Kirpianuscus today, it is easy to criticize it. for the unrealistic Japanese characters, for the too subjective message, for the cruelty and conflicts who are perceived as strange. but the bad opinion has a fragile root. because we ignore the context. for 1943, a propaganda film, mixing few romantic and film noir slices, is the predictable tool for encouraging and answer to expectations. and this is the most useful angle for see it. because, if you ignore all the points of your superiority about it, it is a decent war film. and this, maybe, is the essential thing. because, behind the scenes, the real dramas are easy to be discovered. so, an useful lesson.

MartinHafer This film is the story of a fictional family. Their son had gone to Cornell University in the USA to study and when he returns, he's not used to the Japanese ways. However, he is anxious to be accepted and soon gravitates towards the militaristic wing of Japanese society and he rather quickly shifts from a nice and decent person to a cold monster.This film is a real mixed bag. On the one hand, it does look pretty ludicrous, particularly today, to see American actors like J. Carrol Naish and Tom Neal done up with heavy makeup--playing Japanese people! Sure, there may not have been that many actors of Japanese descent in Hollywood at the time, but at least having an Asian of some sort play the roles would have made a lot more sense. As one reviewer put it, the film was "loopy". On the other, while much of the propaganda may seem ridiculously overzealous and ridiculous today, the truth is that in many ways what the Japanese had really been doing wasn't that much different than in the film...though it was actually worse. This film showed a few atrocities being committed in China and talked about the Japanese troops doing bayonet practice with a baby--surely this didn't happen, right?! Well, actually it did--and a whole lot worse. It's actually pretty amazing that films made since WWII have mostly ignored the many, many Japanese atrocities committed in China and this wartime propaganda film is one of the few to even mention it. Don't believe me? Read Irish Chang's book "The Rape of Nanking" or the documentary NANKING. I hesitate to go into the details, but they are considerably worse than the killing of a few babies.Back to the film. Aside from alluding to the truth of the killing of innocents by Japanese troops, the film is amazingly silly in parts. The boxing match with the Judo expert was really silly and the dialog often stilted...and silly. But overall, it's a really interesting curiosity piece and worth seeing. Plus, it lacks the overt racism and stupidity of one of Mr. Neal's other films, FIRST YANK IN TOKYO.

sol **Mild Spoilers** Surprisingly mild-in the propaganda department-motion picture for an American made war movie at the very hight, with the Axis winning at the time it was made, of WWII.The movie "Behind the Rising Sun" does show the Japanese as villains but only the most nationalist and fanatical as well as racist, towards the white or Caucasian race, among them. The Japanese people for the most part are shown being brutalized and exploited by Japan's Fascist military junta, headed by Gen. Tojo, as much as the Chinese people-who are under Japan's thumb-shown in the film. The film incredibly also shows that the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, descendant of the Sun God, as an innocent stooge being manipulate by Tojo's Military Junta and in no way involved in the crimes that he was at the time, in both US newspapers and heavily propagandized war films, accused of committing. This is exactly what happened two years later in the United State, under the urging of Gen MacArthur, and its allies refusing to indite Hirohito for war crimes! Which turned out to be one of the most brilliant decisions that Gen MacArthur ever made in peace as well as wartime!In "Behind the Rising Sun" we see the lives of father and son Reo & Toro Seki, J. Carrol Nash and Tom Neal, change directions because of the upheaval in their native Japan. Toro who was educated in America is anything like his father Reo in respecting or upholding Japanese tradition. Reo at first is as fanatical a Japanese nationalist as you can get but it's his son who in the end, after being brainwashed by the Japanese military, turns the corner and outdoes even his, who by then finally saw the light, gong-ho and kamikaze like pop! In fact as the movie starts we already see that Toro made the ultimate sacrifice for his country and wait to see, by watching the film, what exactly lead him to do it!Sent to fight in China as an officer in the Japaneses Army's Communication & Engineer Corps Toro became insensitive towards the horrors that his fellow Japanese soldiers inflicted on the helpless Chinese population. Back in Tokyo Toro's father Reo soon realized that his beloved country Japan was descending into barbarism, in its plans to conquer the entire world, and wanted no part of it. I wondered watching the movie if those behind it were somehow trying to put a wedge between Japan and its ally in WWII Nazi Germany! In its hinting that Germany being as white and Caucasian as any nation on earth would be on Japan's hit-list after it, together Germany & Italy, won the war!It becomes very apparent to Reo that his son Toro had gone off the deep end when he came back home on leave from China and even worse he, in his pushing Japanese nationalism on Toro, together with him being indoctrinated by the Japaneses military was a major cause of it! With his son now gone forever, killed during the 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo, Reo could no longer face what he did and did the only thing left for him to do by doing-via Hiri Kiri- himself in Japanese style.Together with the very deep and thought-provoking political menu in the movie we also have Toro's love interest the exotically beautiful Margo as Tama Shimamuka as well as a secondary love affair with American businessman Clancy O'Hara, Donald Douglas, and American newspaper woman Sara Braden, Gloria Holden, which was more or less padding or fillers, to stretch the film to it's eventual 88 minutes, then anything else.P.S By far the best part of the movie had nothing at all to do with the war but a knock down drag out "Battle of the Century" between American prizefighter Lefty O'Doyle, Robert Ryan, and Japanese martial arts expert, even though he's about as Japanese as I'm inner Mongolian, Mike Mazurki. That incredible slug fest between the two giants of pugilism was more then worth the price of admission!

John Today (even in 1943) this film is very racist dealing with Japanese son educated in US goes back to Japan and takes part in atrocities there and in China. The whole China sequences are very grisly and actually disturbing, such as nailing the baby to the door by his/her pigtail along with the usual raping and pillaging of the Chinese countryside. They even keep the Chinese drugged up with free heroin handouts from trucks that pull into the villages. There is just one "good" Japanese character in the movie, the female secretary who works for an American architect caught in Japan with some Western reporters when WW2 finally erupts. But then these characters get tortured and sentenced to death. On the whole film it is NEVER boring...never. It has very good production and fine actors (even though Japanese are all played by white Europeans a la Charlie Chan). Now get this! RKO was asked by US government to make a picture that would portray Japanese in a real and fair way instead of the crop of anti-Japanese pictures that were made already so to stave off racial hatred toward this group. It was rampant in US (not so, for Germans though, interestingly films about Nazi's always had numerous "good" Germans, never in propaganda Japanese films who were usually portrayed as sub human hordes.)Anyway this was Hollywood's answer to the problem. Unbelievable! Film though is considered an excellent yet hysterical example of WW2 propaganda at the time.