Can Tojo Inspire Modern Japan?

One of America’s most patriotic movies, Patton, opens with George C. Scott standing in front of an enormous American flag articulating values that will inspire his troops to defeat Nazi Germany. Pride, a movie that hit Tokyo theaters last summer, has a similar opening scene—except in Pride it is Prime Minister Hideki Tojo standing before a portrait of Emperor Hirohito on December 8, 1941 to explain Japan’s decision to attack Pearl Harbor:

The government tried its best to stabilize the relationship with the United States, but our efforts were in vain. If this empire yields to their demands, it means the loss of our imperial dignity and will result in endangering the existence of the empire. Holding a strong belief to win is essential for victory. In our history of 2,600 years we have not yet seen a single defeat!

The movie cuts to the next scene. It is New Delhi on the first day of Indian independence, August 15, 1947. Throngs of joyous citizens are cheering as veterans of the Japanese-trained Indian National Army march past. A young Japanese dressed in civilian clothes stands nearby, watching with evident exhilaration.

The picture then changes abruptly to Tokyo shortly after Japan’s surrender in August 1945. The camera gives a bird’s eye view of mile-upon-mile of bombed-out urban landscape. Trumpets and timpanies crescendo as the movie title explodes on the screen: Pride: The Fateful Moment.

Aiming at a Generation that Does Not Know War

In these few melodramatic images, it is clear what message the movie Pride is trying to convey, and why it has become so controversial in Japan and all of East Asia since opening last summer. The story is not new to anyone who follows Japanese politics. Indeed, nationalist Japanese cabinet ministers have been forced to resign with depressing regularity for using their offices to espouse this revisionist view of Japan’s role in the Pacific War. Japan, they argue, was fighting a defensive war against Western imperialism. It was a mistake to subject the Japanese people to such a foolish crusade, and the nation suffered deeply for its folly. But Japan’s alleged war crimes were no worse than the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In that sense, Japan was a victim as well. And in the end, Japan helped to win liberation for the Indians and other fellow Asians. The Japanese people should be proud of their history—or so the nationalists’ interpretation of Japanese history goes.

If the message of Pride is not new, its presentation in mainstream Japanese popular cinema clearly is. The Japanese media is divided about whether Pride represents the dangerous re-emergence of nationalism, ¹ or an “outstanding idea” to correct the lost sense of purpose in contemporary Japanese society. ² Like Saving Private Ryan or The Thin Red Line in the United States, Pride is reintroducing the Second World War to Japanese audiences just as the last survivors of the war are passing from the scene. However, it is hard to argue that Pride is having the same impact on popular views of the Second World War in Japan that Saving Private Ryan or The Thin Red Line are having in the United States. There is no doubt that the producers of Pride aimed to influence the younger generation in Japan, but the movie has not fared well with reviewers as an artistic endeavor and has had only modest success at the box office.

If the film is not shaping young Japanese minds, however, Pride is reminding the rest of Asia that Japan has yet to resolve its troubled historical legacy. Pride comes at a critical juncture when the Japanese government is exploring a significantly more robust security role in East Asia under the nervous gaze of its neighbors. In March 1999, the National Diet openly debated whether Japan had the right to use preemptive force against nations that threaten attack (the government’s answer...