Japan's Total Empire. Louise Young

Fallen Blossoms of North Manchuria and Love in the Frozen Plain.54 Productions such as The Great Army Parade and Manchuria March dealt with the Manchurian Incident in the manner of an entertainment review. Each scene depicted an emblematic moment—the Chinese execution of the Japanese captain Nakamura bringing tensions to a head in June 1931, the occupation of Fengtian in September, and Japanese diplomats defending military action in the League of Nations in October. Shochiku, Tokatsu, and Shinko film studios each brought out their own version of Manchuria March, taking the theme music from the prize-winning hit song of the same name.⁵⁵ Such productions turned the epochal moments of the Manchurian Incident into nationalist metaphors, symbolically rendering the takeover of Northeast China in the familiar language of imperial mythology. How new events were assimilated into established myths of a heroic Japan standing tall against Western bullies and easily routing the cowardly Chinese is a question that awaits more considered treatment later. The point to take here is that by raising public awareness of the Manchurian empire through the dissemination of a fictionalized history, the entertainment industry became an agent of imperial myth making.

      In its myth-making capacity, the entertainment industry created a gallery of Manchurian Incident heroes out of army reports on the outcomes of successive military operations. Kawai Pictures sensationalized the battlefield death of Captain Kuramoto (posthumously promoted to major) in The Big-hearted Commander Captain Kuramoto, while Tokatsu Films memorialized his bravery in Ah! Major Kuramoto and the Blood-stained Flag.56 The story of Private Yamada, captured by the Chinese during a reconnaissance mission and later rescued by a Korean interpreter, was made into the movie Scout of North Manchuria, the play The Occupation of Qiqihar, and recorded on the Victor label as the minstrel chant “Private Yamada and Mr. Tei.”⁵⁷ All seven Japanese movie companies produced versions of the sensational suicide of Major Kuga Noboru, who was apotheosized by Shink

as The Perfect Soldier, by Kawai as The Yamato Spirit, and by Tokatsu as an Embodiment of the Way of the Warrior.58 Injured and left behind when the Japanese force withdrew after the first failed assault on Shanghai, Kuga was taken prisoner by the Chinese. After he was released, he returned to the battlefield where he had fallen. He then shot himself to expiate the shame of capture. Announcing Kuga's suicide on April 1, 1932, Army Minister Araki Sadao praised Kuga's martial spirit: “Soldiers of the Imperial Army go to the battlefield to win or to die. Choosing the course of death, Major Kuga displayed the highest military spirit. We will treat him as a battlefield casualty, honoring him as if he died in battle.”⁵⁹ Even the death of an Osaka Mainichi newspaper reporter in the course of covering the front became the stuff of heroic drama. Nikkatsu Pictures’ The Blood-stained Pen glorified the daring and zeal of the reporter when he rushed off behind enemy lines to pursue a scoop. Describing his martyrdom, Screen and Stage wrote that he was struck down by an “enemy of unparalleled violence.”⁶⁰

      The mass media had helped create the heroes of Japan's earlier imperial campaigns, though the numbers that crowded the Manchurian Incident heroes gallery overwhelmed the human icons of the Sino- and Russo-Japanese wars. The scale of military mobilization was, of course, much larger in the earlier campaigns. Yet the reduced number of real participants in 1931–1933 seemed to call for a multiplication of those singled out for cultural distinction. This was due in part to the fact that it was easier to glorify death when there was not much of it. Audience appetites for battlefield heroics would dull after war spread and casualty lists mounted, but in 1931 the loss of a son or husband to a new war on the continent was still an abstraction for most Japanese. A second reason for the multiplication of heroes in the Manchurian campaigns was the growth of the mass media since the earlier wars. In the cultural marketplace of 1931 there were more producers and more consumers, and hence, more competition and more chaos. In the effort to sell their products, cultural manufacturers created as many heroes as the market would bear, competing with one another to depict acts of zealous bravery and sensational death. Ultimately, the commercial initiatives of the mass media did more than army propaganda to define and popularize military heroism in the Manchurian Incident. The army provided the source of information from the battlefield, but the media told and retold these stories, imprinting heroic deeds onto public memory through repetition in song, print, and on stage. In this way media publicity gave cultural authority to the sacrifice and martyrdom of the celebrated. Had they been unsung, men like Kuga and Kuramoto would have remained anonymous.

      Though entertainers spread their eulogies around during the Manchu-rian Incident, not all deaths were celebrated equally. Another conspicuous feature of the imperial jingoism of the early thirties was the emergence of heroes and superheroes. The sensationalizing of the “three human bombs” (or bullets), the soldiers who were blown up in the line of duty during the assault on Shanghai, cast all other new heroes into shadow The army publicized the three deaths as a conscious act of suicide, claiming the young men had sacrificed themselves to explode a section of wire fence impeding the army's advance. Various rumors circulated at the time contradicting the army's account. Some said the three had died because their commanding officer cut the fuse too short or because he had given them the wrong type of fuse; others suggested that the men attempted to abandon the mission but their commander ordered them to follow through. And it was quietly pointed out that something was amiss with the official report because three other soldiers accompanied the mission and were able to return unharmed.⁶¹ Soon this all became immaterial because the “three human bullets” boom in the mass media gave popular authority to the army's version of the event.

      Throughout March, “three human bullets” productions swept the entertainment world. The Screen and Stage reported that “Tokyo's theaters, including all the major houses…are filled with ‘three human bullets’ plays. The story has been dramatized in every form, from shinpa (new school) to kygeki (classical drama).” No fewer than six movie versions were produced in March alone, and at vaudeville reviews at places like the Horie Dance Hall, the chorus line kicked their heels to the “Three Human Bullets Song.”⁶² Record companies brought out a string of “human bombs” songs, which were multiplying due to song contests in the Asahi, Mainichi, Shnen kurabu, Rekdo, and other newspapers and magazines. Yamada Kosaku, founder of the Tokyo Philharmonic, collaborated with Koga Ma-sao, king of popular song, to produce one prize-winning version.⁶³ This, though, was overshadowed by the poet Yosano Hiroshi's version, which proved by far the most popular of the “human bombs” songs.⁶⁴ Before long, even “human bullets” products appeared on the market. Entrepreneurs from the dead men's home towns began selling “three human bullets sake” and “three human bullets bean paste candy,” and an Osaka department store dining room showed questionable taste in offering a “three human bombs” special: radish strips cut to simulate the explosives tube and butterburs representing the “human bombs.”⁶⁵

      Like previous media fads, the “three human bullets” craze did not last long. By the summer of 1932, the entertainment world had turned its attention to the opening of the Japanese Derby, a rash of love suicides, and the Japanese victories at the Los Angeles Olympics. Interest in Manchuria picked up again the following winter, however, with the release of the League of Nations’ Lytton Commission Report on the Sino-Japanese conflict and the League debate over the legitimacy of Manchukuo. Responding to the Lytton Commission's criticism of Japanese actions and the increasing certainty that Japan was losing the war of words to China, a flood of articles denounced European and American interference in Japanese affairs. Although this second media boom was as transitory as the first, the impact of war fever in the culture industries long outlasted the headlines. Media sensationalism flooded popular consciousness with images of war and empire. Such jingoism was important because it became unofficial propaganda for empire. Marketing militarism, the mass media helped mobilize popular support for the army's policy of military aggression against China, and in the process influenced foreign policy and the politics of empire.

      MASS MEDIA MILITARISM AND THE CENSORSHIP QUESTION

      In the context of the early thirties, this militarism in the media represented a dramatic shift from the previous decade, during which the mass media had achieved a reputation for championing pacifism and international cooperation. This raises the