The film is called 灣生回家 (Wansei Homecoming, well I guess the official name is Wansei Back Home). It’s about Taiwan-born Japanese coming back to Taiwan to find their childhood memories and friends. Post war, all Japanese in Taiwan were eventually deported back to Japan, even though most of them had never been to the home islands of Japan, and had lived in Taiwan all their lives.
Since Taiwan was the only home they knew, many Wanseis were willing to give up their Japanese names and adopt Chinese ones just so they could stay in Taiwan. However, the KMT government denied their requests.
After returning to Japan, these Taiwanese-born Japanese were discriminated by “actual” Japanese. Often lived in camps with poor living condition. After the Taiwan and Japan entered a phase of better relations and mutual economic growth, many of them have been making frequent trips to Taiwan, because Taiwan is where they consider their home.
The documentary follows some of the last surviving Wanseis around in Taiwan.
just finished watching it. it’s one of those everyone sobbing in their chair with a smile sort of thing. tears kept rolling out of my eyes that by the end of the movie my eyes hurt.
it’s well executed, and does a good job reminding us that a lot of the difficult wansei experiences were caused by war, and despite all the good the Japanese did, and the hard working and endearing nature of the wanseis on screen, the Japanese also did many horrible things.
The star of the film is definitely 富永勝 Tominaga Katsu. His love for Taiwan drove him to become a professor who specializes in Taiwan history and aboriginal studies. He is quite easy to relate to for me.
Yeah, but it got me thinking about why Japan wasn’t able to garner more support from its colonies and strayed so far from the ideals of it’s more liberal academic politicians.
Wansei was treated horribly when they got expelled to Japan. The average Japanese treated them probably no better how they treat than the Koreans living in Japan at the time. The average Japanese found Wansei’s accent weird, and disliked their laid back attitude, despite the fact that they are as Japanese any Japanese.
That type of xenophobia and superiority complex probably made a peaceful leadership of Asia impossible… I’m guessing more respect is needed for any type of leadership role.
Wansei were treated horribly when they got expelled to Japan. The average Japanese treated them probably no better than the Koreans living in Japan at the time. The average Japanese found Wansei’s accent weird, and disliked their laid- back attitude, despite the fact that they are as Japanese any Japanese.
[/quote]
Hansioux, even today, in modern postwar Japan, since the 1950s…Japanese people who go abroad to study or work in English-speaking countries especially but also Germany or France or anywhere, when they return – and especially young students in primary school or junior high or high school or even college – they are called today as “returnees” [as a perjorative term and spoken out loud as Japanese-English with Japanese pronunciation: “ree -tu- ni”] and the kids in school back home in Japan after living overseas to study or while their parents worked overseas, they are bullied and mocked for their weird accents and inability to speak fluent Japanese or write the characters in kanji, and it’s a big bullying and education problem in Japan in the 21st century too. Nothing has changed.
In the Japanese mindset “we Japanese” are a noble race descended from the Sun Goddess and any Japanese person who leaves the homeland to study or work abroad and then “returns” is labelled as a “returnee” and looked down upon – even thougth these returnees are more worldly than their countrymen for living overseas and speak very good English compared to their countrymen, yet they are mocked and bullied in schools and workplace. Weid Japan. Forget “Cool Japan” which NHK and the govt these wishes to use as PR bait, in fact, Japan is ‘‘Weird Japan’’ and a sad place it is.
I saw this yesterday and highly recommend it. It is emotionally powerful and the main figures like Tominaga Katsu have fascinating stories tell.
The story of 片山清子 (sorry I don’t know the Japanese) however was almost too sad to bear. She was a Taiwan-born Japanese who was abandoned by her mother and adopted by a Taiwanese family as a future daughter-in-law for one of their sons. The humble efforts of her Taiwanese family to help her make some kind of connection to her mother at the end of her sad life were deeply moving.
I strongly recommend this film to anyone with the slightest interest in Taiwanese history or just too see a well-made documntary about interesting people who had fascinating lives. It has English subtitles.
It also seems to me that most movies and Documentaries made in Taiwan about the Japanese era doesn’t go well in Japan. It might be understandable why an average Japanese wouldn’t want to watch Seediq Bale, as the Japanese were oppressors even though not all villains, but, even when a film gets criticized in Taiwan by some as pandering to Japan, such as Cape No. 7 and KANO, most people in Japan don’t seem to care for it.
I suspect Wansei would probably have the same fate. I imagine documentaries probably aren’t crowd-pleasers to begin with in Japan, but it might still under perform in Japan.
I saw it with my wife a week ago Sunday and highly recommend it. It’s not all sadness - there is quite a lot of laughter and affection in the film too, with many happy reminiscences. One man described how as a boy he used to ride his buffalo around and it would often fight with other buffalo, even with him on its back.
Although it doesn’t deal with the morality (or immorality) of the colonization in detail this topic is at least brought up by a few of the documentary’s subjects. Notably, however, the Wansei were treated with warmth and hospitality by many Taiwanese upon their return.
Hopefully Taiwan’s society will one day be mature enough that the education department will allow Taiwanese students to learn their own history. I saw Ducked wrote in the thread Bombing of Taiwan Exhibition that:
Many of my adult students are similarly clueless. How brainwashed would you have to be to not know that a foreign power repeatedly bombed your own cities in WW2?
Anyway, I hope the film does well in Taiwan. The more historical information like this out there for consumption the better.
[quote=“antarcticbeech”]…
Many of my adult students are similarly clueless. How brainwashed would you have to be to not know that a foreign power repeatedly bombed your own cities in WW2?
[/quote]
Yes, the USA bombed the heck out of Formosa island during the Pacific War that Japan started at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Up and down the colonized island of Imperial Japan’s ‘‘Formosa’’, US forces dropped bombs left and right, killing thousands, and causing panic islandwide. Most people here today do not know that the USA dropped tonnes of bombs on Taiwanese people during that ugly stupid war that Imperial Japan started as part of its plan to control all of Great Asia.
