Motion Picture Regulations during the Sino-Japanese War : A Study of teh Laws Pertaining to the Film Industry

Abstract

The film law, implemented on October 1,1939 aimed at controlling the industry under the exigencies of the war. The main purpose of the law was to qualitatively enhance film art, and not to censor artistic expression. Through a critical analysis of the diary of Mikio Tatebayashi, a staff member of the Home Ministry's Bureau of Police Affairs, this essay demonstrates the intentions held by the creatorsof the film law, and the process in which it developed. Prior to the passage of the film law, the market dominance of the major motion picture company Toho had severely affected the domestic motion picture scene, leading to serious conflicts among motion picture companies. At the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Bureau of Police Affairs began to monitor the social influence of films, and altered its policy from negative control based on censorship to a "positive" policy for ethnic cultivation. The Bureau drafted the film law for the purposes of controlling the growth of the film industry, covering areas diverse as production, distribution,and exhibition. All of these were thought to have led to reckless overproduction. The decision to "guide" production rather than censor was considered to be more effective in order to raise the level of films. At the stage of legislation, the eventual aim was to favour the Bureau side, and facilitate the selection of programs during the process of control and distribution of products on the basis of constitutional improvement of the motion picture industry. During the process of deliberation by the Legislative Bureau, minor corrections were made after the generated inquiry regarding the function of the film law. This is interpreted as treatment independentfrom any police activities, which had influenced many facets up to that time. But however, parliamentary deliberations judged the film law to authorize excess supervision over film production, thus the film law was subjected to severe criticism. From the inception of the film law to the end of the war, no real qualitative enhancement of film production was accomplished. Continuing defects and contradictions in the film law prove that the legislative attempts to improve and rationalize the motion picture industry did not provide a conductive atmosphere for higher production levels.