering of grass-roots soldiers in the war and the incurable psychological wounds caused by the war to military families and survivors, and is full of humanitarian spirit.
What impresses people in the film is not only the torture and suffering of Katsuo Tomiki and others in the wartime, but also the silent indictments of the catastrophic effects of the war caused by his wife who struggled to survive after the war and the veterans who survived the war could not adapt to normal life and lingered by the garbage heap like rats.
Tadao Ohashi became a teacher after the war
In the film, Nakahara Army Lieutenant Tadahiko Ohashi expressed his confusion when confronted by Mrs. Fumiki - he did not know what the meaning of the sacrifice of those dead comrades was? What is the significance of their youth in war?
Instead of attributing the sacrifices of Japanese officers and soldiers to the emperor, as fanatical militarists did, Ohashi argued:
"Sacrificing for a peaceful new Japan is the only answer I can find."
Ohashi believes that it does not matter whether Katsuo Tomiki died in military law, because all those who died in the Battle of New Guinea, whether they died of the enemy or died of military law, should not be blamed and discriminated against, and everyone is "killed in battle". Ohashi's reflection on the value of ordinary soldiers' lives and humanitarian attitude have become a rare bright color in the film.
Katsuo Tomitsuki and others at the time of execution
From the perspective of anti-war films, "Under the Fluttering Banner" is a neat work, so it has become a representative work of anti-war films that was recognized by all walks of life at that time.
If we combine the ideological dynamics of various circles in Japan during the Cold War, we will find that the reflection on war under the Fluttering Military Flag is not an isolated phenomenon. Japan's military, intellectual, and literary and artistic circles have all reflected on the war of aggression to varying degrees from their respective perspectives.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the blade of the Japanese literary and art circles, and the depth of reflection far exceeds that of the military circles</h1>
The defeat in World War II has, to a considerable extent, prompted all circles in Japan to reflect to a certain extent on the war of foreign aggression that lasted for more than a decade.
Apologetic Japanese veteran
The first to reflect on the responsibility for war crimes is the Japanese military community that acted as the vanguard of aggression, benefited the most, and paid the greatest price. In 1956, former Lieutenant General Saburo Endo led the "First Visiting Delegation of Old Japanese Soldiers" to Visit China, which was welcomed by the Chinese side.
Endo sincerely reflected on the harm caused by the Japanese invaders to the Chinese, and presented the Chinese side with a saber, implying that "China and Japan will never go to war."
- "The Chinese Concept of the Japanese in the Fifty Years After The War"
Former Army Lieutenant General Shigeru Fujita, after being pardoned by the Chinese government, made public the war crimes committed by himself and the Japanese army in Japan and made a deep confession.
The representative figure of confession to China, Toshiro
It should be said that some former Japanese generals realized the injustice of the war of aggression and the tremendous harm caused to Asian countries and sincerely repented. It is precisely the confessional attitude of people in the military circles that has enabled many anti-war films such as "Under the Fluttering Military Flag" to boldly excavate the dark history of the wartime military, providing a good opportunity for Japan to reflect on the war of aggression.
Compared with the military, the reflection of the intellectual circles is more comprehensive. Japanese intellectuals with conscience not only sorted out Japan's actions after the war of aggression against China, but also excavated the atrocities committed by the Japanese army from the time of the Sino-Japanese War. Inoue Kiyoshi and Masayoshi Hiroshima co-compiled the book "What the Japanese Army Did in China", which systematically sorted out many of Japan's evil deeds since the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese historian Ieyasaburo objectively recorded Japan's acts of aggression in his New History of Japan.
Famous historian Kiyoshi Inoue met with Chinese people
It can be said that the emergence of these historical materials provides strong evidence support for the atrocities such as the killing of prisoners by Japanese officers in anti-war films such as "Under the Fluttering Military Flag".
In terms of the number of anti-war works and the richness of their subject matter, the output of Japan's literary and artistic circles far exceeds that of the military and intellectual circles. Less than 10 years after his defeat, Shohei Ooka, one of the three masters of Modern Japanese literature, released two counter-war works, "Prisoner" and "Wildfire", and the latter also won the Yomiuri Literature Prize. In addition, anti-war works such as Hiroshi Noma's "Red Moon on the Face", "Vacuum Zone", and Toyoko Yamazaki's "Barren Zone" appeared in an endless stream, and for a time Luoyang paper was expensive, and its influence spread to all of Japan.
These rich anti-war novels provide directors with a variety of film and television themes. "Under the Fluttering Military Flag" is an anti-war work of the same name adapted from Masaharu Yuki.
A film and television drama poster adapted from Wildfire
It can be seen that the launch and award of the film "Under the Fluttering Military Flag" is not an isolated phenomenon, but the result of the systematic reflection of all circles in Japan on the war of aggression during the Cold War. The courage to reflect on the war of aggression from all angles shows that many Japanese people have maintained a rare sobriety and realized that Japan should draw profound lessons from that not-so-distant history.
However, if we look at the film "Under the Fluttering Military Flag" with a more rigorous eye, and then more deeply analyze Japan's war reflections during the Cold War, we will find that there are many limitations in their reflections, both in the film and in all walks of life in Japan.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Japan's reflection on the war, a limited reflection that deliberately ignores the "evil of mediocrity."</h1>
In the film "Under the Fluttering Military Flag", the male protagonist Futsuki Katsuo is a tragic character, who cares for his comrades-in-arms and cherishes the life of his robe, but in the end he is forced to a dead end by his superiors. In addition to Tadaoshi, several officers in the film are either fanatics with militaristic ideas or executioners who kill prisoners of war, all of whom are villains.
Persuade Mrs. Fukuki to forget her husband's former Army officer
Because there is no higher-level bureaucracy directly in the film, Fukasaku Shinji uses these negative grass-roots officers to allude to the high-ranking Japanese generals who committed heinous crimes. His point was that the main culprit of war crimes was the top brass of the Japanese army.
Of course, the top brass of the Japanese army committed unforgivable war crimes, but were grassroots soldiers such as Fu Shu irresponsible? Most of the Japanese military's misdeeds in World War II, such as looting property and massacring civilians, were mostly committed by soldiers and non-commissioned officers at the grassroots level. Of course, it is mainly officers who give orders, but we cannot assume that the soldier who carries out the order can be left out of blame and be white.
Japanese soldiers breaking down the door and robbing
The famous German thinker Hannah. Arendt famously put forward the idea of "the evil of mediocrity" in her masterpiece Eichmann in Jerusalem. This kind of evil can be roughly understood as a hidden evil that is carried out in a certain ideological environment without thinking about the criminal orders issued by superiors (such as killing civilians) without thinking and analysis. Eichmann, an officer in a Nazi death camp, is the poster child for this banal evil.
"The reason Eichmann is disturbing is precisely that there are so many people like him, neither psychopathic nor tyrannical, and they are all too normal, even horribly normal, whether they were or are now" – "Eichmann in Jerusalem"
"If it's 'banal,' even funny, if you can't find any cruel, demonic depth in Eichmann with all your might; even then, it's far from being the norm." - "Eichmann in Jerusalem"
Hannah. Arendt
Arendt's theory also applies to the Japanese soldiers in the war, and how many of them committed this "banal evil"? When they kill civilians and plunder property, how many of them are simply carrying out the instructions of their superiors? Unfortunately, the film does not show or discuss the crimes that may be committed by Fu Shu and others who represent the class of Japanese soldiers.
This kind of portrayal of the grass-roots soldiers of the Japanese army as victims of war rather than perpetrators is a very large limitation of the reflection on war in "Under the Flying Military Flag".
What is more worth pondering is that it is not only this film that ignores the crimes of soldiers, but also in the Japanese literary and art circles at that time, many anti-war works invariably placed Japanese soldiers in the position of war victims. Although Hiroshi Noma's novel "Vacuum Zone" is a bitter criticism of the perverted hierarchy and the poisoning of people by militaristic ideas in the Japanese army, it completely avoids the war crimes of the protagonist and other soldier classes; Yamazaki Toyoko's "Barren Zone" also has similar problems, and the novel describes the suffering of the protagonist Iki in the Siberian prisoner of war camp, but keeps a close eye on the crimes committed by Iki during his tenure as a staff officer at the base camp.
A film and television drama based on "Barren Zone"
Another limitation of "Under the Fluttering Flag" is that it not only portrays soldiers as victims one-sidedly, but also deliberately avoids the support and fanaticism of Japanese civilians during World War II, but only highlights their difficulties as war survivors.
As a former military survivor, Fumi Kene has always appeared in the film as a very bitter image, describing haggard, sad expression, and very bumpy experience. Obviously, the director wanted to portray the severe damage of the war to Japanese civilians through the image of Tomitsuki Kene.
Japanese civilians working in military factories
It is true that Japanese civilians suffered a lot in World War II, but we must not ignore the support and fanaticism of the civilian class for the war of aggression like Fukasaku Shinji. It can be said that the support and fanaticism of the Japanese civilian class for the war of aggression are far beyond the imagination of ordinary people. After the July 7 Incident, many Japanese civilians wrote letters to the military headquarters asking for war against China. Major Japanese media outlets such as the Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun have opened up columns on "Defense Donations", showing the names and amounts of citizens who are crazy about donating to the Japanese army.
In four hours on July 14, Japanese citizens donated a huge sum of 23,000 yen (about 5 million yuan today) to the Army. ——Tokyo Daily Shimbun
Japanese civilians involved in shooting training during World War II
Japanese civilians not only donated money to the army, but also enthusiastically signed up for the army, so that there have been extreme cases of suicide because they could not be conscripted into the army or were not sent to China to participate in the war of aggression. Although the Japanese civilian class rarely directly served the war of aggression on the battlefield, they provided human, material and public opinion support for the war of aggression in various ways.
From this point of view, the reflection on the war not only involves Japan's military and political figures, but also civilians should also deeply understand how much material and spiritual fuel their wartime behavior has provided for the chariots of Japan's foreign aggression.
Unfortunately, in "Under the Fluttering Military Flag", we do not see this kind of reflection of the civilian class at all, but only the sad character image of Tomitsuki Kene, who was deeply hurt by the war. The one-sidedness and shallowness of the image of the civilian class undoubtedly greatly reduce the ideological depth of the film.
The bitter-hearted Fuzuki Kene in the film
This tendency to ignore the responsibility of the civilian class for war was not only a problem with the film "Under the Fluttering Military Flag", but also the conceptual flaws in many Japanese literary and artistic works at that time.
For example, in the anti-war works with the theme of "atomic bombing" (literary works set in Japan after the atomic bombing), such as Yoko Ota's "Ragged On Earth" and Hasegawa Yukio's "Daughter of Hiroshima", this concept of civilians simply as victims of war is very popular.
The atomic bomb that bombed Japan exploded instantly
Overall, "Under the Flying Flag" has great limitations when it comes to the war responsibilities involving the japanese army's grassroots soldiers and civilians. And this limitation is not only the problem of this film, there is a huge one-sidedness in the perception of the Japanese literary and art circles and even the whole society on these two issues.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > limited reflection on the unwashed ruling hierarchy, deliberately downplayed propaganda and an inflated national mentality</h1>
Looking back at the history of the Cold War, we can find that a variety of reasons have contributed to Japan's limitations in war reflection.
First of all, the incomplete reflection on Japan's war is closely related to the fact that the United States did not completely shuffle the old Japanese ruling class out of its own interests during the Cold War.
After the beginning of the Cold War, in order to counter the Soviet Union in the Far East and provide forward bases and allies for the US military, the United States did not thoroughly purge the Japanese ruling and bureaucratic classes that started the war. Although the International Tribunal executed 7 Class A war criminals, Emperor Hirohito, the culprit of the war of aggression, was unscathed, but his reputation was affected and he was not held accountable for the war. Hundreds of thousands of former civil servants have been retained, many of whom have contributed a lot in the war of aggression, and even the absurdity of former Class-A war criminal Nobusuke Kishi, who was spat out in "Under the Flying Military Flag", became prime minister.
In the center is Nobusuke Kishi, a former Class-A war criminal who served as prime minister after the war
From the perspective of the core ruling class, post-war Japan basically inherited the mantle of the old Japanese Empire, and this "continuity" must have greatly affected the thoroughness of Japan's reflection on the war.
Second, Japan's post-war education and propaganda policies deliberately downplayed war crimes, resulting in a lack of deep awareness of war crimes.
Because the government retains a large number of old bureaucrats, the Japanese government is very inactive in publicizing the war crimes committed in the country, and deliberately downplays the responsibility for war crimes in the field of education.
Ministry
As early as 1950, Japan's Ministry of Education asked the ministry of education to resume activities such as flag-raising ceremonies, singing the national anthem of "The King's Generation", and resuming the so-called self-cultivation curriculum during the war. In terms of the teaching materials used, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Sports, Science and Technology rejected textbooks describing Japan's war crimes and rejected them for various reasons. Under such an educational policy, many citizens did not understand the numerous crimes committed by the Japanese army in the war of aggression, but only knew that Japan had been defeated. Naturally, this kind of ideological background is impossible to carry out a more comprehensive reflection on the war.
Finally, Japan's rapid postwar rise and its dominance in Asia diluted Japan's reflection.
During the war, Japan, like Germany, suffered severe damage. However, after the war, with the help of the Cold War and the Vietnam War, Japan rapidly rose economically for the second time and became the premier economic power in East Asia.
Japan was reborn from the ruins of war
In the five years after 1966, Japan's GDP grew at an average annual rate of 12.1 percent, compared with 3.1 percent in the United States over the same period.
- "Economic History of Postwar Japan"
Compared with other Asian countries that are still slowly climbing, Japan, which is rapidly developing economically, has changed its mentality. Many Japanese nationals regard Japan's reparations to war-torn countries as "support" for backward countries by developed countries.
This gradually expanding national mentality has also diluted Japan's awareness and depth of reflection on the war, so that its reflection has never penetrated deep into the bone marrow.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
For various reasons, Japan has many limitations in its reflection on the war. These limitations are embodied in the character image of "Under the Flying Military Flag", we see ordinary soldiers who have been tortured to death by war, the widows of miserable soldiers who have lost their husbands and happy lives due to war, but we have not seen the director's excavation and display of their war crimes. Like a detective, Fukasaku Shinji was close to the full truth when he had already deduced the main criminal psychology of the criminal, but he closed the criminal's file and stopped analyzing. I have to say that this kind of shallow taste to a certain extent is the biggest flaw of the film.
Japan's war reflection has a long way to go
As far as Japan is concerned, although the war has long ended, how to reflect on its responsibility for the war more objectively and comprehensively is probably far from over. Perhaps, the Japanese should revisit U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles. Speech given by Sweeney (who participated in the bombing of Japan with the atomic bomb) on the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima:
"If Japan does not pursue and accept the truth, how can Japan live with its Asian neighbors and the United States with peace of mind?"
References: Under the Fluttering Military Flag, Economic History of Postwar Japan, Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Chinese Concept of the Japanese in the Fifty Years After The War
The picture comes from the Internet, invaded and deleted.