Japanese Self-Censorship and the Emperor's Naked Army March On

The Showa Period of Japan (1926 - 1989) encapsulates a large and tumultuous portion of its history in the 20th century, during which Japan rose as an imperial power, conquered parts of East Asia, suffered a major defeat, and was rebuilt as a pseudo-colonial transitioning into a post-colonial state. The politics of memory surrounding the Showa period has played a major role in Japan's relationships with other countries, where tensions continue to rise over historical issues such as the Rape of Nanking and the forced sexual slavery of Korean women. Throughout Japan's postwar history, conservative leadership has slowly pushed a kind of "healthy nationalism" in order to strengthen defense and economic policy, especially in times of perceived external threat. This brand of nationalism aims to emphasize the cultural and historical accomplishments of the Japanese nation and state, and often has come hand-in-hand with statements and actions that have been accused of being historically revisionist and needlessly provocative. Unfortunately, in recent years tensions over these historical issues have had counterproductive repercussions in regional and security issues.
  While the general population has often pushed against both Right and Left political agendas in favor of focusing on more grounded issues, the influence of nationalism has been present throughout the postwar period, and has manifested, in some ways, in the form of censorship, whether through the self or through the larger institutions of media or government. Up until the Showa emperor’s death in 1989 (and still lasting to some extent to contemporary times), it was taboo to criticize the emperor or even the Showa experience itself, as to do so would risk social estrangement and, in extreme cases, expose oneself to physical danger from a variety of nationalistic Japanese right wing groups. Openly defying this taboo, well-known director Hara Kazuo released in 1987 the documentary The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, featuring its protagonist Okuzaki Kenzo (1920 – 2005) engaging in irreverently blasphemous talk about the emperor along with a wide variety of extreme and often violent activities, all aimed at scathing criticism of the Showa era. Hara already had a reputation for extremism with his previous films and as a result had been perceived as both a sadist and a masochist. In part due to this but also due to the film's subject matter, all major distributors refused to carry his latest film, relegating it to arthouse cinemas. Audiences at the time were shocked at Okuzaki’s restless proclamation of the emperor’s war responsibility. Ironically, perhaps, even notoriously violent right wing groups were rather receptive to the film themselves (according to Hara, anyway).
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On is a documentary that has little in common with a photogenic film designed for mass market consumption. Hara Kazuo’s gritty and unrefined camera and lighting techniques (or lack thereof), combined with a notable absence of music and stock footage, creates an uninviting and unattractive Japan. Hara, often playing the role of cameraman, follows Okuzaki across the country in what becomes an investigation into the mysterious deaths of two of Okuzaki’s former war friends in New Guinea after Japan's surrender in August 1945. Okuzaki's quest is focused on discovering the "objective" truths behind their deaths as well as delivering his anti-war and anti-emperor message to the world. We see Okuzaki track down the living survivors of people possibly involved in the incident, many of whom he once knew on the battleground, and each character he meets is ripe for suspicion of his friends' deaths. In what becomes one of his defining character traits, Okuzaki delights in physically assaulting them when they are uncooperative – all the while shouting Japanese pleasantries. As the "plot" unfolds and the viewer eventually learns of the soldiers' deaths through cannibalism by their former commanders, we reach a climax in a twenty minute long verbal and ultimately physical confrontation between Okuzaki and an elderly former superior officer who has just recovered from extensive surgery. Here, the cinéma vérité style becomes fully apparent, with Okuzaki's victim screaming for help at the camera and Hara doing nothing.
Okuzaki fully believes in the unequivocal war guilt of the emperor and is utterly disgusted at modern Japanese social order's propensity to ignore the topic. He rides around in a truck equipped with loudspeakers to spread his message, and his supporters are few and far between. That Okuzaki apparently carried on his activities until his death without any major repercussions (aside from prison stints for various crimes) is astonishing, since many journalists of the time “were still under the spell of the 'chrysanthemum taboo,' so-called after the imperial crest, that crystallized in the 1960s through several episodes of right wing attack on writers and publishers deemed guilty of transgressing imperial honor," to quote Norma Fields.  As a result, it is difficult to measure what people's opinions were as a whole, but newspaper polls conducted within a week of the emperor's death showed that over a quarter of Japanese people (willing to speak up and participate) believed in the emperor's war guilt but would not say so in public discourse.
The emperor also died just two years after the film was released, and his funeral dominated all forms of media and had far-reaching repercussions on the ordinary flow of Japanese society: television channels were flooded with live broadcasts of the funeral, weddings and festivals were canceled, and guns could not be fired. By all public and mainstream accounts, the emperor's death and subsequent funeral were the absolute top priority for all Japanese citizens, and the entire nation was uniformly one in their reverent mourning. What was the reality, however, may have been quite different: for example, looking at market statistics on the day of the funeral, one can discover that people had actually sold out major video store retailers! It seems there was much more diversity in thought, or apathy in thought, than was immediately obvious. While Okuzaki believed himself to be alone in his fight because of the media he surrounded himself with, I believe if he had been less extreme in his actions and more approachable he would have found a significantly larger number of people to agree with him than he probably would have ever conceived.
There appear to be few situations in which this diversity of thought is more apparent than in the case study of Motoshima Hitoshi, the mayor of Nagasaki at the time. In 1986, having hinted in a public statement that the emperor bares at least a fraction of war responsibility, what he would later call “the mere expression of common sense,” he became the target of immense outcry from both the media and especially militant right wing groups, who called for Motoshima’s death as a necessary “divine retribution.” Motoshima was quarantined in private headquarters for over a year after he made that statement, and as soon as the Japanese government began to think that this necessity for extended protection had worn out and he was let go, he became the target of an assassination attempt and was shot in the chest. As a result he continued to be quarantined for a much longer period of time, and during all of this he received over 7,300 letters of private civilian support for his statements. Inspired by Motoshima’s bravery, citizens created the “Nagasaki Citizens’ Committee to Seek Free Speech” and began engaging in active political discourse, particularly in the act of drafting a petition for “free speech” that received nearly 14,000 signatures from around the country, which increased to 370,000 signatures within a week. In this case, it seems people were really rallying around breaking free of the threats and atmosphere that created their self-censorship, ironically censoring the name of their movement.
Self-censorship has returned again following the recent ISIS Japanese hostage crisis. The Japan Times has just reported a wave of self-censorship from a variety of entertainers and television networks. Pop singers in performances changed their lyrics referencing knives and blood or just sang different songs than planned altogether. A comical anime intended for young audiences, which features a band of students' continuous attempts to assassinate their evil smiling octopus teacher, was simplify not aired at all. This is similar to the self-censorship that also occurred after the 3.11 triple disaster, and it doesn't resemble the clear-cut story of self-censorship told in and through Hara's film (though modern self-censorship in reaction to sensitive political matters is still strong, and 3.11 censorship would certainly fall under that category as well). Of course, The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is a packaged film product deliberately edited to create a sense of narrative, no matter how raw it may appear to be, and this analysis only looks at a sliver of society at that point in time. True social and political factors are far more difficult to discern. Either way, though, Hara's opinion is clear: films, and other forms of expressions, should be about "self-liberation in reaction to an overly conservative society." Whether this is or should be the case would make for an interesting discussion, especially when considering this less clearly delineated brand of self-censorship.