Re-Viewing the Past: The Uses of History in the Cinema of Imperial Japan by Sean D. O'Reilly (review)

Filmic depictions of the Bakumatsu period (1853–1868) were extraordinarily popular with early twentieth-century Japanese audiences. Why? This book draws on filmic and print sources to analyze film from the perspective of the audiences from 1925 to 1945 and answer that critical question. Methodologically, the book addresses audience reception, war, empire, gender, censorship, urban spaces, and popular culture in modern Japan and reclaims lowbrow films as historical sources, employing close visual analysis to move beyond traditional historiography.

Each chapter discusses a distinct genre of historical films: revisionist, comedic, serial, hate-the-enemy, and romance. All feature a productive ambivalence regarding the Bakumatsu period, containing undercurrents potentially subversive to interwar/wartime Japan's imperialistic ambitions. Their box-office success indicates that audiences approved of covert resistance to Japan's militaristic course. These films demonstrate that popular culture in the dark valley of 1925 to 1945 was lighter in tone and more resistant to state goals than prior research on interwar Japan suggests.

Production still from the 1939 film Enoken no Kurama Tengu, showing Kurama Tengu (played by Eno[moto] Ken[ichi]), right, facing down Kondo Isami. (Author's personal collection)