Screening Enlightenment

American moviemakers had to tread carefully with the American military and governmental occupation authorities if they were to expect to be able to penetrate the newly opened market for their films in postwar Japan. In sum, filmmakers were secondary players in a game of very serious hardball. Kitamura provides vivid glimpses into what qualities in specific American movies appealed to Japanese critics and audiences. He describes how, as the Japanese spirit revived, lively movie discussion groups sprang up in Japan. Recommended.

* Choice *

Hiroshi Kitamura has written an excellent overview of the role played by Hollywood films in shaping the cultural reconstruction of Japan during the American occupation. His book reflects wide reading in Japanese sources, the research of film scholars, and current scholarship of American occupation policy.... This fine book will be of value not only to diplomatic and military historians but also to persons interested in the American occupation of Germany, as so many parallels are implicit in it.

-- David Culbert * Journal of American History *

In addition to his significant contribution to diplomatic history and U.S. relations with Japan, Kitamura adds to our understanding of Japanese history in the critical period after the war.... What he details so carefully through his examination of the Central Motion Picture Exchange (CMPE) and the Eiga no tomo, among other organizations and entities, is how Japanese came to embrace the carefully scripted and edited manner in which American films were reintroduced to Japan during the occupation.

-- T. Christopher Jespersen * H-Diplo Roundtable Review *

Kitamura shows that Hollywood and SCAP [the occupying authorities led by General Douglas MacArthur] were at loggerheads almost as often as they were in harmony.... SCAP censorship caused problems for American films as various as Frank Capra's political fable, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, unseen in Japan during the Occupation due to its portrayal of corruption in US politics, to the Tyrone Power swashbuckler, The Mark of Zorro, which in an era when samurai films were practically banned, was criticized for its portrayal of swordplay as a 'fine and fashionable art of killing.'... His book sheds new light on a neglected aspect of Occupation history.

-- Alexander Jacoby * Times Literary Supplement *

Kitamura's book is a new contribution to the field of cinema in occupied Japan in covering such diverse groups as the American film distributor, the Central Motion Picture Exchange (CMPE); Japanese exhibitors and movie theaters; 'cultural elites’ including critics, journalists, and scholars; and moviegoers. Attention to all these groups allows readers to see the complicated dynamics in which Hollywood films become the icon of democracy and modernity in occupied Japan.... It can be highly recommended to all scholars and students of the US occupation of Japan, film history, and Japanese cultural and intellectual history.

-- Yuka Tsuchiya * Social Science Japan Journal *

Kitamura's thoroughly researched and immensely readable book mainly combines approaches of historical research and film studies. It is based on an admirable range of both US and Japanese source materials and consists of a concise methodological preface and eight thematically arranged chapters.... The fact that Screening Enlightenment undoubtedly will inspire such future studies that further examine the fascinating issues it raises, may very well be one of its most important merits.

-- Harald Salomon * Pacific Affai