08:33
Tieng Anh Vui
ONE young filmgoer in Tokyo was clear about why he was queuing up for a third viewing of “Eien no Zero”, or “The Eternal Zero”. The message for him in the film, which is about a group of kamikaze pilots attacking American ships at the end of the second world war, was that young men in those times were manly and purposeful in contrast to today’s “herbivorous” youth. The tokkotai, or “special attack force”, as the pilots are known, have long been controversial but never has their story been so popular at home. “The Eternal Zero” (named after the type of plane flown by the kamikaze) is likely to become one of the most watched Japanese films ever.
Another viewer, Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, declared himself “moved” by the film. Naoki Hyakuta, the author of the best-selling novel on which it is based, is close to Mr Abe. Last year Mr Abe chose Mr Hyakuta as a governor of NHK, the public broadcaster. Mr Hyakuta’s beliefs are right-wing even for a conservative and, while campaigning for another right-winger, Toshio Tamogami, in the race for the governorship of Tokyo this month, he declared that the massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing in 1937 “never happened”.
As “The Eternal Zero” has packed cinemas, Minamikyushu, a city in southern Japan, has also been doing its bit to rile the neighbours. It has submitted documents from kamikaze pilots to UNESCO for inclusion in its “Memory of the World” register of important papers and manuscripts, which includes Magna Carta and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Among the artefacts are pilots’ farewell letters, diaries and poems from the city’s Chiran peace museum, a memorial at a former airbase from which hundreds of kamikaze sorties departed.
Both the film and the collection of documents misrepresent the pilots. The right wing seeks to present them as willing fighters who died heroically for their country. In “The Eternal Zero”, the message is at first subtle, as the protagonist, an elite pilot, tries to subvert the military by trying to survive. Yet he becomes a true hero only when he accepts his mission and dies in a blaze of supposed glory. The museum and its collection of documents also broadly support this interpretation. But Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, a historian, says most recruits were in fact forced to volunteer. She wonders whether the pilots’ letters in Minamikyushu’s submission were censored by their superiors at the time of writing, or written under duress.
South Korea has objected to the move and China has reacted with predictable fury. The authorities in Nanjing say they will again send documents which prove the massacre of 1937 to the same UNESCO register. And there is good reason for China to pay attention to Mr Hyakuta’s view of history: it is succeeding beyond the box office. With Mr Hyakuta’s backing, Mr Tamogami, who has also denied Japan’s historic aggression, did surprisingly well in the Tokyo election, winning nearly a third as many votes as the winner. Asahi Shimbun, a newspaper, reported that about one in four 20-somethings, especially young men, voted for him.
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