Lost Pasts and Unseen Enemies: The Pacific War in Recent Japanese Films

This essay examines the representation of the enemy in recent example of Japanese cinema portraying the Second World War in the Pacific. Since 1945 the history of the war itself, and the record of Japan’s aggression against its Asian neighbours, the United States and its allies have themselves become battle grounds disputed by national and international commentators. As a result, the depiction of Japan’s war in popular culture has been marked by obfuscation and ambiguity, with historical fact as much as national perspective being contested by the creators of fiction, films, comics and animation. In many such examples of post-war popular culture, representations of Japan’s adversaries, most notably Americans, have been virtually absent, or have been limited to faceless, distant aircraft or ships on the horizon, the crews of which remain invisible and anonymous.

In two films addressing the problematic history of the Japanese Kamikaze tactics adopted in 1945, the effort of recovery of a stable national past is located within familial history and the (re)discovery of lost relatives. Assault on the Pacific: Kamikaze (2012) and The Eternal Zero (2014) eschew all representation of the ‘enemy’ until climactic battle sequences showing suicidal attacks upon American warships, which stand as moments of both national pride and mourning. Contradictions apparent in these films’ interpretation of Japan’s war (both lamenting the destruction and loss of life suffered by both Japan and her adversaries, and celebrating the past sacrifices which produced modern, peaceful and prosperous Japan) complicate the portrayals of wartime enemies, now post-war allies and trading partners. Within current nationalist and pacifist discourses of the country’s disputed past, the ‘enemy’ is therefore frequently relocated within the militarist establishment as the source of Japan’s war and her people’s suffering. Yet in these films the continued honouring of the nation’s war dead remains as a gratifying element for a patriotic home audience, and a revisionist provocation for Japan’s former enemies.