Cannes Film Explores Japanese Textbook Controversy Through Student Eyes

By Adam Voiland '05

Koji Masutani '05 (below) only had three days remaining in Kyoto when he got the call. Who in their right mind would be calling at three in the morning? he wondered while groping for the cell phone.

"Is this Koji Masutani, the kid making a film about the textbooks?" a male voice on the other line demanded.

"Yes, and who are you?" Masutani replied.

"That doesn't matter. What matters is that you answer my questions!" Then a furious cascade of Japanese followed: "Why are you doing this? You shouldn't be asking these questions! What are you hoping to prove?"

In broken, stumbling Japanese, Masutani explained that he was an international student with Japanese ancestry making a film that catalogues student perspectives on World War II atrocities inflicted by the Japanese military. A concentrator in international relations, Masutani said he worried that Japanese students would lack even a basic understanding of events like the Nanking Massacre and the systematic abuse of "comfort women" if an ultraconservative wing of the Japanese government continued to encourage the use of watered-down textbooks in Japanese schools.

Masutani should have saved his breath. "Stop making the movie immediately," the caller threatened, "or people will come and kill you!"

The death threat did little to dissuade Masutani from submitting the film to the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, which accepted the documentary in its short-film category. The film, The Japanese Textbook Controversy: Through the Eyes of the Next Generation, screened on May 11, the opening day of Cannes, to an audience of film buffs and critics.

History is riddled with lapses into barbarism. But even within this abominable context, the brutality that occurred when Japan invaded and sacked Nanking in 1937 is remarkable. According to most historians, in the space of two-and-a-half months, Japanese occupiers systematically raped, tortured, and murdered some 300,000 Chinese civilians -- more people than were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki together, and more than the combined losses of Britain, France, and Belgium in the whole of World War II. During the massacre, Chinese men were used for bayonet and decapitation practice. Some 20,000 to 80,000 women were raped, and often disemboweled and mutilated afterward. During the height of the violence, live burials, castration, and killing contests became everyday occurrences.

However, some Japanese textbooks, particularly some pushed by the right-wing Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform and approved by Japan's Ministry of Education, refer to the Nanking Massacre and other wartime atrocities as mere isolated "incidents" and say nothing of the gory details or widespread nature of the violence. In fact, the approval of a sanitized textbook by the Ministry of Education caused massive anti-Japanese riots to burst out in China last April.

Although some Japanese textbooks are more comprehensive, Masutani said that one result of sanitized textbooks is that when students discuss the topic of World War II atrocities -- if they do at all -- the discussions almost always lead to sterile debates about the exact number of people killed rather than serious inquiries into the nature of the event.

Masutani's film is an effort to start more substantial conversation. It features eighty students discussing historical memory, the role of censorship, and the Nanking Massacre.

Although controversy about the textbook situation in Japan is constantly swirling, Associate Professor of History Kerry Smith says that Masutani's film is one of the first attempts to actually record the insights of students directly affected by the history books.

Masutani began filming the documentary during a year abroad with support from the Stanford Kyoto Center for Japanese Studies. He continued the project at Brown as an independent study under Smith and history Professor Richard Davis.

Unlike most documentaries, Masutani's sparse, minimalist movie doesn't have voiceovers, accompanying footage, or even a musical soundtrack. Its power lies in the voices of the Japanese, American, and biracial students who create a compelling collage of perspectives that, ultimately, bring Japanese students and others a step closer to facing historical reality.

The film's future is unclear, but already, eight distribution companies have expressed interest, including Fox Searchlight. Better yet, though, Masutani says he'd like to see the film distributed in Japan.