Introduction to "Transcolonial Film Coproductions in the Japanese Empire"

This special issue brings new perspectives to colonial films by readings of primarily Japanesese-Korean coproductions. At the same time, we have included one study (by Hong) specifically on the films of the Manchuria Motion Pictures Corporation (Man’ei). Other papers (by Mizuno and Watanabe) further extend their analyses to consider connections with Manchuria. Through a study of Man’ei films as well as coproductions with complex trajectories across Japan, Korea, and Manchuria, these authors collectively help put into relief both the continuities and discontinuities between Japanese cultural rule over its formal colony of Korea, on the one hand, and the nominal nation-state of Manchukuo, on the other. Here we see differences and yet an uncannily similar imperial logic under which contemporaneous continental films were being produced. Building upon recent work on Manchukuo, which has begun to take seriously that this political unit was established in the form of a nation-state rather than a colony, such as Korea or Taiwan (Duara 2003; Han 2004), Hong’s article, for example, charts the antinomies of Japanese-Manchurian coproductions. In some regards, such as the common disavowal of racial or ethnic discrimination and the production of a kind of East Asian regionalism and universalism, the Japanese empire worked in similar ways in both its formal colonies and nominally independent allies within the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Yet there were critical differences and contradictions specific to the case of Manchukuo—for instance, in the explicit ideology of ethnic harmony and the obvious but still underanalyzed imperative to constitute national subjects of Manchukuo, rather than Japan.