Kinji Fujiwa

Morning for the Osone Family

A Japanese family weathers much hardship after their military uncle comes to live with them during WWII.

The Whole Family Works

Father of nine children cannot find a job. Despite their aspirations, the children are encouraged by both parents to hold down menial jobs and contribute to the family expenses.

Mother Never Dies

The premature death of a young mother serves as inspiration for her husband and son.

A Fond Face from the Past

A Fond Face from the Past is also set in a rural community, specifically a village outside Kameoka, near Kyoto. In some ways this short, thirty-six-minute film is Naruse's most moving negotiation of the militarist restrictions of the time, perhaps because it is also his most direct engagement with the culture of war. When a newsreel comes to Kameoka featuring a local man named Yoichi, it causes some excitement in the community and, of course, in Yoichi's own family. First of all his mother makes the newsreel (Nippon News, no. 14), which begins with the same marching music that opens his own film, followed by a curious baby judging context in Los Angeles featuring two hundred Japanese babies. Released in January 1941, almost a year before the pacific war begins, this “found footage” is indicative of Japanese imperialist ambitions beyond Asia long before Pearl Harbor.

Shanghai Landing Party

This film attempts to reconstruct the tension of the Battle of Shanghai through an episode in an understated way, introducting its story in a documentary mode. In the film story, Japan's marine regiment protects Japanese residents and Chinese refugees-women and young children-from rampant street fighting, Shanhai Rikusentai unsparingly uses its first eight minutes for an official-mannered self-justification of the war. From the viewpoint of explaining Japan's military operation,the narration refers to the city s spatial division in sync with maps on screen.

Hikari to kage (Zenpen)

Part one of two.

Keshô yuki

Nightingale

An episodic film about life in and around a rural police station and the people it serves.

Schoolgirl Records

A "slice-of life" film about a group of high school girls in 1940s Japan.

China Night

Wartime propaganda filmed by the Japanese in occupied China, Shirley Yamaguchi portrays an orphan rescued from the streets by a kindly Japanese merchant marine officer. Part spy thriller and part Shanghai travelogue, it was part of a popular series known as "Chinese Continental Friendship" made by the occupying Japanese in China.