Our Enemy- The Japanese
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Our Enemy- The Japanese | |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Office of War Information |
| Starring | Joseph C. Grew |
| Distributed by | War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry |
| Release date(s) | 1943 |
| Running time | 20 min |
| Country |  U.S.A. |
| Language | English |
Our Enemy - the Japanese was a 1943 short film produced by the US Navy and Office of War Information to provide background knowledge about the wartime foe.
The film begins with the narrator, former U.S. ambassador to Japan, Joseph C. Grew, stating that he has lived in Japan for ten years and that their logic is incomprehensible by Western standards, and that they are 2000 years behind in ethical, social thinking.
The film is an odd assortment of truths and untruths; for instance, that Japan had been gear to a war path for the last 11 years, that it was a totalitarian society with a tightly controlled press and militaristic education system, and that war production was being made in family houses; these things were certainly true.
However other things are unsubstantiated. It implies several times that the Japanese are not inventive or resourceful, that they get much of their ideas for the west, "aping American newspapers" or copying Nazi propaganda. It also states that the Shinto religion had always been, and that the Japanese people have always believed, an ideology preaching world domination and fascism. In fact, the militarist brand of Shinto was a comparatively recent development.
