Chinese Yasumi Hara is ordered by his chief of Intelligence to go to Japan, use the attraction Japanese women feel for exotic aliens to get information from them, and disrupt Japanese morale.
I was expecting a propaganda piece, especially when the credits announced it was supervised by an army Major, and "supported by Counterintelligence Association." Yet throughout, Hara plays his character as an intelligent and compassionate man, who feels guilty about deceiving his Japanese lover, and is compassionate to his Philippino associate, Shinichi Himori, who suffers from tuberculosis. Shin Shiburi, as the intelligence officer who corrals the spies at the end, admires their professionalism and nationalist motivations. Perhaps we can see the censor's hand in the opening sequence, when Hara receives his orders in Chungking under bombardment; the people attacking the city are never named.
Perhaps it is because it was still early in the war, and Japan had suffered no major setbacks when this was released on April 23, 1942. The Japanese war in China, which had been going on, in one form or another, since 1931, was offered to the Chinese as a compassionate one, and their inclusion in the Japanese Empire as a means of establishing peace and co-prosperity; indeed, Hara's operations are bankrolled by American Tatsuo Saito, planned after Japan is scheduled to be rebuffed at peaceful negotiations in Hong Kong. The Chinese are not the natural enemy of Japan. It is the English and Americans who batten on Japan, China, and the Philippines, and once they realize that, and correct their understandable errors, victory is inevitable.
I was expecting a propaganda piece, especially when the credits announced it was supervised by an army Major, and "supported by Counterintelligence Association." Yet throughout, Hara plays his character as an intelligent and compassionate man, who feels guilty about deceiving his Japanese lover, and is compassionate to his Philippino associate, Shinichi Himori, who suffers from tuberculosis. Shin Shiburi, as the intelligence officer who corrals the spies at the end, admires their professionalism and nationalist motivations. Perhaps we can see the censor's hand in the opening sequence, when Hara receives his orders in Chungking under bombardment; the people attacking the city are never named.
Perhaps it is because it was still early in the war, and Japan had suffered no major setbacks when this was released on April 23, 1942. The Japanese war in China, which had been going on, in one form or another, since 1931, was offered to the Chinese as a compassionate one, and their inclusion in the Japanese Empire as a means of establishing peace and co-prosperity; indeed, Hara's operations are bankrolled by American Tatsuo Saito, planned after Japan is scheduled to be rebuffed at peaceful negotiations in Hong Kong. The Chinese are not the natural enemy of Japan. It is the English and Americans who batten on Japan, China, and the Philippines, and once they realize that, and correct their understandable errors, victory is inevitable.
