Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors

Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema

Amanda Weiss

• Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9789888805471
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

Taking the "tidal wave" of memory in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century as its starting point, this monograph explores collective memory of World War II in East Asia (1937–1945) through film. Weiss argues that Chinese, Japanese, and American remembrance of World War II is intertwined in what she terms a "memory loop," the transnational mediation and remediation of war narratives. Gender is central to this process, as the changing representation of male soldiers, political leaders, and patriarchal father figures within these narratives reveals Japanese and Chinese challenges to each other and to the perceived "foundational" American narrative of the war. This process continues to intensify due to the globally visible nature of the memory loop, which drives this cycle of transmission, translation, and reassessment. This volume is the first to bring together a collection of Chinese and Japanese war films that have received little attention in English-language literature. It also produces new readings of popular war memory in East Asia by revealing the gendered dimensions of collective remembrance in these films.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Synposis
• Author Biography
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Series Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Notes on Language
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Tokyo Trial On-Screen
• 3. New Heroes in Chinese and Japanese Combat Films
• 4. Contested Images of Wartime Rape
• 5. Gender and Reconciliation in Sino-Japanese Melodramas
• 6. Conclusion
• Tables
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index