ABSTRACT

Separated by nearly two decades, the preceding quotes suggest a curious division among mainstream Japanese fi lm critics over the prevailing image of Chinese fi lms after the end of the Japanese empire and into the Cold War. Under the control of the Japanese fi lm industry, fi lm production in China during the 1930s and 1940s had been a colonial project whose value was measured less in terms of the box offi ce than of its usefulness as an ideological tool for Japanese imperialism. Since the early 1920s, Japanese critics had held mixed feelings toward fi lm-making on the Chinese continent. Shanghai’s proximity to Western fi lm studios and exhibitors was especially vexing to Japanese ideologues trying to purge Hollywood-style entertainment fi lms from their newly acquired colonial markets and replace them with Japanese production methods.