Manchuria Movie is a quarterly magazine of the Manchurian Film Association published from 1937 to 1941. ‘Man Ying’ and Manchuria Movie under the Manchukuo government operated with the dual goals of propagating the colonial policy of Japan and esta...
Manchuria Movie is a quarterly magazine of the Manchurian Film Association published from 1937 to 1941. ‘Man Ying’ and Manchuria Movie under the Manchukuo government operated with the dual goals of propagating the colonial policy of Japan and establishing the ideology of Manchukuo nation-building. These realistic goals made Manchuria Movie consider strategies to utilize popularity to form Manchukuo national culture while conveying colonial policy propaganda. Among them, the discussion of Shanghai films has special significance in exploring the direction of Manchuria Movie. This paper analyzes the causes of the change in emphasis on Shanghai films before and after Manchuria Movie, and attempts to interpret the correlation between the Japanese militaristic culture involved and the formation of Manchukuo’s national culture. An analysis of articles related to Shanghai films suggests a path to re-discuss the formation process of the Manchukuo movie control mechanism of ‘Man Ying’, which was previously uniformly evaluated as a means of controlling Japanese militarism culture, in terms of popularity and commerciality. This paper explores Japan’s colonial will and the possibility of forming Manchukuo’s national culture by discussing the process of Shanghai films acceptance of Manchuria Movie.