EIGA: Cinema in the Philippines During World War II

By Nick Deocampo

Nick Deocampo’s continuing film saga investigates on its third volume how World War II affected the growth of cinema in the Philippines (1942-1945). Revealed in the book is a vast wealth of information about Japanese wartime manipulation of motion pictures that would only lead to the inglorious end of the colonial film cycle at war’s conclusion. This valuable construction of the country’s wartime film history uncovers significant intellectual efforts made by Japanese film critics and film artists who formed the Propaganda Corps assigned to the country.

They conceived for Filipinos a “national” identity for their cinema, even while this was wrapped in a fascist, colonial, and militaristic context. Seventy years after the end of World War II, Deocampo triumphs over trauma and forgetfulness as he revisits the wartime period and its cinema. He provides a landmark contribution to historical memory as he uncovers one of the bleakest moments in Philippine film history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9786214200832

Book preview

Introduction

Cinema during the Japanese War

The saga of cinema’s evolution in the Philippines continues with this third installment in the ongoing investigation of the history of motion pictures in the country. From the introduction of film during the waning years of Spanish colonial rule to its formative period under the Americans, the phenomenal growth of cinema became suddenly interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, a war that devastated not only the nascent infrastructure of the emerging film industry but, more tragically, the social fabric of an emerging (although not yet independent) nation. This present volume covers the last phase in the colonial cycle that formed the first half-century of motion pictures in the Philippines.

The violence and trauma caused among Filipinos by the two colonial experiences under the Spaniards and the Americans were far exceeded by the severity of the brutal suffering experienced under the Japanese occupation, in terms of its massive scale and the magnitude of oppression. The brevity of time was made up for by the intensity of the profound pain inflicted on the Filipino people. The suffering was made even more bitter by the thought that it was officially and systematically sanctioned by the occupying Japanese military authorities, themselves agents of the same hardships. Behind the overt and organized control of a country and its people, the Japanese occupation promised an end to the era of western colonization. It offered hope for a new beginning, a return to one’s Asian roots, the attainment of native identity, of freedom. But, as history shows, Japan’s promise was merely the ploy of one colonial power to displace another; of an Oriental power lusting to displace a western rival for the same opportunity to rule over a territory. In this scenario of power struggle and colonial wrangling, cinema became a tool for warfare.

This third volume deals with colonial effects that further enriched cinema before it became the national cinema it is known today. The two earlier volumes, Cine: Spanish Influences on Early Cinema in the Philippines and Film: American Influences on Philippine Cinema deal with the two Western colonial cultures from where this national cinema would emerge; the third volume deals with yet another colonial control, although exercised by a fellow Asian country. The colonial legacies bequeathed by the country’s former colonizers would be felt in subsequent years as the homegrown cinema would contain markings of their influences that became part of this cinema’s identity as Filipino. This experience is no different from the political identity that the nation would struggle to attain. Filipino identity in cinema could only come after a long historical process that paralleled the growth of the modern-day nation. Even so, the topic of identity is a problematic one that can hardly be resolved by merely assigning it without dealing with its historical provenance. This makes for an interesting study between cinema and the nation as they mirrored each other’s experiences in attaining Filipino identity. The role colonialism played in defining the country’s national identity in cinema, as it did with the identity of the people who claim it as their own, cannot be ignored.

Little has been written specifically on the cinema that emerged under Japanese colonial rule from 1942 to 1945. It was a colonial cinema that formed during the Japanese occupation of the Philippine Islands. If, by the end of that war, Japan had succeeded in colonizing the Philippines, the country’s cinema would have continued its colonial trajectory but in an Asian context. However, the war took a different turn. It favored the Allied forces, specifically the U.S. (coincidentally the nation’s colonial ruler at the outbreak of war and then its liberator), to win the war. This led to the granting of Philippine independence by the American government on July 4, 1946, which then historically marked cinema officially with a national identity now that the country attained its sovereignty.

How did that come about? And was that the only occasion when local cinema assumed the identity of being Filipino? Did granting the country its independence already assure its cinema of becoming national? To answer these questions, and many more attendant to the assigning of a Filipino identity to cinema, this book urges us to pause and reflect on what happened during the crucial three-year interregnum that severely cut into the temporal flow of cinema and changed its course, although resulting events did not favor the Japanese attempt to wrestle cinema from U.S. domination. The change in direction in the history of this cinema depended on the outcome of war. As mentioned, if the Japanese army had won the war, the history of cinema would have looked to Japan for its direction, therefore, greatly altering the destiny of local cinema. But it was not to happen. The Americans won, and Hollywood regained its hegemonic rule over local cinema which it had dominated during the pre-war period. But before all this, the three years when the Japanese almost changed the destiny of local cinema need to be re-evaluated. So many questions have been left unanswered, making this period one of the hardly understood chapters in the country’s film history.

Perhaps it was the trauma brought about by war that made film historians shirk from investigating this period. But more than the pain of remembering, several reasons account for the sparse narratives on this era. One major reason could be the barrier that the Japanese language imposed on local film historians. The lack of language proficiency did not easily allow non-Japanese-speaking historians to access the sources of Japanese policies and actions that had a profound impact on wartime cinema. Tapping into Japanese primary sources would have also necessitated a fair amount of logistics to conduct research in Japan (where cultural policies governing the use of film and other related film matters can be found) as well as in the U.S. (where another set of wartime policies that were devised in the retaking of America’s former colony is kept). All these entailed financial expense, time, and a determined effort to gather data, process them, and write a history that would throw light on this dim corner of cinema’s past. The fact that the subject of Philippine wartime cinema remained inadequately written about after many years since war ended, testifies to the lack of support given to this intellectual endeavor.

Facing all those challenges to make sense of what happened to cinema during the three-year Japanese occupation, this book makes the effort to revisit the past and understand how events bracketed within the war years may be seen to be an integral part of the continuing evolution of cinema. Seventy years after the end of World War II, this study takes on the subject despite challenges to its accomplishment. It is motivated by questions that beg for answers to explain the role war played in the transition from pre-war colonial cinema to post-war national cinema. Was there anything in World War II that one can tangibly say contributed to the formation of the national identity of cinema? What policies governing the Filipinization of cinema under the Japanese found relevance in the Filipinos’ pursuit to attain a national cinema, if not during the wartime period (when its implementation was compromised by propaganda), then during the post-war period (when the project of nationalization happened in earnest)? Did the Japanese film experience—despite the stigma caused by militarization and the contentiousness of film as propaganda—play a pivotal role in forming the national cinema? Were assertions towards forming a national cinema by the Japanese propaganda team merely to be seen as aspirational in nature rather than material because such a national cinema was aborted long before it was realized? While one may officially attribute cinema’s national identity to the declaration of independence in 1946, soon after the U.S. granted the country its independence, the question of how cinema assumed a national identity (and what helped compose that identity including the process it took to achieve it) are questions that are pursued in this book.

In providing a wartime history of local cinema, the following questions provide the narrative for this book:

How did Japanese control of film during World War II cast its influence over local cinema that was then still under heavy American influence? During the three-year occupation, what film policies were introduced by the Japanese military propaganda team to change local cinema in order to adhere to Japanese cultural values and wean it away from Hollywood? How did these efforts impact local film culture?

In calling for nationalism in cinema, what principles were behind this Japanese film propaganda? What in the rhetoric of nationalism espoused by enemy propaganda found fulfillment in, if not relevance to the post-war pursuit of national cinema? How do we compare the Japanese notion of national cinema to the cinema that was coming on its own as the county inched closer to independence from the U.S.? Did the U.S. promise of independence make the attainment of national cinema already imminent, had it not been for the outbreak of war? How national was this anticipated cinema to become, if seen in the light of its material and cinematic dependence on Hollywood?

When World War II was over, what influences, if any, were cast by the Japanese experience of cinema on local film culture, no matter how brief the occupation was; and how pivotal were they in the formation of the country’s national cinema? How was this identity complicated by the return of Hollywood’s influence as it once again dominated the country’s post-war film culture?

As can be seen, so many questions have been left unanswered regarding wartime cinema. This has resulted in an acute lack of knowledge regarding the use of film during the war and how its wartime use affected the cinema that emerged after the war. Only a few studies have looked substantially on the subject, such as those by Dr. Motoe Terami-Wada, whose research and writings have greatly inspired my own; Dr. Ricardo T. Jose, whose essays on cultural policies guiding the use of popular media have been helpful; and Agustin Sotto, whose essays on war-themed movies highlighted the surge of moviemaking featuring the war soon after independence was declared.

Still, there has not been a thorough and sustained scholarship on the subject of what happened to cinema during World War II. Due to inadequate data and information on this period, cinema during the war has remained largely un-written. The lack of access to information forced local film historians to write, almost out of necessity, historical narratives that would be Filipino-centric. This meant writing about war films and experiences that dealt mainly with the native experience, with little, if at all, information on the actual Japanese (as well as American) manipulation and control of cinema. When written about, this resulted, at best, and in large measure, to the Japanese enemy being reduced to caricature or the American soldier being hailed stereotypically as hero. This resulted in the historical framing of that cinema becoming nativist, a perspective that lacked a more historically-layered and racially-nuanced discourse that would have accommodated other foreign film influences.

Past historical writings were substantially silent about foreign interventions in local cinema that would help explain how that cinema met its fate during the hapless war years and how alien forces caused its disrepair and dysfunction. Unaccounted for are the roles played by two foreign agents shaping cinema’s development—the Japanese and the Americans. This left local film historians to gaze inside their own world and define the experience of wartime cinema as, primarily, a Filipino experience. While this navel-gazing made us Filipinos take a grip of the trauma caused by war, including the destruction on our local movie industry, a more rounded perspective of what happened that would hold accountable foreign forces that destroyed and re-built local cinema, would make for a more holistic view of the period.

Particularly in the case of cinema during World War II, the rupture caused by war needs to be brought into the open, problematized and written about. But what knowledge is available? Despite the many references to the period in post-war film literature, historical narratives tend to mainly recognize Filipinos’ contributions, leaving figures that were foreign, Japanese or American, or issues of foreign significance, to be relegated to the margins. To cite a few problems, one may want to know what foreign-sourced film policies (not only referring to general cultural policies already brought into the open by scholars like Terami-Wada and Jose) had direct bearing in controlling the local movie industry? Concomitant to this, can we name those Japanese or American officials who were responsible in drawing up and implementing policies that governed local film affairs?

As must be reiterated, Philippine cinema has been impacted by global forces that brought film to its shores and have ever since been influenced by them in its material and cultural growth. This understanding has made local cinema’s identity contested and problematic, no matter how much nationalism, as an ideological construct, has made us believe in Philippine cinema’s essential virtues to be of native cultural expression.

PHILIPPINE CINEMA’S HISTORICAL CONTINUUM

For a better understanding of wartime cinema, a historical timeline shown below helps visualize the continuum of the country’s film growth and locates the cinema that emerged during World War II.

Locating WWII in the History of Philippine Cinema

From Colonial Cinema……………………to……………………National Cinema

To better appreciate the position that World War II cinema occupies in this historical trajectory, a brief discussion is necessary to describe pre-war (some call it peacetime) cinema and post-war cinema. Cinema before the war may be termed colonial cinema—although this is seldom named as such by local film historians, making us believe in their rhetoric that cinema was already Filipino from the start. This belief is erroneous because film, not being indigenous to the country, was an imported commodity. The film was brought into the country by Spanish businessmen in 1897 and the Spanish influences, as described by my book¹ on the subject, continued to strongly shape the cinema that was to form even under the American rule and beyond. It is this cinema’s continuing saga of becoming Filipino which has greatly inspired this book series.

Serving as historical background, the pre-war situation is briefly discussed in Chapter I for us to see the forces that motivated Japan to colonize the Philippines and to want to change its cinema that was criticized by Japanese propagandists as a western imitation lacking an authentic Filipino identity. Fueled by its own nationalism with dreams of becoming a world power, Japan’s drive towards territorial expansion led its military to colonize its neighbors. This started with Japan’s overseas foray in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. This would lead to the 15-Year War that ended up devastatingly for Japan with its defeat in World War II. After Japan reached a stand-off in its expansion in the north to Manchuria, China, and Russia, the Japanese military embarked on a movement to occupy countries in the south. This resulted in World War II that included the invasion of the Philippines.

It is interesting to note that at the time when Japan started colonizing its neighbors at the end of the 19th century, there were three important events happening in the region during that period: (1) the colonization of the Philippines by the U.S. in 1898; (2) the arrival of motion pictures as early as 1896; and, (3) the rise of Pan-Asianism at around the same time. The American occupation of the Philippine Islands did not escape notice from the Japanese military that had already added nearby countries like Choson (now Korea) and Formosa (now Taiwan) to its list of conquered territories. The American intrusion into the Far East may even be seen as adding fuel to the desire of Japan to conquer its neighbor, the Philippines, as Japan had ambitions to rule the entire South-East Asian region. America’s sudden appearance in Asia as a new colonial power formed a new threat to Japan’s ambition of dominating the region.

While Japan prepared for an eventual conflict with colonial powers controlling countries it desired to conquer, motion pictures rose to its popularity in Japan (as it did in the Philippines and everywhere else it was introduced). In no time, the Japanese military saw in motion pictures a weapon that could be used for the purpose of war. It could be as effective as the use of guns in the battlefield. In every success the Japanese military had during its overseas conquests, films visually captured those victories in moving pictures. Triumphant images brought back home bolstered Japan’s rabid nationalists to crave for more territories to conquer. Film provided Japan the confidence it needed from the home crowd. Authorities began to look at how film could be effectively used in support of Japan’s military advances. This led to state-sponsored policies (most notably seen in the Motion Picture Law, or Film Law, of 1939) that officially bestowed on motion pictures the role it played as a war instrument. Those policies would also find their way to the Philippines when it was time for the country to become colonized by Japan.

It is also of interest to point out that towards the end of the 19th century, Pan-Asianism began as an intellectual and cultural movement. The region was seen as belonging to Asians, in contrast to the reality at the time of the region being under colonial control—territorially, economically, and socially. A generation of intellectuals from Japan to India, from Indonesia to China, as well as those in the West, developed a consciousness that contraposed Asian interests against those from the West. This intellectual movement would, like cinema, find its use in the Japanese ideological framing of the war as a way to counter western hegemony and bring Asia back to Asians. This found official sanction in the creation of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere which justified the Japanese occupation of Asia’s southern corridor as an act of integrating the region into one economic and cultural community under the leadership and patronage of Japan. This regional solidarity was made to resonate in the Japanese–controlled movie industries found in the occupied territories where they were seen to form into a unified market whose center was Tokyo, away from the leading film capital dominating global film market then, as it does now—Hollywood.

In the timeline given above, the outbreak of World War II created a violent blow to American (i.e. Hollywood) dominance in the country, although this dominance resumed more strongly after war ended. When independence was finally declared, what was earlier called Tagalog cinema became Philippine cinema, due to the expediencies brought about by the declaration of Philippine independence. It is astonishing to find that within ten years after the devastating war, with the movie industry literally reduced to ashes, this cinema attained its golden age in the fifties, when the emergence of the studio system, maturation of the film genre, and the rise of popular movie stars, together with the presence of strong market forces, all contributed to bring Philippine cinema to the peak of its maturity. After that golden decade, the same cinema came to a steep decline, a victim of its own commercialism.

As the movie industry suffered from its excesses as an industrial cinema, a more powerful force, one that was politically motivated, steered cinema towards a different path. The declaration of Martial Law² in 1972 brought a saving grace to the commercial film industry; but, for those who opposed the regime, it was a bleak period that produced dark narratives for that era. When the dictatorship ended in 1986 with the EDSA People’s Power Revolt, the local cinema was in a state of transition, as it tried to find its bearings after the shock it took from the military regime. But the industry as it was known in the past was no more. The strong foundations provided by the industrial infrastructure crumbled due to a confluence of many factors, among them are labor problems, heavy taxation, censorship, and the ubiquitous American films flooding local screens. A new age came with the decline of the movie industry towards the end of the 20th century. As the new millennium started, technology changed from film to video. The emergence of video technology promised to redefine cinema, although its analog technology did not fulfill its much-touted promise. Analog video’s threat became a reality only with the coming of digital technology. And this is what cinema has become in the early part of the 21st century.

Given the long history of the local development of cinema, this book points out how several episodes have been scarcely written about, such as the period of early cinema and the Japanese period. For wartime cinema, accounts of the war were mostly on effects of the war, and were hardly about contemporaneous events within the period. War was only retrospectively seen. Long overdue is for wartime cinema to be studied for all its worth.

WARTIME CINEMA

To better understand the three-year war and the cinema it spawned, another timeline is presented below, this time, illustrating the years covered by Japanese control over the local movie industry and the few landmark events which helped define the period:

Timeline of Cinema in the Philippines, Locating the Three -Year Japanese War

The Japanese War, as war in the Philippines during World War II was called by those in the country, was one that had its origins abroad. Its planning was hatched in Japan by a military bent on expanding its country’s territory. On the other hand, Philippine liberation was also plotted in another country, this time, by the War Department in the United States of America. Together with the Philippines, the three countries were caught in a macabre dance of death. This triadic coming together brings to mind a similar incident that put the Philippines in the uncanny situation of being caught in a war between Spain and the U.S. half a century earlier. In both conflicts, cinema was conscripted to play a role where each conquering power made use of motion pictures to advance its own colonial interests.³

In the years leading up to World War II, film was an essential part of Japanese military preparations because of the state support it received to bolster its deployment in war. Chapter II details the preparations made by the Japanese society to assume a ready-for-war attitude. The Japanese Diet, or Japan’s legislative congress, passed the Motion Picture Law of 1939 to give official recognition to the use of motion pictures for warfare. This was to serve as a legal template guiding film’s utilization in war. By nationalizing policies governing film use, the Motion Picture Law was considered to be the first cultural legislation in that country. It is clear that, of all the arts in Japan, it was film that the state found to be the most useful for its impending war activities. Placed under state control and with the military behind it, the film law was strictly applied in Japan, but found its application in colonized territories such as the Philippines problematic. The law also found complementary support from the cultural and administrative policies issued by the Japanese Military Authority soon after it was established.

In advancing what had been tagged by the Japanese military as film maneuvers, a civilian force in the military organization was formed. This unit was called the Propaganda Corps composed of Japan’s bunka senshi (or cultural warriors). They were Japan’s intellectuals, or bunkajin, and counted among them men of letters, artists, those belonging to religious orders, philosophers, and media people, including those in motion pictures and radio. It was a group of civilians embedded within the military, young Japanese men with outstanding talents. Instead of fighting in battlefields, they accompanied military soldiers to wage cultural warfare among the occupied populations.

The group’s mission was to convince Filipinos that the Japanese came to liberate them from their American oppressors. They did this by implementing cultural policies that were handed to them before leaving Tokyo. Among different media they used to wage their cultural warfare was film. They used this and other media to pacify local inhabitants while also performing other non-combatant tasks. Whereas bullets were used to coerce Filipinos to submit to Japanese authorities, cultural activities were organized by the propaganda team to placate and convince both the civilian population and their patriotic defenders to side with the Japanese. But, in essence, as the Propaganda Corps was militarily attached, it was to the Japanese military that its loyalty and allegiance remained.

With film given high priority in the pacification campaign, movie houses were made to open at the soonest possible time in order to create an atmosphere of normalcy. The propaganda team believed that films served as effective tools to communicate Japanese messages to the largest number of people. But the struggle to re-orient Filipinos from their Hollywood patronage and redirect them towards a nationalist orientation became a difficult challenge for the occupying army. Contradictions arose regarding the way cinema was handled by the Japanese military, which was unable to rid Hollywood’s pervasive influence on entertainment overnight, despite being at the height of their power.

The conflict that met Japanese propagandists was merely symptomatic of the greater struggle they waged in winning Filipino sympathy. With the same dogged determination of soldiers fighting at the war front, they struggled to displace existing systems of iconographic representation and the ideologies they represented with new symbols of Japanese culture, such as the introduction of the Nihonggo language in schools and in radio broadcasts. The maneuvers they used in culture served as hard proofs of their calculated, aggressive, and coercive attempts to dislodge one colonial power and replace it with their own.

The chapters that follow address the ways in which the Japanese executed their film maneuvers. Starting with the propaganda unit’s inventory of local pre-war cinema in Chapter III, its systematic research of the country’s film resources, both material and human assets, provided its members with knowledge of the country’s film and media resources. Their findings and observations published in popular film magazines in Japan such as the Eiga Junpo that had not earlier been consulted by local film historians,⁴ one appreciates the amount of data and the systematic process taken by the propaganda research team to reveal the widespread growth of moving pictures in the archipelago, albeit dominated by Hollywood. In those researches was profiled a nascent Tagalog movie industry struggling against its own dependency towards American film resources. Imitativeness marked the practice of moviemaking while under U.S. colonial control. The copycat phenomenon found to be pervasive in Tagalog movie industry gave the Japanese critics the opportunity to propagandize their intent to liberate local cinema from the yoke of American cultural imperialism.

From the inventory of pre-war cinema came impressions of Hollywood’s heavy influence in shaping the country’s state of motion picture entertainment, such as those found in Chapter IV. One critic, Tsutomu Sawamura, even went so far as to blame America’s filmic influences for shaping even the Filipinos’ spiritual well-being, robbing the people of their own true Asian identity. Filipino identity was spiritually molded through Hollywood movies, as Sawamura noted, allowing it to assume Western trappings. From the sheer number of western-designed movie houses all over the archipelago to popular movie genres, from movie star icons to English-language fan magazines that outsold books, it was obvious to Japanese observers that Filipinos strongly patronized American movie culture. This reality, in turn, imposed a Western shell in the conception of native Filipino identity. The Japanese were convinced that what they saw in Filipino movies were blind imitations of western entertainment; and that the Filipinos’ authentic identity was yet to be found. It was for this reason, according to official Japanese propaganda, that the Japanese were compelled to liberate their fellow Asians from the Occidental movie spell.

Based on the figures the Japanese propaganda agency gathered through its researches, observers (including noted writers like Hidemi Kon) criticized the quantity and quality of American film entertainment Filipinos consumed and produced. They believed that imitating Hollywood film traits only stunted local film growth. Despite the increasing number of local film productions, local cinema continued to be marginal. This could only be explained by the flooding of Hollywood film products in the local film market. Whatever achievements local filmmakers made, there was the ever-present dependency on Hollywood and a reference to its aesthetic and business standards as the measures of success. Fifty years after motion pictures were introduced, local cinema failed to escape from the shadow of its master cinema—Hollywood. While there was truth to these observations, it could not be denied that the Japanese propagandists used the negative traits they found in Filipino films to full advantage in their own propaganda campaign to advance Japanese military agenda. By denigrating Hollywood as a source of the evil corruption of the Filipino soul, Japanese critics found a convenient argument to encourage Filipinos to shun their western nemesis and provided a convincing appeal for a return to native identity, obviously through Japanese intervention.

The next chapter provides a unique opportunity to identify the personalities behind the wartime propaganda machine and get into the minds of intellectuals who masterminded the plan to change the course of local cinema. Several personalities stand out for their participation in film maneuvers. They include critics with their own theories on how to transform Filipino cinema, namely Tsutomu Sawamura (who was also a scenarist and filmmaker) and Hidemi Kon (also a noted novelist), and film directors like Yutaka Abe and cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima. Except for Abe whose name has been frequently invoked in association with the propaganda movie, Ano hatta o ute (Dawn of Freedom, 1943, henceforth, only the English title will be used), other film persons and their contributions have only recently been re-evaluated and given their rightful significance in this book.

To know what was inside a Japanese mind regarding the mission to transform local movie-making, a three-part essay printed in Philippine Review by film critic Tsutomu Sawamura offered insights on how the said task was to be performed. After a blistering critique of the imitative local movie industry, he introduced his vision of the ideal cinema. In it could be found the spirit of art, which was necessary to transform local films through the values of truth, goodness and beauty.⁵ For Sawamura, films produced under the oppressive dominance of western filmmaking only created poor imitations of the Hollywood cinema it tried to copy. Finding fault in this practice, he pontificated on the value of art in cinema as a way of discovering the true expression of Filipino identity. His discussion on the importance of finding the fundamental point in making movies through truth, goodness and beauty would usher in new and authentic expressions for Filipino filmmakers. In arguing for his ideas, it was obvious that Sawamura was batting for the Japanese model in making movies, instead of the prevailing Hollywood-style filmmaking practiced by Filipinos.

One needs to see Sawamura’s impassioned appeal as part of the propaganda tactics espoused by the agency he represented. Promoting the wartime ideology to achieve a Greater East Asia movie industry, he was advancing the idea of having Tokyo—and with it, Japanese cinema—as the center of this new regional movie industry that would supplant Hollywood. It is important to keep in mind that Sawamura used film criticism as a way to wean local cinema away from its dependence on Hollywood. While he, too, made use of scenario writing to actually put his thoughts to action, the only film in which he wrote the scenario, Tatlong Maria (Sannin no Maria/Three Marias, 1944, henceforth only the Tagalog title will be used), remains to be a missing film. This frustrates efforts to validate his idealistic theories by comparing them with actual results that would have been evidenced through his work, had it survived. That leaves Toyo no Gaika (Victory Song of the Orient, 1942, henceforth only the English title will be used), a war propaganda documentary he and a team of Japanese and Filipinos shot and edited, as the only basis upon which to evaluate his words from his work. As claimed by Kon, it was Sawamura who assembled the entire footage covering the fall of Bataan and Corregidor, a virtuoso piece of filmmaking accomplished under the pressure of war.

Another strong voice commenting on local cinema came from Hidemi Kon. As head of the film unit of the Propaganda Corps, he was actually more of a literary man than a film person. His writings on his role in implementing film policies, particularly during the first year of the occupation, show how significant he was in the Japanese film maneuvers in the country. As an intellectual, he introduced the concept of cultural construction to help local cinema overcome western influences. His goal was to turn the ideals of establishing the Greater East Asian cinema into reality.

Kon oversaw film activities soon after his troops occupied Manila. Despite being at odds with Japanese military authorities over the early opening of movie houses, he saw to it that a sense of normalcy was in place by getting people in the occupied city to watch movies. Chapter V narrates various film activities as they came back to life under the Japanese. Theater houses were opened, films were distributed and shown in provinces, and Japanese films were imported to augment the dwindling supply of Hollywood and local films. The Eiga Haikyusha (Central Film Distribution Office) served as the main agency to distribute movies. Censorship was applied in all films that were shown, as it was also strictly observed in other media like theater and radio broadcast.

FILMS PRODUCED DURING THE WAR

In the middle of 1942, limited film production started. Chapter VI accounts for how locally made propaganda films were produced. Sequestered film studios provided equipment and facilities, as well as movie stars and crew to make films. With Sampaguita Pictures leading the way, with its services readily offered by its owner Congressman Pedro Vera, and resources of other leading studios like LVN and Excelsior confiscated, local moviemaking proceeded under strict supervision from filmmakers sent in from Tokyo. In total, there were only three full-length films that were produced—one documentary and two fiction films. Newsreels were also produced.

In the first year, several newsreel propagandas were made when a local news company called the New Philippines News was set up to churn out current news coverage of the war and civilian activities. Victory Song of the Orient was the only full-length documentary that was made soon after, and the first to be produced among Japanese-occupied territories in the south. In it was recorded the triumph of the Japanese Imperial Army over U.S. military forces in the battles in Bataan and Corregidor. Kon’s film unit covered the bloody encounters and it was Sawamura who assembled the footage with help from Filipino assistants under difficult conditions in the Sampaguita studio.

The two full-length fiction films were melodramas laced with propaganda. Ano hatta o ute (more popularly known as Dawn of Freedom in English or Bukang Liwayway in Tagalog) and Tatlong Maria were produced in December 1943 in time for the first anniversary celebration of the Japanese invasion for the former, and in October 1944 for the Japanese granting of Philippine independence for the latter. Due to a limited film supply, it was strictly observed that film production served only the purpose of war.

As the conflict dragged on, social collaboration and resistance towards the Japanese occupation became two highly contentious issues dividing Philippine society, as described in Chapter VII. Beyond the make-believe world of movies, real-life dramas took place as families were divided, loyalties severed and individual reputations shattered over issues of loyalty to or dissent against Japanese authorities. Tragic consequences resulted from those life-and-death decisions. During the war itself, those who collaborated claimed themselves to be the new patriots, overzealous in their act to liberate the country from its American oppressors. They hailed the Japanese occupiers as liberators. The KALIBAPI (Kapisanan sa Paglilingkod sa Bagong Pilipinas, or Association in the Service of the New Philippines) was the local Japanese-support organization because it was the only political party allowed to operate. Its card-carrying members supported the building of a New Philippines, and in turn received benefits. This citizens’ political group engaged in propaganda activities and helped in spying against fellow Filipinos who supported anti-Japanese activities.

Outside of film, there were other media propaganda activities that were waged through print, radio, literature, visual arts, and theater. The Japanese language was pushed to become a national language, together with Tagalog. Competitions were held for students to speak in the language of their new colonizers. Military-run newspapers carried positive reports of the Japanese winning the war (while remaining silent on its losses), while only negative accounts were written about the Allied forces. Literary competitions were held to support the Japanese ideals of living the Oriental way of life, espousing values of native living and renouncing Western influences. Japanese theater and culture were promoted through the arrival of Japanese performers. Other Japanese theater forms, like puppetry, were also introduced. Music, too, was made to serve the same purposes as those advocated by the Japanese in other media.

Conversely, it was also in those same forms of popular media that cultural resistance was waged by local artists, such as those in theater and literature, to counter Japanese propaganda initiatives. Dissent was expressed through underground means conducted in subterfuge ways for fear of enemy reprisal. While no anti-Japanese film was known to have been produced locally, resistance to military authorities was waged in the dark chambers of movie business, like passing on vital information to guerillas inside packed movie theaters. Famed actors as well as those behind the curtains engaged in underground resistance, serving as an undercover network between the civilian population and the underground guerilla resistance movement. Ironically, all these were done under the watchful eyes of Japanese soldiers.

U.S. COUNTERS JAPANESE PROPAGANDA

While it took time to draw up a master plan to counter Japanese propaganda, the U.S. finally set up the Office of War Information (OWI) to manage the production and dissemination of information on the war, both in the U.S. homeland and in Allied countries. The promulgation of OWI as a U.S. Government agency to manage war information bears comparison with the state-sanctioned Motion Picture Law passed in Japan. OWI’s operation in 1942 was a more belated response to war than the Japanese one which was set into motion in 1939. Similarly, both facilitated through radio broadcasts, newspapers, posters, flyers, photographs, films, and other forms of media, the connection between the battlefront and civilian communities. But while the Japanese law mandated the drastic reorganization of private film companies to serve Japan’s war plans, OWI could only issue official directives to guide private-owned Hollywood studios and the rest of the U.S. motion picture industry to cover the war. Chapter VIII lists specific policies tailored for the Philippines, although they were issued late as part of the U.S. post-war scenario to recapture its former colony. In those policies, films became a major focus to win the war on the Allied side.

Covering the war’s end in the Philippines, documentaries were mainly produced by the U.S. Army Signal Corps. As economic rehabilitation took place, media coverage became part of its plan, giving way to agencies like the U.S. Information Service (USIS) to produce newsreels and documentaries on the country’s rebuilding. Soon, Hollywood newsreel companies, private individuals, and quite surprisingly, publishing companies like Encyclopedia Britannica, started making their own educational documentaries about the country’s recovery from war devastation. While fewer in number, documentaries were of significant value to the efforts made in presenting the Philippines’ immediate post-war condition. In post-war Hollywood, big-financed movies that were specific to the war in the Philippines like Bataan, Back to Bataan, They Were Expendable, and An American Guerilla in the Philippines were produced. The films celebrated the heroism of U.S. soldiers fighting and dying in battle. Accounts of Filipino bravery and loyalty to the Americans were marginally taken up in those war narratives.

In the U.S.-army-produced films, documentaries and newsreels contained images that were not flattering to the Japanese people. They were depicted as stereotypes, as were their European counterparts, the Nazis and Italians. Japanese soldiers were shown as buck-toothed and slinky-eyed. In the narration, they were tagged as the yellow peril. In the opposite camp, similar efforts were made by the Japanese in conscripting cinema for purposes of propaganda. In their films, Americans were seen as white devils. The racial conflict between the two warring camps later found resonance in wartime Philippines, when the Japanese made films with local support. The screen became the Japanese battleground to wage its campaign to discredit Americans through films like Dawn of Freedom. Accounts of local viewership, however, showed that not all who watched the film were convinced of the propaganda it contained.

At war’s end, Filipinos returned to their favorite pastime of watching movies. Films were first seen in U.S. army barracks, as most of the movie theaters had yet to be rebuilt. Naturally, those shown were recent Hollywood flicks that had failed to enter the country in wartime due to the Japanese embargo of U.S. products, including films. When local movies eventually got made, audiences were greeted mainly by war subjects, whether comic or tragic. Extending beyond the scope of the book’s main topic, Chapter IX discusses films that were locally produced long after war was over. Soon after liberation, a mad scramble for negatives to be used for filming took place. But because the Philippines was merely a consumer market for raw film materials, local filmmakers relied on the U.S. for their film supply. That did not take long in coming. Film giant Kodak was quick to supply films to a Pacific market that it could have lost to Japan (and its competing brand like Fuji) had the Asian power won the war. It was soon business as usual with production companies competing to satisfy the population hungry for movie entertainment. It goes without saying that American film distribution companies swamped local screens with movies that were long anticipated by a public restricted from watching the latest Hollywood products.

As it had been before war commenced, the local movie industry’s dependence on U.S. film imports resumed. This underscored the irony besetting the declaration of Philippine independence when it was formally declared in 1946. While the country rejoiced over the granting of its independence, what did it mean to a devastated movie industry that desperately struggled to get back on its feet after three years of helpless devastation? The revival of the local movie industry could only be made possible through its reliance and complete dependence on U.S. film products. The plight of the movie industry underscored the country’s larger dependence in terms of its economic, military, and cultural needs on its former colonial master, the United States of America. How that dependence cast its influence in shaping what would emerge as the country’s national cinema provides interesting insights on the formation of Philippine cinema, now that the country had become an independent nation.

WAR STALKING LOCAL FILMS

Across decades, war took on various meanings to those who addressed the subject cinematically. Chapter X discusses fiction films (and also documentaries) produced by the local movie industry and independent filmmakers that tackled war themes. Titles represent the decades when they were produced—1940s/50s: post-war guerilla films; 1960s: Portrait of the Artist as Filipino and Manila, Open City; 1970s: Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God); 1980s: Oro, Plata, Mata (Gold, Silver, Death); 1990s: Private Wars; 2000s: Markova, Panaghoy sa Suba (Cry of the River) and Aishite Imaisu (I Love You). The films provide in shorthand an understanding of the progress taken by homegrown films in addressing the theme of war. They offer a wide range of emotional responses to the trauma that was caused. From anger to despair, films of the immediate post-war years spoke of bitter suffering and the Filipinos’ deeply felt sense of loss. The guerilla returning from war provided a striking image that evoked all sorts of memories and emotions in the audience. But not all films were of serious stuff. Others elicited laughter through comedies that poked fun at the foibles of being under a brutal occupier, if only to ease the pain of remembering a painful past.

As decades went by, films revealed the various temperaments of differing times. From the bitterness and recrimination of the early years, films descended towards bleak remembrances, later leading to films that would no longer look at the Japanese as enemies but at fellow Filipinos as their true enemies in the time of war. It was as if war happened only to bring out the worst traits in Filipinos. Films reviewed ran against the grain of what was stereotypical. This chapter finds in the narratives of selected films the breaking of stereotype images of the Japanese as one-dimensional characters only capable of violence. It discovers a changing pattern in the way the Japanese enemy has been represented in local films across decades. Throughout the years, the Japanese soldier evolved from the once dreaded enemy into an array of characters seen in a better, if not more human, light. With distance in time, contemporary views have shown images of reconciliation between Japanese and Filipinos in films that sought to heal the wounds of the past. But while it appears remarkable to find that decades after the war ended, Japanese screen representation has greatly evolved, war—in itself—remains resilient as a topic of interest.

As the 1990s set in and all the way to the new millennium in the 2000s, the war theme continued to haunt filmmakers in ways that are addressed through various perceptions depending on the temper and the politics of the times. The Cold War that gripped the world soon after war was over produced movies that reflected, as well, the political nature of the situation. Aligning itself with its war ally, the U.S., the Philippines naturally kowtowed with its patron with regards to film matters. Both foreign and local films suspected of communist sympathy, and no matter how faintly or merely suspected, suffered the fate of being banned outright or mutilated by censorship before getting shown. McCarthyism at its height found adherents in the Philippines through the overzealous instruments of government like the Board of Censors, or from those outside this agency which pressured its members to act on films that showed even the faintest sign of communist sympathy. No matter how far local cinema has progressed, war has remained among its most fascinating subjects which elicited perceptions and reactions that helped define both cinema and the society it serves.

WAR’S IMPACT AND LEGACY

Chapter XI is a reflection on the brand of nationalism which Japanese propagandists introduced into local film practice and consciousness. It investigates the inroads made by Japanese critics in refashioning local cinema and retooling it to attain the much-desired Filipino identity. This desire for national film identity came in consonance with the Japanese-proclaimed Philippine Republic. This bold experiment in cultural construction, as critic Hidemi Kon called it, found actual practice in eiga kosaku (film maneuvering). In this practice was found the deployment of propaganda to accomplish the desired goal of finding nationalism in film. Predictably, as Motoe Terami-Wada mentions in her Foreword, the construction warfare which aimed to construct the future of occupied territories could only come about after the enemy was brought to submission by destruction warfare. What the Japanese did to local cinema naturally went in dialectical opposition with the Hollywood model of commercial filmmaking already in place in pre-war society. The nationalism which became the locus of interest in cinema by the propagandists had its origin and inspiration from what the military-backed Tokyo government defined as its policies that would govern the definition and conduct of wartime national cinema. While there were two definitions that defined it, one culturalist and the other militarist, it was the former that may be seen to have guided, in particular, the thinking of scenarist Tsutomu Sawamura, in conceiving for local cinema its nationalist aspirations. It was his ideological and aesthetic contributions made through the essays he wrote and the actual film work he did in the country that embodied the lofty ideals of attaining the difficult task of forming Philippine cinema under the direction and control of the Japanese military government. Under the cloak of idealism and guided by the philosophy of Spiritism, Sawamura took the moral high ground in paving the path for Filipinos in arriving at a new cinema in step with the establishment of the new Republic.

Finally, in Chapter XII, a summary of the significance of the Japanese occupation on the emergent cinema is made. This final chapter recalls the views and practices made to transform local cinema to the ideals set by the Japanese film propagandists. It includes a review of the material as well as the aesthetic and ideological impact made on the local movie industry. However, closely studying the actual implementation of the Japanese ideals reveals the embarrassing material inadequacy faced by the Japanese propagandists while working in the country. For to realize their goal, they had to use the sequestered technical equipment locally owned by existing movie studios and relied heavily on hired local talents. They even made the American prisoners-of-war appear in propaganda movies in violation of war policies governing POWs. The legacy in wartime filmmaking may, thus, be seen to have found expression along merely aesthetic and ideological lines, with little lasting effect on the industry due to the war’s short duration. It may appear that the use of propaganda may all be but the lasting legacy bequeathed by the Japanese propaganda to the post-war movie industry as it took its own path in forging a national cinema. Ironically, for the local movie industry to get back on its feet, it relied heavily on the return of Hollywood, a situation no different from the plight the country faced in rebuilding the war-torn country through the support of the returning Americans. Under such a circumstance, the enthusiasm to attain independence and nationalism was spoiled by exhaustion and despair brought about by the nation’s debilitating war experience.

NOTES:

1. Nick Deocampo, Cine: Spanish Influences on Early Cinema in the Philippines (Manila: National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 2003).

2. Martial law was declared on September 21, 1972 by then Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos. This lasted until 1981 when, upon the arrival of Pope John Paul II, Marcos lifted the military rule that curtailed political and democratic freedom in the country.

3. One can make an exception of Spain which, at the time of its war with the USA, had an underdeveloped film industry. But as it would be seen years later, another battle (more cultural in nature) would ensue between Spanish and American interests in film soon after the Americans colonized the Philippines. This happened through the conflict between Hispanismo and Anglo-Sajonismo . Refer to Deocampo, Cine 14-19

4. See the Bibliography for list of newspapers and magazines.

5. On several occasions Tsutomu Sawamura mentions the three values of truth, goodness and beauty in his essay, For the Glory of Philippine Movies, Philippine Review (April 1944): 54.

Chapter One

War and Cinema

Chapter I traces historical accounts happening prior to the outbreak of World War II and before the spread of motion pictures in Asia. Events narrated in this chapter may appear remote from the actual subject taken up in this book. They are, however, necessary in providing the background to explain the tragic wartime events and the role played by cinema in the Japanese occupation, themes that will be adequately discussed in subsequent chapters. No matter how distant and remote the geopolitical reasons which shaped Japan’s desire to dominate the region, this chapter’s detour provides a historical perspective essential to the understanding of Japan’s occupation of the Philippines and its use of motion pictures to achieve its colonial ambition.

The presence of Japanese settlers in the country was felt centuries prior to the military invasion in the 20th century. Whether engaging in maritime trade or fishing or fleeing from Christian persecution—several Japanese communities started to settle in the country while it was under Spanish colonial rule.¹ While individual persons fancied transforming parts of the country into Japanese territories, no personal desires were fulfilled. It took the violent invasion by the Japanese Imperial Army to fulfill such dreams, although this army had higher ambitions than merely owning a few scattered islands. The Japanese military wanted to take control of the entire Philippine Islands, as it had done with its neighboring islands and territories.² Fueling the desire to conquer its neighbors was Japan’s implicit political ambition to dominate the Asian region with the army’s much sought-after dream of establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.³

The sudden Japanese invasion in 1941 caught those charged with the