JAPAN:A CRITICALLY acclaimed film about Yasukuni shrine, Japan's controversial memorial to millions of dead soldiers, has been pulled from Tokyo cinemas amid a campaign of right-wing intimidation and death threats against the distributors, writes David McNeillin Tokyo.
Ten years in the making, Yasukuni explores the shrine's role as a rallying point for the Japanese far right and its tortured relationship with Japan's undigested war history.
Among the 2.46 million war dead enshrined at Yasukuni are more than 1,000 war criminals, including the men who led Japan's brutal pillage of Asia.
A museum on the shrine's grounds audaciously rewrites history: teenage suicide bombers (kamikaze) are heroes, America is the enemy and the emperor, supposedly reduced to mortal status after the second World War, is still a deity.
Chinese director Li Ying says Yasukuni symbolises a "disease of the spirit" in Japan. "That I haven't been able to leave this issue alone for the last 10 years means that I too am suffering. The point is to look directly at the disease."
However Japanese conservatives have branded the movie "Chinese propaganda," and condemned a decision by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs to award Li a ¥7.5 million grant.
With criticism growing, along with the threat of violence from ultra right-wingers, four Tokyo cinemas have pulled out of an official launch on April 12th. The documentary, which was applauded at the Sundance Festival in January, is unlikely to be seen on Japan's cinema screens.
The campaign against the movie is led by powerful Liberal Democrat lawmaker Tomomi Inada, who says it is guilty of "political propaganda".
"I felt the movie's ideological message was that Yasukuni was a device to drive people into an aggressive war," she told the Asahi newspaper, but denied she wanted it banned.
"I have no interest in limiting freedom of expression or restricting the showing of the movie. My doubt is about the movie's political intentions."
However, in a now familiar pattern, ultra-right-wingers who follow along in the shadow of establishment politicians in Japan, threatened retribution against anyone who handled the movie.
Anonymous bloggers posted contact details for the distribution company, the Japan Arts Council and every theatre showing it. Anonymous death threats were issued against Dragon Films, which produced Yasukuni, forcing it to move its Tokyo offices.
The burying of Li's film follows a string of similar incidents. In February, a Tokyo hotel cancelled a conference by the Japan Teachers Union - a popular ultra-right target - after learning that 100 right-wing loudspeaker vans turned up at last year's conference venue.
Fear of intimidation ensures that there are still no Japan screenings planned for any of the dozen or so foreign films made to commemorate the anniversary of the 1937 Nanjing massacre by the imperial Japanese Army.
Li's cinematic gaze is unflinching and sometimes disturbing. In one scene, filmed on the 60th anniversary of Japan's second World War surrender, August 15th, 2005, two young anti-Yasukuni protesters are beaten and chased from the shrine's grounds by right-wingers who yell at them to "go back to China".
The protesters, who are Japanese, are later hauled off by the police. Archive shots show Japanese soldiers using Yasukuni swords, forged in the grounds from 1933-1945, to decapitate Chinese victims.
But much of the movie, which is narration-free, deals with the conflicting sentiments provoked by the memorial among ordinary Japanese: from the two older women who recall the battlefield deaths of relatives and who want the prime minister to pay his respects, to the Buddhist priest who resents that his father's soul has been enshrined there against his will.
The movie is hinged around the work of the shrine's last remaining sword-maker, Naoji Kariya, a gentle craftsman who offers few insights into how he helped forge the 8,100 swords that ended up on the battlefield.
Li, who moved to Tokyo in 1989 and speaks fluent Japanese, rejects claims that he is anti-Japanese and describes his movie as a "love-letter" to the Japanese people.
"I live in Japan. How could something that is anti-Japanese be good for me, personally? This love letter may be hard to watch, but that's the form my love takes."
He says he was motivated to start making the film a decade ago by the shock of listening to Japanese revisionists at a conference on the Nanjing massacre.