Abstract
This study considers the recurring themes contained in selected films shown in Korea before and after Japan’s defeat to offer insights into how Japanese and US occupation authorities attempted to capture the hearts and minds of the occupied. In order to show how this theoretically worked, this chapter examines two of the most notable co-productions from the early 1940s, Homeless Angels (Choi In-gyu, 1941) and Suicide Squad at the Watchtower (Imai Tadashi, 1943, hereafter Suicide Squad). This investigation also includes a number of Hollywood films shown in Korea between 1946 and 1948, such as In Old Chicago (1937) and You Can’t Take It with You (1938). In each case, the occupation authorities screened films to reorient Korean audiences toward their social, political and economic worldview. Despite tremendous scope, most histories of the Japanese and US occupation periods lack a rigorous discussion of this significant cultural policy.1 Furthermore, conventional accounts of cinema in Korea only address the struggles that Korean filmmakers experienced during both eras, highlighting the limitations that threatened the expression of local culture.2 This investigation builds upon these former studies by providing a complementary viewpoint on how such screenings resulted in complex intersections between cinema, culture, and politics, before and after Japan’s defeat in 1945.
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Notes
Previous studies on US Army Military Government in Korea primarily analyze the political and economic dimensions of US occupation. For example, see GM McCune, ‘Post-War Government and Politics of Korea’, The Journal of Politics 9, No. 4 (1947): 605–23;
EG Meade, American Military Government in Korea (New York: King’s Crown Press 1951);
B Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: WW Norton, 1997);
and BBC Oh (ed.), Korea under the American Military Government, 1945–1948 (Westport: Praeger, 2002).
See H Lee, Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture, and Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000);
EJ Min, JS Joo and HJ Kwak, Korean Film: History, Resistance, and Democratic Imagination (Westport: Praeger, 2003);
HI Yi, ‘The Korean Film Community and Film Movements during the Post-liberation Era’, B Yecies and A Shim (eds), Traces of Korean Cinema from 1945 to 1959 (Seoul: Korean Film Archive, 2003), pp. 11–89.
For a detailed discussion of naisen ittai , see CJ Eckert, Offspring of Empire: The Koch’ang Kims and the colonial origins of Korean capitalism, 1876–1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), pp. 224–52.
B Yecies, ‘Systematization of Film Censorship in Colonial Korea: Profiteering from Hollywood’s First Golden Age, 1926–1936’, Journal of Korean Studies 10, No. 1 (2005): 59–84.
M Baskett, The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), p. 22.
See T Sakuramoto, ‘Korean Film during the 15 Year War–Korea in a Transparent Body’, Kikan Sanzenri 34 (1983): 184–91.
Quoted from a speech by Governor-General Minami Jirō delivered to Korea’s thirteen provincial governors in April 1937. See Government-General of Tyosen, Annual Report on Administration of Tyosen, 1937–38 (Tokyo: Toppau Printing Co, 1938), p. 227.
W Dong, ‘Assimilation and Social Mobilization in Korea: A Study of Japanese Colonial Policy and Political Integration Effects’, in AC Nahm (ed.), Korea under Japanese Colonial Rule (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1973), p. 168;
MJ Rhee, ‘Language Planning in Korea under the Japanese Colonial Administration, 1910–1945’, Language, Culture and Curriculum 5, No. 2 (1992): 94.
PB High, The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War, 1931–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp. 307–8.
See B Powell, Japan’s Modern Theatre: A Century of Change and Continuity (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 34–5.
For example, see YI Lee, Hanguk Yeonghwa Jeonsa [History of Korean Cinema] (Seoul: Sodo, 2004), p. 202.
JL Anderson and D Richie, The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 130.
TT Fujitani, Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), p. 310.
See Yecies, ‘Systematization of Film Censorship in Colonial Korea’; B Yecies, ‘Sounds of Celluloid Dreams: Coming of the Talkies to Cinema in Colonial Korea’, Korea Journal 48, No. 1 (2008): 16–97.
T Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939, Vol. 5 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p. 180.
There was also a major point of divergence between the ‘democratic’ prin- ciples showcased by the USAMGIK ‘film project’, and the US occupation authority’s practice of retaining Korean public officials (as well as institutions and policies) from the KCG. See: Y Chung, ‘Refracted Modernity and the Issue of Pro-Japanese Collaborators in Korea’, Korea Journal 42, No. 3 (2002): 18–59; and ME Caprio’s chapter in this volume.
See ME Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), 201–7.
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Yecies, B. (2015). Film and the Representation of Ideas in Korea during and after Japanese Occupation, 1940–8. In: de Matos, C., Caprio, M.E. (eds) Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137408112_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137408112_7
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