The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun
Wartime propaganda filmmaker examined
Documentary director looks at estranged father’s work
“Iwondered if there was a way to make a documentary film that portrayed the ‘truth’ of the war years, as well as compassion for my father.” Chonosuke Ise (1912-74), the father of film director Shinichi Ise, 72, was stationed in Java, Indonesia, during the war, tasked with making propaganda films extolling Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
In order to better understand his father’s legacy and discover what he might have felt when making his films, the younger Shinichi set out on a journey that would take him around the world, retracing his father’s footsteps in Indonesia and tracking down the original prints of the “phantom” wartime films in the Netherlands.
The results of this three-decades quest can now be seen in the recently completed documentary film, “Ima wa Mukashi (Now is Once Upon a Time),” which is being screened in Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Ivy covers the ruins of a building on the grounds of the Produksi Film Negara, a national film production company in Jakarta. This is all that remains of the Japanese film studio where Chonosuke made propaganda films as a member of Japan’s “Cultural Front,” from the time he deployed to Indonesia in 1942 until the war ended in 1945.
The studio made about 130 films during the war, mostly short featurettes of about 15 to 20 minutes. Chonosuke worked on many of them as a core staff member.
The documentary “Ima wa Mukashi” incorporates snippets from these films, which were made with the aim of assimilating locals into Japanese culture. We see children studying the Japanese language in “Good Children of East Asia” and a speech contest in “Japanese Language Competition.” In “Tonari Gumi,” locals form tonarigumi neighborhood associations similar to those in Japan during the war and Muslims make a deep bow in the direction of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
These films are now preserved at the Institute for Sound and Vision in the Netherlands, which once counted present-day Indonesia as part of the Dutch East Indies.
Shinichi first viewed his father’s films more than 30 years ago, when an Indonesian researcher at Nagoya University brought back copies from the Netherlands. He had not known of the wartime film credits of his father, who left behind many documentaries in the postwar years. After viewing his father’s early work, Shinichi decided to make a film retracing his father’s footsteps, and over time conducted interviews in Indonesia and the Netherlands.
However, his feelings about his father are complicated. When Shinichi was 3 years old, Chonosuke abandoned the family. As a young boy, Shinichi grew up hating his estranged father. Even when Shinichi arrived to pick up child support payments, Chonosuke — by nature a man of few words — seemed to have little to say to him.
But one comment had always left a deep impression on Shinichi.
“Back during the war, when Japan entered Indonesia, it was not an invasion but a liberation,” his father once said out of the blue.
“When I became older than my father ever was, an age when any day could very well be my last, I began to wonder what on earth he thought about all day, what was going through his head. I started to think that I should have been nicer to him.”
“I wanted to find out what he was thinking when he was working. I thought it might bring him even a little bit of happiness, if I made a documentary about his work that had gone so long without an audience. I made this film with that in mind.”
In the film “Ima wa Mukashi,” the camera pushes deeper and deeper into the narrow alleys of downtown Jakarta. Small children are running around and the sound of the Muslim call to prayer is heard. The film shows the lives of ordinary Indonesians whose lives are inextricably attached to these alleys. Elderly residents, who remember the Japanese occupation period, share their experiences.
As one man said: “The Japanese?
They were scary when they were angry. What did they always shout? ‘Bakkyaro! (You idiot!). What’s wrong with you?’ When they got angry, they were quick to punch and kick us.”
And a woman: “I was scared of the Japanese soldiers. They wore military swords on their waists. I was always running away from them because I was so scared.”
Shinichi collected the oral history of the residents of this downtown area, which he chose as grounding point for his film. He did not arrange these interviews in advance, but rather met the speakers by chance.
On a wall of the defunct Japanese film studio is a sculptural relief of a Japanese soldier trampling an Indonesian laborer, the butt of his rifle pointed at the laborer’s face.
“The generation of our fathers and elders did a terrible thing, especially to Asia,” Shinichi comments at one point during the documentary. “I think it was something that cannot be taken back.”
“They said Java was paradise, Burma was hell, and New Guinea was a place you couldn’t return home from alive,” Shinichi said.
“People who had been to the fiercest battlefields may have thought that movies were just a trifling diversion. But I think my father, who at a time of great upheaval became involved in the war, suffered trauma in his own way.”
But the documentary doesn’t moralize or try to convey a strong message of right and wrong. Instead, it reflects a multifaceted reality, pieced together
over 30 years.
Shinichi explained: “Conversations about war tend to lead to the conclusion that we already know, ‘war is bad.’ But this prevents people from taking it a step further and really thinking, so the realities go unconveyed. I think it’s important that we continue thinking on our own, and not simply align our thinking with what people say is ‘right.’ I thought a lot about the war while making the film, and still continue to think about the war now. If I had just put the film together quickly 30 years ago, I doubt I would have ended up thinking about it so much.”
Over the course of the project, Shinichi would come to be accompanied by his eldest son, Tomoya, also a director, and eldest daughter Kayo, an actor. In this way, the documentary is a journey spanning three generations, and a passing of the baton of memory into the future.
The film was completed in the midst of the unprecedented coronavirus crisis.
“Everyone has begun to lose clarity, even the government,” said Shinichi. “In such times, it is important to reflect on the past. I hope it will help us think about the present. Now is once upon a time. Once upon a time is now.”
The documentary can be seen at Shinjuku K’s Cinema in Tokyo until Sept. 24, before traveling to Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Yokohama and elsewhere. An English-subtitled version is scheduled to be released in November. For more information, visit the Ise Film website at https://www.isefilm.com.