%0 Journal Article
%T Flight school for the spirit of Myanmar:  Aerial nationalism and Burmese
%A Jane M Ferguson
%J South East Asia Research
%@ 2043-6874
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0967828X18793046
%X In 1935, two Burmese filmmakers traveled to Tokyo with the intention of acquiring the latest sound recording equipment and training in sound-on-film production. In addition to these stated goals, in Japan they co-produced the feature film Japan Yin Thwe/Nippon Musume, ¡®Japanese Darling.¡¯ The film depicts daring young Burmese aviators and a budding romance with a Japanese woman. The active harnessing of the symbolic capital of aviation ¨C the ideological notion of airmindedness ¨C through the mimetic capacities of cinema, could be seen as a prescient example of Pan-Asianism, predating Daitoa Kyoeiken ¡®Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere¡¯ propaganda. The film¡¯s explicit encouragement of Burmese techno-nationalism offers a compelling contrast to other examples of anti-colonial nationalism, which emphasize notions of ethnic history and Buddhist morality and concerns of religious decline in the face of foreign imperialism. However, a comprehensive analysis of the film industry and commercial aviation in Japan in the 1930s reveals a structural impetus for this collaboration, arguably overshadowing ideological motivations and results
%K Aviation
%K Burma
%K cinema
%K film
%K Japan
%K Pan-Asianism
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0967828X18793046