Japan - A New History
From Robert Whymant
(Our man in Tokyo)
The Japanese Right is launching a film re-interpreting the country's role in the
Second World War. The film, seen in an exclusive preview by The Times, portrays Japanese
troops as selfless liberators of their fellow Asians. Merdeka, which means "independence"
in Malay, opens in Tokyo cinemas in May. It challenges the conventional view of the
Japanese as brutal aggressors and credits them with freeing Indonesia from Dutch
colonial rule. The film will cause fierce debate in neighboring countries that lost
millions of civilians to the Emperor's invading armies. It coincides with a campaign
by a group of nationalists rewriting history for schools by glossing over atrocities
by Japanese troops and depicting them as noble crusaders for the independence of
South-East Asia.
It also comes while the United States is determined that Japan should play a stronger
military role in the Pacific. To do so it will need to revise its American-inspired
Constitution, which renounces the national right to make war. Constitutional revision
is a central aim of the Japanese Right. This is the first film about Japan as liberator
of Asia, With Indonesia as the setting,' Hideaki Kase, the co-producer, said. Three
years ago Pride, a sympathetic portrayal of Japan's military leader, General Hideki
Tojo, who was hanged in 1948 for war crimes, caused outrage. The makers hope that
China will protest about their latest film from Japan's biggest studio Toho and financed
by lsao Nakamura, the wealthy right-wing businessman - and "help us with the promotion".
Merdeka, starring some of Japan's most popular actors, begins with a provocative
statement splashed across the screen: "The Greater East Asian War was fought in self-defence..
words are taken from Emperor Hirohito's 1941 declaration of war against the United
States and Britain.
Ever since General Tojo, Japanese nationalists have argued that the war was just,
needed to give Tokyo access to vital raw materials in Western colonies. The argument
goes that Japan was driven to take over the Dutch East Indies, as Indonesia was known,
by the Western powers' embargo that cut off petroleum supplies, crippling Japan's
war machine. When the Japanese occupied the Dutch colony in early 1942, Indonesian
nationalists hoped that colonial rule was about to end and it is generally accepted
that the Japanese invasion of South-East Asia forced the pace of change. Throughout
the region, however, Japanese rule is remembered more for its brutality and rapacity
than its advancement of freedom. Only when the war turned against them did Japan's
military start to train Indonesian youths as independence fighters.
Shot in Indonesia, with official co-operation, Merdeka puts the sort of benign spin
on history dear to the hearts of Japan's ruling conservatives. It tells the story
of about 2,000 Japanese soldiers, fired by the purest motives, who remained behind
in Java after Japan's surrender in August 1945 to help local fighters in their struggle
against the Dutch, who tried to reclaim their colony with the help of Britain. Based
on fact, it focuses on one Japanese officer's heroic efforts to force the white man
out of Indonesia and win independence for the natives. Mr Kase, a prominent commentator
and writer, said that in the 56 years since Japan's defeat, there had been no feature
film based on the "historical fact" that Japan liberated Asia from the yoke of Western
colonialism. "If Japan had not fought the war, most parts of Asia and Africa would
still be under Western colonialism today," he said.
From Robert Whymant
(Our man in Tokyo)
