Constructing Japaneseness: War, race, and American cinema, 1924--1992

Constructing Japaneseness traces the changing images of Japanese and Japanese Americans in American feature films--and the reasons for those changes--from the early 20th century to the end of the Cold War in 1992. The study is based on an examination of films, newspapers, periodicals, production files, government documents, and other primary sources. My study reveals how politics, specifically interactions among social conditions, government agencies, international relations, and the evolving demands of war often defined Japaneseness in American cinema.;This dissertation is a cultural history of racial thinking in the United States and the political struggles centering on changing definitions of "Japaneseness." The Japanese became a prominent part of American popular imagination as a result of the Russo-Japanese War, the first major modern victory of "Orientals" against allegedly "superior" Caucasians. During WWII, racism informed the construction of cinematic images of the Japanese and Japanese Americans. Following the Second World War, as Japan became an American ally in the Cold War struggle to contain the Soviet Union, Hollywood studios offered favorable portrayals of the Japanese and Japanese Americans. After 1971, as relations between the U.S. and East Asia nations grew more complex, Americans saw more varied images of Japanese and Japanese Americans on the screen.;While images of the Japanese and Japanese Americans in American films were primarily shaped by contemporaneous US-Japan relations, the story of how politics, wars, and foreign relations shaped those images involves a much more complex approach than has been practiced to date. The making of such images was a contested terrain where producers, directors, screen writers, actors and actresses, Hollywood's self-censorship agency (the Production Code Administration), U.S. governmental agencies such as the Office of War Information and the War Relocation Authority, and foreign governments vied for power. My thesis compares images of the Japanese with those of the Chinese to demonstrate the fluidity and malleability of race. This dissertation also shows how race, class, gender, and ethnicity worked together in the construction of Japanese and Japanese American images. Informed by the neo-Marxist methodology, this study adds a fresh materialistic perspective to cultural studies.