Japanese wartime film production, intra-imperial competition and political resistance : a case study of My nightingale (dir. Shimazu Yasujirō, 1943)

A collaborative film made in 1943 by the Japanese studio Tōhō and the Manchukuo Film Association, My Nightingale (Watashino Uguisu) seems to be a conventional nationalist propaganda film at first glance. The story between a Russian father and a Japanese daughter caters to the military slogan of ethnic harmonies in the puppet state Manchukuo, and the exotic landscape of Harbin also potentially attracts film-goers from the metropole. However, a careful investigation of its production background and the historical context under which it was situated, in addition to a close textual reading, demonstrates that the film is not only the result of tense intra-imperial competition among Manchukuo, Shanghai and the metropole, but even politically suspect in its messaging. The film was banned in both Japan and Manchukuo except a brief screening in Shanghai in 1944, only to be rediscovered in 1984. As a coproduction that was made at the height of the Pacific War, its melancholy undertone and tragic ending not only made the censors vigilant but also rang the death knell of the Japanese empire and its holy imperial projects around East Asia.