Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia

Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia is the first attempt to explore how the tumultuous years between 1931 and 1953 have been recreated and renegotiated in cinema. This period saw traumatic conflicts such as the Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War, and the Korean War, and pivotal events such as the Rape of Nanjing, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of which left a lasting imprint on East Asia and the world. By bringing together a variety of specialists in the cinemas of East Asia and offering divergent yet complementary perspectives, the book explores how the legacies of war have been reimagined through the lens of film.

This turbulent era opened with the Mukden Incident of 1931, which signaled a new page in Japanese militaristic aggression in East Asia, and culminated with the Korean War (1950–1953), a protracted conflict that broke out in the wake of Japan's post–World War II withdrawal from Korea. Divided Lenses explores the ways in which events of the intervening decades have continued to shape politics and popular culture throughout East Asia and the world. The essays in part I examine historical trends at work in various “national” cinemas, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the United States. Those in part 2 focus on specific themes present in the cinema portraying this period—such as comfort women in Chinese film, the Nanjing Massacre, or nationalism—and how they have been depicted or renegotiated in contemporary films. Of particular interest are contributions drawing from other forms of screen culture, such as television and video games.

Divided Lenses builds on the growing interest in East Asian cinema by examining how these historic conflicts have been imagined, framed, and revisited through the lens of cinema and screen culture. It will interest later generations living in the shadow of these events, as well as students and scholars in the fields of cinema studies, cultural studies, cold war studies, and World War II history.

• Michael Berry, Editor

  Michael Berry is professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

• Chiho Sawada, Editor

Contributors

• Michael Berry
• David Desser
• Aaron Gerow
• Eric Hayot
• Kyu Hyun Kim
• Hyangjin Lee
• Wenchi Lin
• Chiho Sawada
• Robert Brent Toplin
• Lily Wong
• Yingjin Zhang

• In spite of its obvious importance, the war film genre has been inexplicably ignored in the study of East Asian cultures and societies. This pioneering volume fills a gaping hole in the literature and will be essential reading for students and researchers interested in the culture, in the broadest sense, of post-war East Asia.
  —Timothy Tsu, Kwansei Gakuin University
• This well-conceived volume covers a wide range of topics and media while keeping a clear focus on screen memories of war. It provides both highly informative and comprehensive overviews of war films from China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, as well as in-depth, innovative readings of specific works. It is an important book that should become a standard reference for students and scholars for years to come.
  —Jason McGrath, University of Minnesota