[Lee Jong-gil's Film Reading] Imperialist Liberalism, The Two Faces of Japan

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 'Spy no Tsuma' boldly tackles Manchuria's Unit 731 war crimes
Yusaku aims to expose atrocities worldwide, squad leader Daiji worships militarism
Japan in the 1940s seen through intellectuals and soldiers, still chasing fictional characters

In director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film The Wife of a Spy, the couple Yusaku (Issei Takahashi) and Satoko (Yuu Aoi) create a silent film and screen it at a year-end party. It depicts a masked woman secretly opening a safe, only to be caught by her husband. The husband shoots his wife in a quiet warehouse. The fallen wife gazes at her husband with a sorrowful look before dying. A mournful song flows from the turntable.

"Even a futile love brings boundless joy. A boat of dreams afloat in a gloomy world. Fleeting dreams shatter emptily, and endless tears do not cease. Fleeting love. A momentary bond. Though I try to appear calm, a blazing fire burns within my heart. An illusory kiss shared in this world. My body is engulfed by overwhelming sorrow."

This is a frame story that foreshadows the development of The Wife of a Spy. Yusaku, a trader, witnesses the atrocities of the Japanese Kwantung Army's Unit 731 in Manchuria during a business trip. He plans to collect evidence and expose these injustices to the international community. Satoko, realizing this, tries to dissuade him.

"You are a traitorous slave." "I am a cosmopolitan." "What?" "I pledge allegiance not to a nation, but to universal justice. I cannot tolerate injustice." "Is that justice even if tens of thousands of our compatriots die? (...) What about our happiness?" "Are you satisfied with happiness built on injustice?" "I want happiness more than justice."

In the face of love, ideological and philosophical conflicts become insignificant. But if the backdrop is 1940, when survival was threatened, the story changes. The Yusaku-Satoko couple is wealthy enough to employ a driver and a maid. However, the outside world is a different story. After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the national total mobilization system was strengthened. Along with the Konoe Cabinet's declaration of a new order, a control system aiming for a powerful advanced defense state was established.

Daiji (Masahiro Higashide), who admires Satoko, appears like a monster born from such a society. He is a squad leader who never loses his military spirit even in private. To Satoko, who responds warmly, he points out her Western attire and whiskey as potential grounds for criticism of the regime. He believes political control arises from urgent everyday needs rather than mere domination. A militarist who places war and its preparation above all else, subordinating every aspect of life to it.

Did politics dominate his culture and ideology? Director Kurosawa seems to see it the other way around. Two long-take scenes indicate the political dominance of control culture and ideology. One shows civilians watching soldiers' military parades. Some cheer "Banzai," but most stare blankly or just pass by.

Yusaku, the latter, became a cosmopolitan within militarism not simply because he was a trader. Taisho-era thought, summarized as liberalism, democracy, and culturalism, formed as Japan established its international status and achieved remarkable economic growth after winning the Russo-Japanese War. With the establishment of a modern public education system and emphasis on knowledge acquisition, neo-Kantian cultural philosophy took root, fostering awareness of the world-citizen individual.

Director Kurosawa represents this paradoxical flow of imperialistic growth and the rise of liberal intellectuals through Daiji and Yusaku. Liberal intellectuals succeeded in laying the ideological foundation for establishing people's sovereignty and expanding individual rights in Japan. However, broadening their view to Asia, they confronted the reality of imperialistic violence and colonialism, the source of their privileges. They had to acknowledge the fatal contradictions of their ideology: enjoying privileges at the cost of violence and slaughter while simultaneously denying it?a situation of profound hypocrisy.

In a situation where the worlds of participants and observers, labor and play, concern and indifference collide, Yusaku also recognizes his position. He plans to escape beyond his limits. Yet most turned their backs on this paradoxical situation, living in comfort and later showing the faces of postwar victims. They either mistakenly believed or pretended that a shameful past of succumbing to violence was no longer shameful. When brutal soldiers withdrew in the changed circumstances, all that was needed was to utter the word democracy. Thus, the bitter memories of inflicting harm on other peoples gradually faded.

In the film's final act, Satoko's plea to Daiji is more than enough to summon forgotten memories. "Your true nature is kindness. I know that. Such a person was given great power. If the era changed you, then you can also change the era." Daiji is still chasing fictional characters. Trapped within the frame story...

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.