Tag: japan

Posted on

Akira Kurosawa’s The Most Beautiful (1944): A Study in Propaganda

Akiria Kurosawa’s The Most Beautiful  opens not with an image of beauty, but with a brutal command: “Attack and Destroy the Enemy!” This command is followed by the totalitarian declaration that this is “An Information Bureau Movie for the People,” before the familiar Toho Studios logo even appears on screen. This is the disorienting introduction to Kurosawa’s 1944 wartime docudrama.

While nominally a Toho project, The Most Beautiful was created under the unyielding grip of Japan’s militarist government. By 1944, as resources dwindled and creative control tightened, it was one of only 46 films released in the country. Kurosawa had initially planned an action film centered on Zero fighter pilots, but with no military aircraft available for filming, he was compelled to pivot. His new subject: a “patriotic morale booster” about young women working in the home front.

Kurosawa ingeniously blurs the line between documentary and fiction. In what one might described as startlingly early anticipation of method acting, the actresses lived in the factory where they filmed, ate in its mess hall, and referred to each by their character names, immersing themselves entirely in their roles.

The story centers on a group of women at an optics plant, producing lenses for weapons of war.  When the government mandates a production increase—a staggering 100% for male workers, but only 50% for their female counterparts—the women, driven by a fervent sense of duty, passionately petition to have their own quota raised. The film chronicles their subsequent struggle, a grueling battle against exhaustion, illness, and personal sacrifice to meet these self-imposed targets.

As a historical document, The Most Beautiful offers a window into Japanese wartime society. It captures the realities of industrial mobilization: factory floor dynamics, dormitory life, management techniques, company calisthenics. showing us the lives of Japan’s equivalent of Rosie the Riveter.

Thematically, the film offers a distillation of a core Japanese cultural value: dedication, often referred to as “doing one’s best.” This cultural touchstone, likely familiar to anyone acquainted with Japanese media, finds an extreme and unsettling expression here. For 85 minutes, we watch these women do their best, pushing past physical limits, ignoring illness and family duties, all in the service of building weapons.

Here the virtues Kurosawa would later champion for humanistic ends—dedication, community, and self-sacrifice—serve imperial militarism.  These women work to “destroy Britain and America” and to ensure that the Yamato race would not have to live under the same sky as Chinese people.

Kurosawa himself would later grapple with his role in creating such propaganda, stating with stark honesty: “I offered no resistance to Japan’s militarism… I did not have the courage to resist in any positive way… I am ashamed of this, but I must be honest about it.”

And yet, for the cinephile, there is undeniable value in The Most Beautiful beyond its function as a historical artifact. You can witness the nascent signatures that would define Kurosawa’s later work. The director demonstrates his growing mastery of rapid-fire editing to convey urgency, intimate close-ups to reveal inner turmoil, and meticulously crafted compositions that transform a factory floor into a battleground of the will.

Furthermore, in a filmography often dominated by male bonding and power struggles, it is compelling to see Kurosawa, forced by circumstance, center an ensemble of women.

The Most Beautiful is not an easy film, but for those willing to engage with its complicated legacy, it is an intriguing if challenging piece of cinematic history.Thank you for joining me for the third installment in my series on World War II propaganda films. Next time, we’ll journey from the Pacific to the Atlantic to examine another narrative feature: the immortal classic, Casablanca.

Posted on

The Art of Cinematic Jujitsu: How Frank Capra Turned Enemy Propaganda Against Itself

When Pearl Harbor shattered America’s isolationist fantasies, General George Marshall faced a peculiar dilemma: how to transform farm boys and factory workers into global warriors who understood why they were fighting. His answer: have Hollywood’s most beloved populist, Frank Capra,  wage war with light and shadow.

This is our second examination of the propaganda films of WW2, and today we dissect Capra’s Why We Fight: The Battle for China.

Capra arrived at his Pentagon assignment with experience making beloved features like  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but he wasn’t a documentary filmmaker. His brilliant approach was conceptual jujitsu—he would let fascism indict itself. Enemy newsreels, speeches, and triumphalist spectacles would be surgically re-edited into their own damning testimony. “Let the enemy prove to our soldiers the enormity of his cause,” Capra declared, “and the justness of ours.”


The gamble paid off. Roosevelt, impressed by Prelude to War, ordered the series released to civilians—54 million Americans would eventually witness Capra’s cinematic sermons. The formula was simple: authoritative narration, swelling orchestras, and surgical editing that carved the world into moral absolutes.


The Battle for China shouldered a burden more delicate than the series’ other installments. Beyond selling democracy versus fascism, it had to perform cultural alchemy—introducing America’s Chinese allies and transforming Yellow Peril stereotypes. Capra faced the task of introducing five millennia of Chinese civilization to audiences whose geographic knowledge might not extend  beyond state lines.


His solution: frame the narrative in terms of shared values. Sun Yat-sen became China’s Washington, Chinese resistance became Lexington and Concord writ large. In addition to  demonizing Japan, Capra elevated Chinese endurance—reframing eight years of occupation and resistance not as victimization, but as civilization’s first stand against fascist barbarism.

The film does have what, today, we know as historical errors.  It references the “Tanaka Memorial”—supposedly Japan’s 1927 blueprint for global conquest—that was likely fabricated. But Capra wasn’t engaged in historical deception; he was a filmmaker using the intelligence available at the time. Similarly, the film’s stated death toll of 40,000 in the Rape of Nanking is a stark underestimate of the 200,000 to 300,000 now accepted by historians. This wasn’t an attempt to whitewash the enemy ` ‘s war crimes, but a reflection of the limited information escaping the war zone. In fact, the film’s most haunting sequences derive their power from authenticity: grainy, 16mm footage of Japanese atrocities, smuggled out of China by an American priest, which provided a silent, damning testament to the war’s true horror.

Ultimately, the most discordant note is not found within the film itself, but in the stark and jarring reversal of geopolitical narratives that followed. In the Cold War’s shadow, Japan was recast as a peaceful, aesthetic culture, while our former allies, the people of  mainland China after Communist takeover, were suddenly portrayed as a monolithic, fanatical horde.

The Battle of China  preserves a history often marginalized in Western accounts: that the Second Sino-Japanese War was the true opening act of the global conflict. China’s eight-year resistance, fought against staggering odds, is a story that has to be  remembered.

Today, as new lines are drawn and old alliances are tested, Capra’s film serves as a powerful reminder of how narrative shapes reality, and how the allies of yesterday can become the adversaries of tomorrow. But the human cost of conflict is a haunting constant.