Not Films That Survived, but Films That Were Returned: How GHQ-Seized Prints Shaped Japanese Film History

The verbs hidden by "survival"

According to NFAJ, the discovery that a large group of prewar and wartime Japanese films seized by GHQ remained at the Library of Congress came in 1964. After investigation and negotiations by both countries, an exchange agreement was signed on November 8, 1967. The nitrate films requested by Japan returned in stages. Sorting them and transferring them to safety stock took still more time. The repatriated films became one of the foundations of the collection that eventually developed into NFAJ.²

The curious fact that Japanese films ended up in the United States is only the beginning. Repatriation did not simply restore a lost original state.

Which films were seized? Which ones were kept in the United States? Which did Japan request back? Once the nitrate prints returned, which could be identified, transferred to safety stock, and made projectable? Selection entered at every stage. Before a work could enter film history, the physical print had already passed through several institutions.

This is why the term "repatriated film" matters. "Surviving film" tells us where an object is now. "Repatriated film" keeps its movement in view. A change in ownership and custody becomes part of the film's description.

What propaganda shows, and what it leaves outside the frame

The program moves through colonial rule, the Sino-Japanese War, Manchuria, the southern occupation, civil defense, counterintelligence, labor, science, women, children, and animals. It is a broad shelf of wartime social records. It is also a record of how far the state tried to organize society through moving images.

In the program titled "The Deception of the 'Incident' (1)," 『支那事変』 (The China Incident) assigns responsibility for the Marco Polo Bridge Incident to the Chinese side. It describes occupied Shanghai as a place where the Japanese military restored "brightness and peace." 『曦光』 (Dawn) observes Chinese markets, entertainment districts, women, and children, then casts the Japanese military as the defender of Chinese tradition and culture. The presence of everyday life on screen does not settle the question of how that life has been edited into a chain of cause and effect. The concrete detail of documentary footage makes it all the more necessary to question the story built by narration and montage.³

Fumio Kamei's 『支那事変後方記録 上海』 (Shanghai: A Record of the Incident Behind the Lines) was also commissioned as a topical wartime film. NFAJ describes it as something less compliant than a simple victory narrative. It accumulates quiet images of ruins, civilian life, grave markers, and the foreign concessions. Even within state-sponsored cinema, the films do not all yield in the same way. There is another complication: only the first 17 minutes of Kamei's film came back with the repatriated material. The complete version in this program comes from a different print transferred from the Ministry of Education in 1971. The work and the provenance of the material diverge inside a single title.⁴

An enemy resembling Mickey Mouse, animated by Japanese hands

The animation program carries the same knot.

『桃太郎の海鷲』 (Momotaro's Sea Eagles, 1942) turns the attack on Pearl Harbor into a battle fought by Momotaro and his animal troops. Caricatures recalling enemy leaders and Western cartoon characters appear as villains. At the same time, director Mitsuyo Seo drew on Disney animation and introduced multiplane photography to create depth. Japanese animators learned from Western motion, then used that motion to depict the West as an enemy. Technical achievement and propaganda purpose cannot be separated cleanly.⁵

NFAJ lists the screening print as incomplete. 『お猿三吉 鬪ふ潜水艦』 (Sankichi the Monkey: The Fighting Submarine) is incomplete too. Missing footage is not an accident outside the viewing experience. It changes the form we can see. Without knowing what has been lost, we cannot assume that the surviving rhythm or structure matches the original film.

This makes the usual choice between praising the animation and condemning the propaganda inadequate. What was made to move? Whom does that movement treat as human, and whom does it reduce to a sign? Which print are we watching, what is absent from it, and how did it arrive here? The work and its material carrier both demand attention.

Censorship numbers remain on the film

Provenance is not confined to a catalog. Fumiaki Itakura's research reads Occupation-era censorship through numbers and letters on title cards, splices in the film, and the manufacturing dates of different stocks.⁶

During the Occupation, films faced two layers of review, one by the Civil Information and Education Section (CIE) and another by the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD). The division within CCD that handled film classified prints as passed, passed with deletions, or suppressed, and gave identification numbers to those it approved. From October 1945 through the end of September 1946, the Tokyo office examined 1,516 Japanese films. Of the 502 prewar and wartime 35mm films submitted for re-release, 274 were suppressed and 95 were passed only after deletions.

The identification codes also described categories. A number without a letter marked a new 35mm Japanese film. "A" marked a 35mm older film submitted for re-release, while "C" identified a cultural film. In some cases, a new title card bearing the code was inserted when an older work returned to theaters. Yasujiro Ozu's 『父ありき』 (There Was a Father, 1942) survives in one version cut and re-released during the Occupation, and another without a GHQ code that returned from former Manchuria by way of the Soviet Union. The choice of source material changes the form of what we call the same film.

Seizure, storage, and repatriation were separate from Occupation-era censorship. The same code does not appear on every returned film. Even so, both histories show why content alone is not enough. A print may bear traces of wartime state control and of the Occupation authority that later decided whether, and in what form, it could be shown.

The route of the print belongs in film history

When I previously wrote about NFAJ's crowdfunding campaign, the question was who should pay for film preservation. This story begins one step earlier. By what route did a film reach the vault?

The returned films cannot support a comforting story in which GHQ seized Japanese cinema in order to save it. This was seizure under Occupation, not a preservation project. Censorship and control over exhibition were taking place during the same period. The films nevertheless remained in the United States, later returned to Japan, and became a foundation of the present collection. Repression and preservation sit at different points along the same route.

That contradiction should remain unresolved. When 『桃太郎の海鷲』 enters a history of Japanese animation technique, the journey of its print belongs in the discussion. When a newsreel gives us streets and bodies from the period, we should not collapse what the camera excluded and what later failed to return into one vague category of the unseen.

Film history is not a story in which strong works naturally endure. Survival has involved war, occupation, bureaucratic classification, storage across national borders, negotiations over return, and archivists working through the material one reel at a time.

A work appears on the screen. Behind the light is the long route taken by its print. "Repatriated film" is a small but useful label for keeping that route in sight.

Event information

"Repatriated Film Collection [Part 4]: Cultural Films, Newsreels, and Animations" runs from August 4 through September 6, 2026, in the Small Hall at NFAJ in Kyobashi, Tokyo. It includes 113 films in 28 programs. NFAJ is closed on Mondays during the run. Screening dates and ticket information are available on the official program page.

References

• Repatriated Film Collection [Part 4]: Cultural Films, Newsreels, and Animations | National Film Archive of Japan
• NFAJ Program No. 75 (PDF)
• History of the National Film Archive of Japan
• Fumiaki Itakura, "GHQ Film Censorship during Occupied Japan: Investigation of the Identification Codes on Film"
• What Does It Mean to Preserve a Film? The Work of Japan's National Film Archive