Paper short abstract:

This presentation aims to shed light on how "Anarchist from Colony" revealed the conflicting nature of being "anti-Japanese" in the contemporary relationship between South Korea and Japan.

Paper long abstract:

"Anarchist from Colony" received critical and popular acclaim in South Korea in 2017. Directed by Lee Joon-ik, this film depicts the life of actual independence activist Park Yeol (1902-1974), with a special focus on the relationship between Park and Kaneko Fumiko (1903-1926), his Japanese partner, memorializing them as heroes against Japanese colonial oppression.

When limitedly released in Japan in 2018, however, while receiving some positive reviews, it also drew harsh criticisms mainly for its depictions of Kaneko. Some Japanese movie critics considered the movie "totally historically inaccurate," and even labeled it as an explicit expression of "anti-Japanese sentiment" among South Korean people. The depictions of Kaneko, the only leading Japanese character in the film, stood at the center of such criticisms.

Here two questions arise: did the South Korean movie critics and audience acclaim the film because it is, by Japanese standards, "anti-Japanese"? What does it mean for South Korean films to be "anti-Japanese" in the eyes of contemporary Japanese movie-goers?

To answer these questions from the socio-political perspective, this presentation explores the following four issues :1) Japanese colonial rule depicted in contemporary South Korean films :2) the ways in which the creators of "Anarchist from Colony" paid attention to its historical accuracy; 3) the ways in which South Korean film critics and audience acclaimed the film; 4) and the ways in which Yomota Inuhiko, one of the leading Japanese film scholars and critics, reviewed the film.

In doing so, this presentation aims to shed light on how "Anarchist from Colony" revealed the conflicting nature of being "anti-Japanese" in the contemporary relationship between South Korea and Japan.

Paper short abstract:

This paper highlights the trans-Asian aspects of the 1958 Toei Douga-produced animated film Hakujaden (The Legend of the White Snake) and intends to recontextualise it from a milestone in the national history of Japanese animation to a local node of Asia-wide dissemination of the white snake motif.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the 1958 Toei Douga-produced animated film Hakujaden (The Legend of the White Snake) from trans-Asian perspectives. Released by the predecessor company of Toei Animation (one of the major Japanese animation production studios) as Japan’s first coloured feature-length animated film, Hakujaden has often been contextualised by existing studies as forming the genesis of today’s global prosperity of Japanese animation. Apart from such a nationalistic account, the film’s trans-Asian aspects have nonetheless been relatively understudied. They include the following: the white snake motif itself has its origin in the Tang period Chinese folk tale with more than a 1000-year-long history of adaptations into multiple forms of continental popular culture (e.g. Beijing opera); Japan has its own history of ‘importing’ the motif from China (e.g. into the Tales of Moonlight and Rain in the 18th century); Hakujaden was first planned as a co-production with a Hong Kong film company; and, not only were the film’s artworks (e.g. location/characters/prop designs) Chinese but also some of the crewmembers had connections with Japan’s wartime occupation of China (e.g. some of them were repatriates from Manchuria and ex-employees of the Manchuria Film Association). Highlighting such trans-Asian aspects of the film, this paper intends to recontextualise Hakujaden from one of the milestones in the national history of Japanese animation to one of the local nodes of Asia-wide dissemination of the motif of the white snake.