Hollywood Goes to Tokyo: American Cultural Expansion and Imperial Japan, 1918–1941
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HOLLYWOOD GOES TO TOKYO: AMERICAN CULTURAL EXPANSION AND IMPERIAL JAPAN, 1918–1941 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Yuji Tosaka, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Dr. Michael J. Hogan, Adviser Dr. Peter L. Hahn __________________________ Advisor Dr. Mansel G. Blackford Department of History ABSTRACT After World War I, the American film industry achieved international domi- nance and became a principal promoter of American cultural expansion, projecting images of America to the rest of the world. Japan was one of the few countries in which Hollywood lost its market control to the local industry, but its cultural exports were subjected to intense domestic debates over the meaning of Americanization. This dis- sertation examines the interplay of economics, culture, and power in U.S.-Japanese film trade before the Pacific War. Hollywood’s commercial expansion overseas was marked by internal disarray and weak industry-state relationships. Its vision of enlightened cooperation became doomed as American film companies hesitated to share information with one another and the U.S. government, while its trade association and local managers tended to see U.S. officials as potential rivals threatening their positions in foreign fields. The lack of cooperation also was a major trade problem in the Japanese film market. In general, American companies failed to defend or enhance their market position by joining forces with one another and cooperating with U.S. officials until they were forced to withdraw from Japan in December 1941. Culturally, Hollywood was signified as a major change agent for promoting a new world of capitalist modernization, interdependence, and ii peace unified by the universal influence of democratic, non-political American values and ideals. Domestic divisions characterized the Japanese film market and reception of American films. On the one hand, Japanese films came to control a large part of the domestic market, and Hollywood was increasingly criticized as a tool of cultural im- perialism, a major source of ideological pollution corrupting Japanese traditions and national identities. Such critiques—underlying the growing campaign to impose official controls on American movies after the mid-1930s—were embedded within the nation- alist discourses that helped to define the U.S.-Japanese conflict as a clash of civiliza- tions. On the other hand, American films continued to enjoy strong, if limited, popu- larity, especially among the urban middle-class youth, and the official anti-Hollywood ideology coexisted with a subterranean counter-discourse that imagined American pictures as providing a positive, liberating force and alternative models for modern Japanese life. iii Dedicated to my life partner and soul mate, Rumi iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Professor Michael J. Hogan, for constant encour- agement and support and for his formidable editorial skills that have allowed me to improve stylistically on the original manuscript. Professor Peter L. Hahn has given me the benefit of his critical judgment and counsel throughout the entire stages of preparing this dissertation. I am grateful to Professor Mansel G. Blackford for offering useful insight and valuable comments on all parts of the dissertation. My thanks also go to all professors who helped guide my intellectual development in the history department at The Ohio State University, particularly Professors Steven Conn and David L. Stebenne, in whose research seminars parts of this dissertation took initial shape. In addition, I would like to record my special gratitude to Professor Yōichi Kibata for the help and advise he has continued to give me ever since I was a graduate student at the University of Tokyo. Part of my research was made possible thanks to grants from the graduate school of The Ohio State University and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. I also would like to express my thanks to Seiei Chou for his long-time friendship and gener- osity. He was kind enough to let me stay in his apartment for free while I spent more v than a month going to various libraries and archives in Tokyo during hot summer days of 2000. Undoubtedly, this study would have been the poorer without his hospitality. Finally, I want to thank my partner Rumi Morishima for her characteristic pa- tience, encouragement, and comments from her own sociological perspective throughout the writing of this dissertation. There is perhaps no better way to describe my sense of gratitude than to say that she always has been by my side. vi VITA 31 May 1967 . Born – Osaka, Japan 1991 . B.A. American Studies, Osaka University of Foreign Studies 1994 . M.A. International Relations, University of Tokyo 1996 . M.A. History, The Ohio State University 1995 – present . Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS Yuji Tosaka, “Bunka yushutsu to kokusai kankei: 1920 nendai ni okeru Beikoku eiga sangyō no sekai senryaku [Culture and international relations: Hollywood’s global vision in the 1920s],” Kokusai seiji [International relations], no. 122 (September 1999), 39-53. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract . ii Dedication . iv Acknowledgments . v Vita . vii Introduction: Hollywood and Americanization in Interwar Japan . 1 Historiographical Overview: The Cultural Turn, Hollywood, and U.S.-Japanese Relations . 10 Theoretical and Definitional Problems . 20 Chapter Organization . 29 Chapters: 1. Hollywood, Foreign Markets, and the Limits of the Associative Vision . 37 Hollywood’s Economic Problems and the Formation of the MPPDA . 40 The Hays Office and the Associative State . 47 The Hays Office and Foreign Relations . .60 Hollywood and the Limits of Associationalism . .68 Conclusion . 80 2. Salesman and Diplomat: American Discourses of Hollywood’s Global Influence during the Interwar Years . 82 Hollywood and Projections of Modernity . 85 The Limits of Hollywood’s Modernity Discourse . 95 Hollywood and the Communications Revolution . 103 The Limits of Hollywood’s Cultural Internationalism . 115 Conclusion . 129 viii 3. The Limits of International Dominance: Hollywood’s Commercial Struggles in Japan . 132 Modernity, Urban Capitalism, and the Growth of Motion Pictures in Japan . 134 Hollywood and the “Two Worlds” of Japanese Film Culture . 140 Hollywood and Domestic Competition in the Silent Era . .154 Sound Revolution and Hollywood’s Frustration in Japan . 166 Conclusion . 180 4. Hollywood and Discourses of Americanization in Interwar Japan . 183 Hollywood and the Question of Audience Reception in Japan . 187 Hollywood’s America and the Discourse of Modernity . 197 Hollywood’s America as the Land of Mammon and Women . 204 Hollywood and the Allure of Americanism . 216 Conclusion . 229 5. Nationalist Discourses and Hollywood’s Struggles against Import Controls in the 1930s . 233 The Discourse of Japanese Uniqueness and the Quest for “National” Films . 237 The Sino-Japanese War and Film Import Controls in Japan . 251 The Hays Office, the AMPA, and Trade Negotiations in Tokyo . 262 The Limits of Corporatism and the Resumption of Film Imports in Japan . 271 Conclusion . 285 6. Hollywood and a New Cultural Order in Wartime Japan . 288 Film Law of 1939 and the Ideology of Official Media Control . 291 The Approach of War and Hollywood’s Withdrawal from Japan . 303 “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”: Hollywood and Americanism in Prewar Japan . 320 Conclusion . 328 Conclusion . 331 Hollywood and the Meaning of Americanization in the “American Century” . 335 Notes . 348 Bibliography . 394 ix INTRODUCTION HOLLYWOOD AND AMERICANIZATION IN INTERWAR JAPAN By the 1920s, the modern mass media had begun to create what Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan would later call a “global village.” Major changes in communication and transportation technology, such as the telegraph and telephone, were conquering the traditional barriers of time and distance and linking the remotest villages. One of the most obvious effects of the growth of interconnectedness and mu- tual awareness—often described as globalization since the last decade of the twentieth century—was to make world history a palpable reality and to alter cultural frames of reference and the context in which human identities were constructed. The question of national identity, a moral sense of organic unity and readily identifiable distinctiveness, often took on added significance in such emerging cosmopolitan contexts shaped by the growing intersection and overlapping of societies and cultures. The process of global- ization and increased cultural contact seemed to overrun the established lines of national demarcation and triggered a wide range of reaction over what often appeared to be overt and covert threats to the strengths and vitality of traditional culture.1 The United States was the main vehicle driving this process of global integra- tion, especially in the years after World War I, when it achieved a dominant position in 1 various forms of international communication. After the war, the United States emerged as the world’s leading economy and the largest creditor nation. American-controlled media flooded global markets with American popular culture, and America was in- creasingly recognized as the center of international mass culture, in effect launching a process of Americanization on a global scale.