© 2011 William Ahearn
In the 1930s, while Hollywood was obsessed with the “Orient” and the making of “yellow face” films that seemed to show up at the local cinemas on a weekly basis, East Asia was already enmeshed in what would become known as World War II.
Japan was becoming more militaristic with each passing year, occupying Korea in 1910 and Manchuria in 1931. China, after overthrowing the emperor in 1911, seemed to be in a continuous state of revolution, civil war, or battles among what government existed and the notorious warlords.
The circumstances in China, for example, were far more extreme than in pre-war France or post-war Italy and yet the films presented in this essay bear more than a striking resemblance adjusted for language, culture and filmmaking style to the French film noirs and the Italian neo-realists.
Having neither the space – nor the background – to simplify the political and military aspects of 1930’s East Asia into bite-sized chunks, I have decided to present edited clips of the films to let them speak for themselves and notating whenever possible what is only essential to understanding the context of the films.
The story starts in a dismal industrial area of Tokyo in 1935 . . .