WW2 5
Momotaro, Sacred Sailors
By Jasper Sharp. Momotaro, Sacred Sailors, a bizarre piece of wartime propaganda targeted at children, coming to UK Blu-ray over 70 years since its original theatrical release in April 1945. Sacred Sailors is a monumental work in the evolution of Japanese animation, and a testament to the dark days of modern history, funded by the […]
Books: Promiscuous Media
By Jonathan Clements. Hikari Hori’s new book Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial Japan 1926-1945, examines the first phase of the Showa Era, from the enthronement of Emperor Hirohito through to the end of World War Two. She offers an enthralling narrative of Japan’s first mass-media sovereign, but also the theories and critical […]
Tank Girls!
By Andy Hanley. For all of the abject horrors that World War II brought to bear, it’s hard not to be fascinated by the war machines that were so instrumental in the fighting. While the First World War was largely won and lost by weight of numbers and boots on the ground, with a smattering […]
Sacred Sailors
By Jonathan Clements. Japan’s first animated feature was a masterpiece of propaganda film-making, uncompromising in the bile it directed at the enemy, romantic in its evocation of home and hearth and of imperial Japan’s Pan-Asian aspirations, and still unsettling today in its depiction of the mindset of the Japanese military. Its survival to reach modern […]
Books: The Long Defeat
by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood. When it comes to WW2 war guilt, Germany sets the gold standard. As a nation it has accepted responsibility for the Holocaust, acted to suppress the symbols of the Nazi regime, and has made great efforts to reconcile with its neighbours. Japan seems to stand in contrast to this. Aside from a […]