The first moving images ever filmed in Japan. Thomas Edison and other pioneers of the moving image had brought their amazing new technology to Japan a year earlier. Previously timeless, mysterious and isolated, Japan is beginning to transform itself.
Takeshi Endo, a retired school teacher. I remember the time before Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu and the absolute rule of the samurai. Everything is changing so quickly now.
For my liking, far too quickly and too much. Since the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the restoration of the power of the Emperor Meiji in 1868, Japan has become a place of commercial and cultural fascination for the West. But it has also been flexing its own muscles on mainland Asia. Japan had waged war against China in 1894 in dispute over the control of Korea.
Japan's imperial forces overwhelmed those of the Chinese emperor, who sued for peace. In the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed in April 1895, China had recognized the total independence of Korea and ceded Taiwan to Japan in perpetuity. It was Japan's first step on the road to imperial glory. A path that would be fleetingly triumphant, but would in just 50 years lead to catastrophe and humiliation. Japan's holy war.
Seisen. Port Arthur, Siberia, December 1904. Troops from Japan's 3rd Army, under General Mariskei Nugi, are preparing for the final assault on the Russian Imperial garrison. The Russians have held out for five months. Losses on both sides have been huge.
Japan sends 16,000 reinforcements and heavy artillery. Japanese sappers start to dig into the hillsides to plant huge explosives. The hills around Port Arthur fall one by one, leading the Japanese to celebrate an historic breakthrough.
The Russian Pacific Fleet in harbour is now vulnerable to artillery attack. Nogi deploys his 11-inch Krupp howitzers, capable of hurling 500-pound shells over 15 miles. The Russian commander, General Stossel, surrenders, giving Japan a remarkable victory. Stossel is escorted into captivity on his white horse, along with 25,000 of his men.
The Russian prisoners are treated with kindness and dignity by Nogi and his men. Nogi then marches his army to Mukden, where they inflict another crushing blow. defeat on the Russians. Later in the same year the SARS Baltic fleet arrives in the Straits of Tsushima.
It has sailed 18,000 nautical miles to reach the Far East where it confronts the might of the Japanese Navy under Admiral Togo. Japanese Imperial Navy inflicts a crushing defeat on the Tsar's fleet, sinking 21 of the Russians'28 ships and 7 of its 8 battleships. Togo returns to Tokyo as the conquering hero.
He is greeted by Emperor Meiji at the Imperial Palace. Then the two heroes of the war against Russia are united. Admiral of the fleet, Hiachiro Togo, and General of the Army, Marusuke Nogi. Journalist Saburo Katsura describes the scenes in Tokyo.
The whole city turned out to celebrate. A major Western power has been brought to its knees. We were proud to be Japanese.
Now we can move on to take our place as a first class nation in the eyes of the world. The Ussuri River, Siberia, 1918. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia and subsequent civil war has led the United States and the European powers to support a Japanese and Allied expeditionary force to secure eastern Siberia against the communist threat. The mission is to protect the Trans-Siberian Railway at Khabarovsk and seize huge stockpiles of supplies and munitions. The incursion will provide a major Asian bridgehead for Japan for several years to come. They also relieve Cossack troops and the Czech Legion who have been fighting the Bolsheviks'Red Army from the Ukraine to the Pacific.
Japanese Lieutenant General Oei, leading Japan's 12th Division, hosts Colonel Henry Steyer, commander of the US 27th Infantry, the Wolfhounds, part of the American Expeditionary Force, much admired by the Japanese and their Bolshevik enemies. General Oye enjoys a cigar with his staff officers. US Colonels Murrow and Robinson relax in the wintry sun, while the Allies exercise and fraternise together, following their route of the Red Army.
In just 25 years, the roles will be reversed. The United States and the Soviet Union will join forces to defeat the rise of fascism. And Japan and the United States will engage in a ferocious fight to the death across the Pacific.
Seoul, Korea, 1924. Invigorated by its success against Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, Japan had turned its attention to control of the Korean peninsula, the isolationist Hermit Kingdom. Effectively under Japanese control for several years, Korea had been formally annexed as part of the Japanese Empire in 1910. It immediately began to suppress the Korean language and culture, and exploit its people and resources. A state of affairs that would last for 35 years.
By the end of World War II, there will be over 850,000 Japanese living in Korea. Tokyo, spring, 1925. It is cherry blossom time, a time for renewal and optimism. Japan is now a strange mix of the modern and traditional.
In this spring festival, there is traditional dress. But most of the men wear western straw boaters or cloth caps. These innovations do not meet with the approval of many Japanese.
The diary of Yotaro Inaka, a civil servant. Why do we adopt these American fashions? We have our own culture.
We should respect it. Japan's towns and cities are becoming more and more affluent, especially through the growing influence of American goods and lifestyle. The influence of foreigners, especially Americans, is resented by traditionalists. Retired engineer Mitsuru Oyama.
The rich are getting richer and acting like Yankees. They bring disgrace to our people. In the countryside, the vast majority of Japanese live like they have for centuries, in a state of humble self-sufficiency, often bordering on abject poverty. Rice, tea and silk are vital to survival.
The work is back-breaking. Fertilizer brought from the towns in the form of human waste feeds the crops. Life is ageless and simple, and appears to be untroubled and tranquil.
But beyond the rustic scene, there are dark clouds on the horizon. The US Congress had passed legislation a year earlier prohibiting Japanese and other Oriental immigration into the United States. The move is deeply resented in Japan. Yutaro Inaka The Americans come to Asia and act like they are superior to us.
But they have no honor, no respect. They treat us like second class human beings and refuse us entry to their country. Closer to home, Japan's interests in China are being threatened by the rise of the Kuomintang under General Chiang Kai-shek.
Dalian, Manchuria, 1931. The Ural Maru arrives from Osaka, carrying comfort parcels for Japanese troops in Manchuria, one of several foreign garrisons in China. Parcels are provided by newspaper giant Asahi and are part of a propaganda campaign engineered by right-wing elements in the Japanese military. In order to generate a wave of nationalist fervor at home, the parcels are delivered in person by Asahi's director, Harada, and a posse of journalists, photographers and newsreel cameramen. Some are not convinced by the propaganda.
Journalist Ken Iwasaki. What is going on is dangerous. The fanatics in these secret societies, like the Black Dragons, are dragging us into war.
But nobody is brave enough to stand up to them. Japan has been expanding its interests in China and Manchuria for years. The South Manchuria Railway.
Vital to Japan's interests is used to transport the parcels to Mukden, the headquarters of Japan's presence in Manchuria. Lieutenant Iwayo Okubo, stationed in Mukden. We must take control ourselves.
If we wait for Tokyo, nothing will happen. It is our duty to act decisively in the interests of our homeland. It is our destiny.
An audacious plan is being hatched by nationalist elements within the army, acting beyond the control of high command in Tokyo, and without the sanction of the emperor. Itaro Inaka. We must defend our interest in China.
Japan cannot feed itself or get the raw materials for its industry, without a strong presence on the Asian mainland and throughout Southeast Asia. September, 1931, Mukden, China. Two army colonels, Seishiro Itagaki and Kanji Ishiwara, have devised a plan to ignite war in Manchuria.
On the morning of September 19th, two artillery pieces, installed in secret at the Mukden Officers'Club, opened fire on the Chinese garrison nearby. The Japanese armies moved into position in large numbers, and reinforcements arrived from the Japanese garrison in Korea. At first, Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek orders his army to fall back, and Japan occupies Chancheng and Antong with ease. Only in November do the Chinese attack, leading to intense fighting for several weeks. Iwae-O-Ukubo The generals were not brave enough to make this move But we showed them how to fight in the true Japanese tradition with spirit swiftly and decisively The Chinese army is ill prepared for battle and the country is beset by internal political wrangling and the effects of severe flooding in the valley of the Yangtze River.
Japan's army makes rapid progress, sweeping across Manchuria's wide open spaces. Iweo Okubo. It was exciting.
Nothing could stop us. Our supply lines became longer and longer. But HQ kept us going with excellent backup.
We despised the Chinese for not fighting with more courage. Within five months of the Mukden incident, the Imperial Japanese Army overruns all major towns and cities in the provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang. United States Secretary of State Henry Stimson declares that the United States will not recognize any government that is established as a result of Japanese actions in Manchuria. A League of Nations Commission, headed by British diplomat Earl Lytton, rejects the Japanese claim that the Manchurian invasion and occupation was an act of self-defense.
The League of Nations later refuses to acknowledge Japan's claims and in 1933 it resigns from the league. Journalist Akira Yamaguchi. It is typical of the hypocrisy of the Western powers.
They have had a colonial presence here in Asia for centuries. They call it benign partnership or some other ...the euphemism. But when we Japanese do the same, they call it naked aggression and condemn us. The port of Makden is secured for Japanese shipping and for Japan's commercial interest to begin to exploit the new territory. Koki Ashida, a businessman from Yokohama.
At last we have open spaces to expand into. We have natural resources, land for agriculture and labor to put to work. Now we can flex our muscles. Kyoko Yamashita, a school teacher, travels to Manchuria with her husband in 1932. At first, I was carried along with the excitement of our victory.
But the more time I spent with the Manchu people, the more I realized how much they resented our presence. We weren't liberating them from Western oppression. We were just replacing one sort of colonial rule for another. Japan begins to create a puppet state controlled from Tokyo. The last emperor of China, Puyi, is invited to come with his followers and act as the head of state for Manchuria.
On February 18th, 1932, the Manchu state of Manchukuo is proclaimed. The city of Changchun becomes the capital of the new entity. Two years later, Puyi is declared emperor of Manchukuo, but is nothing more than a figurehead, and real authority rests in the hands of the Japanese military officials.
Japan formally detaches Manchukuo from China in the course of the 1930s, and with Japanese investment in its rich natural resources, the area eventually becomes an industrial powerhouse. Throughout the 1930s, vast numbers of Japanese settlers migrate to find a new life. Propaganda films depict Manchukuo as a paradise of peace and harmony. Koki, Ashida.
This is Australia. Like the British, we need room for our people. Nobody complains about the British settling in Australia. So what's wrong with us moving here?
Besides, look at the progress we are making. It is a new country. The Chinese should be thankful instead of complaining.
Manchukuo is portrayed as a new Japan. economic turmoil and the impact of the global depression following the Wall Street crash of 1929 plunges Japan into turmoil and introspection. Many lose faith in parliamentary democracy and ultra-nationalist groups begin to form among the junior officer ranks of the army.
Mitsuru Oyama, a former Japanese military The Zaibatsu like Mitsubishi who control our industry need to be taught a lesson. They have grown too fat. The politicians are corrupt and bringing disgrace to the diet.
Only the emperor deserves our respect. We should restore his supreme power so that we have discipline and pride at home and a new empire overseas. Conditions worsen when American demand for silk collapses because of the Depression.
There is great hardship in rural Japan, especially in the north, the main recruiting ground for the army. Itsuro Oyama. It is our...
unbearable. In my district, families are so poor, they are selling their daughters to the tea houses. They dress them like geishas, but they are just prostitutes in Brussels.
What has become of our people? It has to stop. Japanese attitudes harden in spring 1932. On April 29th, Yun Bong-gil, a Korean nationalist protesting at the Japanese control of his country, carries out a bomb attack at a Japanese army celebration of Emperor Hirohito's birthday in Hongkou Park, Shanghai. The bomb kills Yoshinori Shirakawa. a general of the Imperial Japanese Army, and Sadaji Kawabata, the government chancellor of Japanese residents in Shanghai.
It also seriously injures several others. Yun is arrested at the scene and convicted by a Japanese military court and later executed. The Emperor Hirohito, who had ascended the Chrysanthemum throne in 1926, is concerned about growing army interference. The army is meddling in domestic and foreign politics, and its general willfulness is a state of affairs which, for the good of the nation, we must view with apprehension. The Emperor's anxieties are well founded.
1932, Shanghai, China. Instigated by local Japanese military, fighting breaks out between the Chinese army and the Japanese navy stationed in the city. The world is shocked by one of the earliest examples of the aerial bombing of cities, as Japanese planes attack the Chepe district of Shanghai.
It also witnesses how Japan's troops treat their captives. The honour and respect shown their enemies in 1905 have gone. In the ensuing battle, the Chinese hold their ground. Unable to retrieve the situation despite reinforcements from the fleet, the Japanese Navy has to call on the army for help. The high command in Tokyo organizes a fully-fledged Shanghai Expeditionary Force under General Shirakawa and reinforces it with two full divisions.
Intense fighting ensues. The Chinese finally fall back. Japan is able to announce a face-saving ceasefire, followed by an armistice. Although the Japanese are surprised by the results, Over the Chinese, the ferocious reputation of the Japanese soldier begins to spread. Captured by the Chinese in February 1932, Captain Kuga Noboru is returned to Japan in a prisoner exchange.
He commits suicide to atone for his capture. Lauded for his martial spirit by Army Minister Ariki, Kuga is later enshrined at the soldier's tomb in Yasukuni. From this time on, officers who survived battle are openly pressured to commit suicide.
January 1933, the Chumenko Pass, gateway to the Chinese province of Jehol, close to the Great Wall of China. Operation NECA. Japan is attempting to add J-Hall to its new entity, Manchukuo. Once again, the Japanese military creates a minor incident and uses press propaganda to justify its actions.
Japanese newspaper, the Miyako Shimbun. Japan's action to prevent the Chinese from entering Jehol and violating the security of Manchukuo is a necessary measure of self-defense. Emperor Hirohito approves the campaign, but insists that the Imperial Army goes no further than the Great Wall. The civilian population flees in terror in the face of the advancing Japanese army.
Chinese General Ho Chu Kuo's celebrated 9th Brigade forms part of the Chinese line, but they are armed only with light artillery pieces and small arms. Nevertheless, they fight for over three months to keep the Japanese at bay. Aritomo Yoshida, an officer in the Imperial Army. My respect for the Chinese grew and grew. They had few weapons and no tanks or heavy artillery.
But they held us for a long period. The unique terrain of J-Hall makes the fighting an unusual mix of old and new military techniques. Fighting takes place in the depths of winter in atrocious conditions. Aritomo Yoshida.
I have never been so cold. We had two enemies, the Chinese and winter. Winter was the most difficult to fight. We only had to face the Chinese from time to time. We had to face winter every day.
On March 4th, Chengdi, the provincial capital, falls, and in May a truce is declared at Tangu, handing Japan a vast new province to add to its empire. Japan's empire now stretches to the great plains of Central Asia and the peoples of Mongol descent, famed for their horsemanship and martial prowess. Over 100,000 men took part in the campaign, with heavy casualties on both sides.
It is estimated that China's losses were over 10,000. There were over 5,000 Japanese dead and injured. Manami Hayato, a nurse at a military hospital in Yokohama.
Some of the boys paid a terrible price. Apart from the usual awful wounds, many suffered from frostbite. bites they lost fingers and toes how will they work their only chance is that their families will look after them Throughout the 1930s, Japan quickly recovers from worldwide economic depression and begins to grow rapidly.
Hidetoshi Toyotomi, a businessman. We are doing well. People work hard, but we need more resources if we are to match the Americans and Europeans.
We need coal. oil and minerals. Not only that, our farmers can't keep pace with our growing population.
We need cheap food supplies, and everyone knows where they are. Its economy grows by 5% per annum, and between 1929 and 1937, its gross domestic product increases by 50%. Steel production rises from 6 million tonnes to nearly 9 million tonnes.
By 1941, Japan's aircraft industry is able to produce 10,000 aircraft per year. Much of this economic expansion benefits the old Zaibatsu, large industrial conglomerates like Mitsui and Mitsubishi, which grow closer and closer to the Japanese military. and the new Zaibatsu like Nissan and Toyota, which are booming from vehicle manufacture and producing military hardware.
Japan's people have a strong sense of personal and national discipline. A rigid education system teaches the cardinal principles of the nation. It defines Japan and the duties of its people in very precise terms. The unbroken line of emperors reign eternally over the Japanese empire.
This is our eternal and immutable national entity. Thus founded on this great principle, all the people... united as one great family, obeying the imperial will, enhance the beautiful virtue of loyalty and piety.
This is the glory of our nation. The Emperor is a deity incarnate, a living God, and serving him is seen as the duty of every citizen. Individuals must sacrifice their identity for the sake of the Emperor and the nation. Japanese diplomat Tetsuo Kawai, writing about the Japanese philosophy of Musubi. The history of the Japanese people is a record of our faith in nature.
The harmonization of our people with the forces of nature. Preserve nature and redesign it. cover oneself so teaches the philosophy of musubi following the dictate of musubi Japan will restore a degenerate China and the rest of Asia Armed with ideas like Musubi, 1930s Japan steals itself with a missionary zeal to liberate Asia from its immoral slumber and oppression by the West. And just in case anyone should resist these potent ideas, Japan's secret police, the Kempeitai, maintains a reign of terror against dissidents.
Yotaro Nagata, a doctor. I have heard what is happening in the cities with the Kempeitai. Although I don't support open dissent, people should be allowed to think for themselves. The old samurai would never have tolerated these young hotheads, who seems to be running the army now.
What has happened to Onna? Ueno Park, Tokyo, April, 1937. Cherry blossom time. A long-standing tradition in Japan.
This is the earliest example of colour film shot in Japan. The footage is on 16mm Kodachrome, a newly released film stock developed for home movie enthusiasts. It is shot by American military attache at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, William Carey Crane, who will later become a brigadier general in the U.S.
Army. The images depict endearing scenes of a tranquil country in harmony. But they are deceptive.
They hide internal turmoil and disguise a nation hell-bent on a relentless course that will lead to catastrophic global conflict and to its own terrifying demise. The brief life of the blossom, Sakura, symbolises the transient nature of human life and is used to inspire Japan's warriors. The Sakurakai is the name chosen by young Japanese officers for their secret society devoted to creating a military state. Japan's soldiers are expected, like myriad cherry blossoms, to scatter in the wind and die. Kyoko Endo, a Tokyo housewife, writes to her husband, an officer in the 35th Regiment, stationed in China.
I went to see the beautiful blossom today with our daughter. It is the first time we have done that without you. I wish this fighting in China would end so that you can come home. Tokyo seems so peaceful and everyone looks happy, but many are hiding their feelings.
If you ask why are we going on these adventures in foreign countries, people turn away. They don't want to talk. Those people who disagree with what's going on are arrested. It's not right.
Ten days after sending her letter, Kyoko is arrested by the Kempeitai. She is interrogated for three days and has to give them the details of all her friends and family and those of her husband. Lieutenant Endo, Kyoko's husband, never replies to her letter. He is killed in China.
Japan is firmly in the grip of those who want war. There seems to be nothing to stop them. They believe it will bring Japan glory and power, and its rightful place in the world.
But within a decade, they will be tragically disillusioned.