Masahiko Amakasu

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Masahiko Amakasu
甘粕 正彦
Deceased
Conviction(s)Murder (3 counts)
Criminal penalty10 years imprisonment with hard labour; commuted to 7.5 years imprisonment with hard labour

Masahiko Amakasu (甘粕 正彦, Amakasu Masahiko, January 26, 1891 – August 20, 1945) was an officer in the

anarchists after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, who later became head of the Manchukuo Film Association
.

Biography

Amakasu was born in

Nagoya, and entered the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1912. After graduation, he served in the infantry and then the military police in various postings in Japan and in Korea
.

On September 16, 1923, when Amakasu was a

American Embassy involved were unsuccessful. One embassy official made a brief statement on the case.

"In the case, even, of an unquestioned American citizen involved in trial in a foreign court, the law of that country must take its course, and we can only be interested in seeing that the trial is fair and the law impartially applied."[1]

Amakasu and four other Imperial Japanese Army soldiers were court-martialed for the murders.[2] During the trial, Amakasu's lawyers tied the murder to soldierly duties, and the ideals of spontaneity, sincerity, and pure motives. They argued that Sakae and Noe were traitors, and Amakasu killed them out of an irresistible urge to protect the country. As for the murder of the child, they argued that this was still justifiable for the public good. Many in the courtroom sympathized with these arguments, with spectators loudly calling Amakasu a "kokushi" (hero). The judge did nothing to intervene. Even the military prosecutor, while unwilling to accept the defense's arguments as an excuse, was sympathetic. Believing that Amakasu had merely acted excessively, he said the officer's patriotism "brought tears into one's eyes". As such, he demanded only 15 years in prison with hard labour for Amakasu, and lesser punishments for the other defendants.[3]

The judge was even more lenient. Amakasu was sentenced to ten years in prison with hard labour, and IJA sergeant Keijiro Mori was sentenced to three years in prison with hard labour as an accomplice. The other three men were acquitted, two on the grounds of superior orders, and the other due to insufficient evidence.[3]

In August 1924, Amakasu's sentence was reduced to 7 years and six months.

Marco Polo Bridge Incident
in 1937, which marked the beginning of the war with China, Amakasu played a prominent role in undercover operations against China.

In 1939, with the support of

Yoshiko Ōtaka, better known as "Ri Kōran" in Japanese.[10]

In 1940, Amakasu produced Shina no yoru (支那の夜, "China Nights"), which become the most popular Japanese film of that year.[11] Starring Yoshiko Yamaguchi, a Japanese actress who had grown up in China and was fluent enough in Mandarin Chinese, the film told the story of a Chinese woman Kei Ran whose parents had been killed in the war by a Japanese bombing raid and was violently anti-Japanese as a result.[12] A handsome and caring young Japanese naval officer Tetsuo Hase falls in love with her, but she resists his advance until he violently slaps her face, despite her tears and begging him to stop, and after which she declares her love for him.[13] After being slapped into declaring her love, she apologizes for anti-Japanese statements, and in a true Pan-Asian union, the two are married and lived happily ever after.[14] The film was and still is very controversial in China, with most Chinese feeling especially humiliated by the face slapping scene with its suggestion that all one has to do is slap around a Chinese woman to make her love one.[15] The Japanese historian Hotta Eri argued the cultural nuances of Shina no yoru were lost on Chinese audiences. In Japan, as part of a ploy to infantize the population, the Emperor was always portrayed as a hermaphrodite figure, being both the mother and the father of nation at the same time, with his/her loving subjects as perpetual children unable to think very much for themselves, thus requiring the Emperor as the parent of the nation to do all the necessary thinking for his/her loving subjects. At the same time, the Emperor as a god had such awesome responsibilities to deal with that he had to delegate some of his power down to mere humans so he could focus on more important matters. In both the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, officers routinely slapped the faces of the men under their command when giving orders, which was portrayed not as an exercise in petty humiliation, but as an act of love, with His Imperial Majesty's officers acting as the surrogates for the Emperor, who had to discipline his "children" by having their faces slapped all the time.[16] Hotta wrote that the scene where the Japanese hero slaps the face of the Chinese woman until she declares her love for him was seen in Japan as a romantic gesture, as a sign he cared for her, just in the same way that officers of the Imperial Army and Navy showed the Emperor's "love" for his subjects serving in his Army and Navy by slapping their faces all the time.[17] Yamaguchi herself in a 1987 interview stated she did not feel the controversial face-slapping scene was an exercise in humiliation for her character, calling it a very romantic and moving scene.[18] However, Hotta observed that Amakasu did project a Pan-Asian message in the film, with its Chinese heroine marrying the Japanese hero, and moreover, it is clear that the Japanese hero is the dominant partner in their relationship, which was meant as a metaphor for the relationship Amakasu wanted to see between Japan and China.[19]

With the fall of Manchukuo to Soviet forces during the invasion of Manchuria in August 1945, Amakasu committed suicide by taking potassium cyanide. On the last day of his life, he wrote out a suicide note in his office and swallowed a cyanide pill.[20]

In popular culture

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Masahiko Amakasu.

Notes

  1. ^ "Amakasu Incident Embassy". The Marshall Messenger. 1923-12-12. p. 1. Retrieved 2023-07-20.
  2. ^ The Japan Financial and Economic Monthly. Liberal news agency. 1924. p. 16.
  3. ^
    S2CID 55622167
    .
  4. ^ Jansen, Marius B. (2000). The Making of Modern Japan, p. 573.
  5. ^ Behr, Edward The Last Emperor, Toronto: Futura, 1987 p. 193.
  6. ^ Behr, Edward The Last Emperor, Toronto: Futura, 1987 page 193.
  7. ^ Young, Louise Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999 p. 16.
  8. ^ Behr, Edward The Last Emperor, Toronto: Futura, 1987 p. 213.
  9. ^ Nornes, Japan/American Film Wars. p. 84
  10. ^ Young, Japan's Total Empire. p. 16
  11. ^ Hotta, Eri Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945, London: Palgrave, 2007 pp. 132–133.
  12. ^ Hotta, Eri Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945, London: Palgrave, 2007 p. 133.
  13. ^ Hotta, Eri Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945, London: Palgrave, 2007 p. 133.
  14. ^ Hotta, Eri Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945, London: Palgrave, 2007 p. 133.
  15. ^ Hotta, Eri Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945, London: Palgrave, 2007 p. 133.
  16. ^ Hotta, Eri Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945, London: Palgrave, 2007 page 133.
  17. ^ Hotta, Eri Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945, London: Palgrave, 2007 page 133.
  18. ^ Hotta, Eri Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945, London: Palgrave, 2007 page 133.
  19. ^ Hotta, Eri Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931–1945, London: Palgrave, 2007 p. 133.
  20. ^ Behr, Edward The Last Emperor, Toronto: Futura, 1987 p. 261.
  21. ^ [1] Internet Movie Database

References

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