Know Your Enemy: Japan
Encyclopedia
Know Your Enemy: Japan is an American propaganda film directed by Frank Capra
, commissioned by the U.S. War Department. Completion was delayed by disputes between the Hollywood producers and Washington. The original intention of the film was to prepare U.S. soldiers for war before deployment in the Pacific, though ultimately it never realized this purpose due to the war’s abrupt end soon after its completion.
The film’s first public screening was in 1977 as part of a PBS special.
for the production of a series of documentary films to be released to the general public and to be used for the orientation of American soldiers before and during deployment. Commissioned as a major and placed in charge of the 834th Photo Signal Detachment, Capra produced the film series “Why We Fight
,” as well as other films, including Two Down and One to Go
and Know Your Enemy: Japan.
hired Joris Ivens
to supervise the documentary in early 1943, but after Ivens delivered a 20-minute preview, Frank Capra
told Ivens that the U.S. Army not only disapproved of the approach Ivens had taken towards portraying the Japanese, but that they also had requested that he leave the production team. Ivens’ approach had been to treat the Japanese as open-minded people being directed by a dictator, vilifying Emperor Hirohito. Allen Rivkin, one of the writers working on the script, commented that a large setback for the film’s production was the realization that “we couldn’t call Hirohito a war criminal because we knew we had to deal with him later…and it threw us into a tailspin. That’s why it took so long.”
The scriptwriters ultimately felt a lack of direction coming from Frank Capra
, aside from the knowledge that Capra was steering the film in a decidedly racist direction. Although the writers did not realize this, Capra’s racist depictions in the film came at the request of the producers.
In January 1945, the film underwent a series of final revisions to remedy an issue pointed out by the Pentagon: the film had “too much sympathy for the Jap people.” The film was released in its final form in 1945.
The film itself was a compilation of footage obtained from newsreels, the UN, enemy film, fictional Japanese movies for historical background, and re-enactments supervised by the war department. This footage was narrated by Walter Huston
and Dana Andrews
.
, and the totalitarian nature of the Japanese state. Today, it’s used to show the influence of images and sound over narration, and the portrayal of the Japanese people during World War II."
The film begins by discussing the soldiers of the Japanese army. This section focuses mainly on the appearance and diet of the soldier, much more than tactics and strategy. The film comments on the soldiers of the Japanese army as being, “as alike as photographic prints off the same negative.”
Know Your Enemy then discusses Emperor Hirohito as how the Japanese supposedly see him saying "entrust to one man the powers of the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the Premier of Soviet Russia; add to them the powers of the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and top it all with the divine authority of our own Son of God and you will begin to understand what Hirohito means to the Japanese."
After going over Hirohito's divinity and that this divinity is shared by Japanese people as a whole the film then goes into Japanese religion, Shinto saying it had been a "quaint religion for a quaint people" until 1870 when a mad fanatical conquer the world doctrine based on first Emperor Jimmu's commandment of "let us extend the capital and cover the eight corners of the world under one roof" was woven into it and called Hakko Ichiu
. The Yasukuni Shrine
is where the dead of all Japan's wars are buried and where the spirits of those killed inbattle will return.
After saying repeatedly if you are Japanese you believe these things the film then shifts gears slightly with the question "But if you're not Japanese then what is the real Japan; the Japan of the geographer, anthropologist, and historian?" After a brief geography lesson the idea of the Japanese pure divine blood is ripped to shreds with them called a plasma cocktail and then begins the history section. Here the emperor is portrayed as having little political power with the real power being in the hands of daimyo
s and their armies of Samurai
. The Samurai are vilified along with their code of Bushido
saying it "not only sanctioned double dealing and treachery but looked as it as an art to be cultivated." Then the arrival of Christianity and the warlords reaction to its teachings of peace and equality by throwing out the West and totally isolating Japan
for 200 years is used to further vilify them.
The film then compares the advances the West made in technology and the concept of liberty while Japan remained isolated until Commodore Perry's forced opening of it in 1853. The Westernization of Japan is discussed but always in the context of how the warlords were using it to further their own ambitions. The elimination of the position of Shogun
and the elevation of the previously powerless Emperor as a rallying point in 1868 with the warlords "reserving for themselves and themselves alone the right to speak for him and guide his policies" giving an impression of Hirohito as an effectively powerless figurehead. The film invokes the Tanaka Memorial
, now generally accepted to have been a forgery, as Baron Giichi Tanaka’s secret blueprint, Japan’s “Mein Kampf.”
The power of the warlords continues to emphasized for the rest of the film saying that they never took the moral or ethical principals that went with the ideas they borrowed and that all information is filtered down to the Japanese people having been first approved and altered to suit the purposes of the warlords. This is emphasized by how despite is modernization most of the Japanese people still lived and worked in ways effectively unchanged since the 17th century and that even the white-collar Japanese lived like his ancestors did in the Middle Ages once he got home.
The warlord's control over the Japanese people is used to explain the current expansionist and warlike actions of the Japanese and ends with the circumstances of 1945 Japan.
and on the same day as the bombing of Nagasaki
, which ultimately ended the conflict between the U.S. and Japan. General McArthur made the decision to withhold the film from the troops and recommended that it not see public release. The bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
were a turning point for American foreign policy in the Pacific, and when policy switched from war to negotiation, a movie persuading the American people to continue fighting became undesirable.
The historian John W. Dower
comments that the film “was a potpourri of most of the English speaking world’s dominant clichés about the Japanese enemy, excluding the crudest, most vulgar, and most blatantly racist." The film thus "captured the passions and presumptions that underlay not only the ferocity of clash in Asia and the Pacific, but also the sweeping agenda of reformist policies that the Allied powers subsequently attempted to impose upon defeated and occupied Japan.”
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
, commissioned by the U.S. War Department. Completion was delayed by disputes between the Hollywood producers and Washington. The original intention of the film was to prepare U.S. soldiers for war before deployment in the Pacific, though ultimately it never realized this purpose due to the war’s abrupt end soon after its completion.
The film’s first public screening was in 1977 as part of a PBS special.
History
When the U.S. entered World War II, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall made an official request of director Frank CapraFrank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
for the production of a series of documentary films to be released to the general public and to be used for the orientation of American soldiers before and during deployment. Commissioned as a major and placed in charge of the 834th Photo Signal Detachment, Capra produced the film series “Why We Fight
Why We Fight
Why We Fight is a series of seven war information training films commissioned by the United States government during World War II whose purpose was to show American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S...
,” as well as other films, including Two Down and One to Go
Two Down and One to Go
Two Down and One to Go was a short propaganda film produced in 1945; as its title might suggest, its overall message was that the first two Axis powers, Italy and Germany, had been defeated, but that one, Japan, still had to be dealt with....
and Know Your Enemy: Japan.
Production
Production on Know Your Enemy: Japan began in 1942, and was troubled from the very beginning by the inability of the U.S. government to determine what exactly the foreign policy towards Japan should be. Frank CapraFrank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
hired Joris Ivens
Joris Ivens
Joris Ivens was a Dutch documentary filmmaker and committed communist.-Early life and career:...
to supervise the documentary in early 1943, but after Ivens delivered a 20-minute preview, Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
told Ivens that the U.S. Army not only disapproved of the approach Ivens had taken towards portraying the Japanese, but that they also had requested that he leave the production team. Ivens’ approach had been to treat the Japanese as open-minded people being directed by a dictator, vilifying Emperor Hirohito. Allen Rivkin, one of the writers working on the script, commented that a large setback for the film’s production was the realization that “we couldn’t call Hirohito a war criminal because we knew we had to deal with him later…and it threw us into a tailspin. That’s why it took so long.”
The scriptwriters ultimately felt a lack of direction coming from Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
, aside from the knowledge that Capra was steering the film in a decidedly racist direction. Although the writers did not realize this, Capra’s racist depictions in the film came at the request of the producers.
In January 1945, the film underwent a series of final revisions to remedy an issue pointed out by the Pentagon: the film had “too much sympathy for the Jap people.” The film was released in its final form in 1945.
The film itself was a compilation of footage obtained from newsreels, the UN, enemy film, fictional Japanese movies for historical background, and re-enactments supervised by the war department. This footage was narrated by Walter Huston
Walter Huston
Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.-Life and career:...
and Dana Andrews
Dana Andrews
Dana Andrews was an American film actor. He was one of Hollywood's major stars of the 1940s, and continued acting, though generally in less prestigious roles, into the 1980s.-Early life:...
.
Purpose
"The hour-long film sought to educate American soldiers about their adversary's history and society, particularly the course up to the Pacific WarPacific War
The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...
, and the totalitarian nature of the Japanese state. Today, it’s used to show the influence of images and sound over narration, and the portrayal of the Japanese people during World War II."
Film Summary
The film’s main focus is on introducing the history and customs of the Japanese to the American fighting force. Throughout the film, a great deal of effort is put into juxtaposing the ancient customs with the modern aspects of Japan. This effect creates the feeling of a strange people with overtones of normality.The film begins by discussing the soldiers of the Japanese army. This section focuses mainly on the appearance and diet of the soldier, much more than tactics and strategy. The film comments on the soldiers of the Japanese army as being, “as alike as photographic prints off the same negative.”
Know Your Enemy then discusses Emperor Hirohito as how the Japanese supposedly see him saying "entrust to one man the powers of the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, the Premier of Soviet Russia; add to them the powers of the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and top it all with the divine authority of our own Son of God and you will begin to understand what Hirohito means to the Japanese."
After going over Hirohito's divinity and that this divinity is shared by Japanese people as a whole the film then goes into Japanese religion, Shinto saying it had been a "quaint religion for a quaint people" until 1870 when a mad fanatical conquer the world doctrine based on first Emperor Jimmu's commandment of "let us extend the capital and cover the eight corners of the world under one roof" was woven into it and called Hakko Ichiu
Hakko ichiu
was a Japanese political slogan that became popular from the Second Sino-Japanese War to World War II, and was popularized in a speech by Prime Minister of Japan Fumimaro Konoe on January 8, 1940.-Outline:...
. The Yasukuni Shrine
Yasukuni Shrine
is a Shinto shrine located in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is dedicated to the soldiers and others who died fighting on behalf of the Emperor of Japan. Currently, its Symbolic Registry of Divinities lists the names of over 2,466,000 enshrined men and women whose lives were dedicated to the service of...
is where the dead of all Japan's wars are buried and where the spirits of those killed inbattle will return.
After saying repeatedly if you are Japanese you believe these things the film then shifts gears slightly with the question "But if you're not Japanese then what is the real Japan; the Japan of the geographer, anthropologist, and historian?" After a brief geography lesson the idea of the Japanese pure divine blood is ripped to shreds with them called a plasma cocktail and then begins the history section. Here the emperor is portrayed as having little political power with the real power being in the hands of daimyo
Daimyo
is a generic term referring to the powerful territorial lords in pre-modern Japan who ruled most of the country from their vast, hereditary land holdings...
s and their armies of Samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
. The Samurai are vilified along with their code of Bushido
Bushido
, meaning "Way of the Warrior-Knight", is a Japanese word which is used to describe a uniquely Japanese code of conduct and a way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and...
saying it "not only sanctioned double dealing and treachery but looked as it as an art to be cultivated." Then the arrival of Christianity and the warlords reaction to its teachings of peace and equality by throwing out the West and totally isolating Japan
Sakoku
was the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner could enter nor could any Japanese leave the country on penalty of death. The policy was enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633–39 and remained in effect until...
for 200 years is used to further vilify them.
The film then compares the advances the West made in technology and the concept of liberty while Japan remained isolated until Commodore Perry's forced opening of it in 1853. The Westernization of Japan is discussed but always in the context of how the warlords were using it to further their own ambitions. The elimination of the position of Shogun
Shogun
A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...
and the elevation of the previously powerless Emperor as a rallying point in 1868 with the warlords "reserving for themselves and themselves alone the right to speak for him and guide his policies" giving an impression of Hirohito as an effectively powerless figurehead. The film invokes the Tanaka Memorial
Tanaka Memorial
The is an alleged Japanese strategic planning document from 1927, in which Prime Minister Baron Tanaka Giichi laid out for the Emperor Hirohito a strategy to take over the world...
, now generally accepted to have been a forgery, as Baron Giichi Tanaka’s secret blueprint, Japan’s “Mein Kampf.”
The power of the warlords continues to emphasized for the rest of the film saying that they never took the moral or ethical principals that went with the ideas they borrowed and that all information is filtered down to the Japanese people having been first approved and altered to suit the purposes of the warlords. This is emphasized by how despite is modernization most of the Japanese people still lived and worked in ways effectively unchanged since the 17th century and that even the white-collar Japanese lived like his ancestors did in the Middle Ages once he got home.
The warlord's control over the Japanese people is used to explain the current expansionist and warlike actions of the Japanese and ends with the circumstances of 1945 Japan.
Impact
The film’s main purpose was to keep the fighting spirit alive in the United States and to spur on the final push against the Japanese. However, the film’s release date turned out to utterly destroy its value. Released on August 9, 1945, Know Your Enemy: Japan came out three days after the bombing of HiroshimaHiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
and on the same day as the bombing of Nagasaki
Nagasaki
is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Nagasaki was founded by the Portuguese in the second half of the 16th century on the site of a small fishing village, formerly part of Nishisonogi District...
, which ultimately ended the conflict between the U.S. and Japan. General McArthur made the decision to withhold the film from the troops and recommended that it not see public release. The bombings of Hiroshima
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
and Nagasaki
Nagasaki
is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Nagasaki was founded by the Portuguese in the second half of the 16th century on the site of a small fishing village, formerly part of Nishisonogi District...
were a turning point for American foreign policy in the Pacific, and when policy switched from war to negotiation, a movie persuading the American people to continue fighting became undesirable.
The historian John W. Dower
John W. Dower
John W. Dower is an American author and historian.Dower earned a bachelor's degree in American Studies from Amherst College in 1959, and a Ph.D. in History and Far Eastern Languages from Harvard University in 1972, where he studied under Albert M. Craig...
comments that the film “was a potpourri of most of the English speaking world’s dominant clichés about the Japanese enemy, excluding the crudest, most vulgar, and most blatantly racist." The film thus "captured the passions and presumptions that underlay not only the ferocity of clash in Asia and the Pacific, but also the sweeping agenda of reformist policies that the Allied powers subsequently attempted to impose upon defeated and occupied Japan.”