'Listen to the Voices from the Sea': The art and politics of a Japanese anti-war film

The Voices project began after the Second World War with the publication of a best-selling collection of letters and diaries of university student-draftees killed in the war, Listen to the Voices from the Sea (Kike Wadatsumi no Koe, 1949). It gained even wider popularity through the film adaptation (1950) and the organization (founded in 1949) which is still active today. The Voices project transformed the war experience in the faith that art (literature and film) wields political power to change society. Voices served as a testament to future generations to resist militarism.;This dissertation analyzes the film of Voices in its historical context, thereby illuminating the film, the movement, and this period in Japanese history. Because it was the first narrative combat film released in Japan after the war, Listen to the Voices from the Sea reinterpreted the war to a public which had been presented with only a partial view of war for decades. As it traces draftees through the crucible of combat it reveals their conflicting allegiances and perspectives on militarism. They form an elite, yet paradoxically representative, microcosm of the war generation's experience. As a combat film questioning compliance with the war effort, Voices occupies a pivotal place in both Japanese cinema and politics.;To clarify the film's significance this study surveys the conflict in Japanese history and historiography over how imperial ideology was inculcated through education and various prewar social institutions; analyzes the student-conscripts writings from the battlefront (from which the film was adapted); describes the production of "national policy war films," (kokusaku eiga, 1937-1945) which the public was accustomed to viewing during the war; analyzes the production, cinematic techniques, and meaning of the film of Voices; and summarizes the organization's (Wadatsumi Kai's) on-going activities.