**Mild Spoilers** Surprisingly mild-in the propaganda department-motion picture for an American made war movie at the very hight, with the Axis winning at the time it was made, of WWII.The movie "Behind the Rising Sun" does show the Japanese as villains but only the most nationalist and fanatical as well as racist, towards the white or Caucasian race, among them. The Japanese people for the most part are shown being brutalized and exploited by Japan's Fascist military junta, headed by Gen. Tojo, as much as the Chinese people-who are under Japan's thumb-shown in the film. The film incredibly also shows that the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, descendant of the Sun God, as an innocent stooge being manipulate by Tojo's Military Junta and in no way involved in the crimes that he was at the time, in both US newspapers and heavily propagandized war films, accused of committing. This is exactly what happened two years later in the United State, under the urging of Gen MacArthur, and its allies refusing to indite Hirohito for war crimes! Which turned out to be one of the most brilliant decisions that Gen MacArthur ever made in peace as well as wartime!In "Behind the Rising Sun" we see the lives of father and son Reo & Toro Seki, J. Carrol Nash and Tom Neal, change directions because of the upheaval in their native Japan. Toro who was educated in America is anything like his father Reo in respecting or upholding Japanese tradition. Reo at first is as fanatical a Japanese nationalist as you can get but it's his son who in the end, after being brainwashed by the Japanese military, turns the corner and outdoes even his, who by then finally saw the light, gong-ho and kamikaze like pop! In fact as the movie starts we already see that Toro made the ultimate sacrifice for his country and wait to see, by watching the film, what exactly lead him to do it!Sent to fight in China as an officer in the Japaneses Army's Communication & Engineer Corps Toro became insensitive towards the horrors that his fellow Japanese soldiers inflicted on the helpless Chinese population. Back in Tokyo Toro's father Reo soon realized that his beloved country Japan was descending into barbarism, in its plans to conquer the entire world, and wanted no part of it. I wondered watching the movie if those behind it were somehow trying to put a wedge between Japan and its ally in WWII Nazi Germany! In its hinting that Germany being as white and Caucasian as any nation on earth would be on Japan's hit-list after it, together Germany & Italy, won the war!It becomes very apparent to Reo that his son Toro had gone off the deep end when he came back home on leave from China and even worse he, in his pushing Japanese nationalism on Toro, together with him being indoctrinated by the Japaneses military was a major cause of it! With his son now gone forever, killed during the 1942 Doolittle raid on Tokyo, Reo could no longer face what he did and did the only thing left for him to do by doing-via Hiri Kiri- himself in Japanese style.Together with the very deep and thought-provoking political menu in the movie we also have Toro's love interest the exotically beautiful Margo as Tama Shimamuka as well as a secondary love affair with American businessman Clancy O'Hara, Donald Douglas, and American newspaper woman Sara Braden, Gloria Holden, which was more or less padding or fillers, to stretch the film to it's eventual 88 minutes, then anything else.P.S By far the best part of the movie had nothing at all to do with the war but a knock down drag out "Battle of the Century" between American prizefighter Lefty O'Doyle, Robert Ryan, and Japanese martial arts expert, even though he's about as Japanese as I'm inner Mongolian, Mike Mazurki. That incredible slug fest between the two giants of pugilism was more then worth the price of admission!

Considering that this is blatant propaganda – basically it is to Japan what "Hitler's Children" is to Germany, and from the same director – it's a somewhat difficult film to evaluate today. I end up going on the negative side – I really don't think that for anyone other than people like myself who are interested in propaganda as a subject that there is very much of value in this film at this point. But I do think that for war-time American audiences it wasn't a rip-off; it did provide a varied entertainment vehicle with surprising elements like a young Robert Ryan boxing against a Sumo wrestler and a fairly interesting love story between the secondary American characters (Gloria Holden and Donald Douglas).The most striking thing about this movie is how hard it strives – like "Children" – to establish the humanity of the Japanese characters before showing how fascist systems of thought dehumanize them and make them capable of doing unimaginable deeds (this film implies that babies are being thrown into some kind of pit and shows children being separated from their mothers so the Japanese army can have their way with them). Unfortunately this effect is greatly damaged by having non-Japanese actors for all the major roles. This isn't a practice that I think deserves the kind of blanket-condemnation that it's received lately. I don't think it's inherently racist to have an actor portray a role that's not of their racial type – Lon Chaney's appearance in "Shadows" is no more racist for example than Denzel Washington's appearance in "Much Ado About Nothing." We should not dismiss the artistic validity of a performance simply because the actor is playing outside his native racial heritage – to do so is far too limiting for actors and shows a lack of imagination on the part of audiences. But in this case I just feel that given how sensitive the material is – Japan's atrocities in China and the Pearl Harbor bombing, for example – it would be highly preferable to have actual Asian-American actors in the roles. And I think this would even have strengthened the film's function as propaganda at the time of its release both here and abroad. And the final nail in the coffin is the fact that they picked Tom Neal ("Detour"), an unimpressive actor with no screen presence and a distinctly European face that simply defies all putty and paint and never convinces. Usually in these kind of films I start to ignore the racial difference regardless of how European the actor looks – for instance Boris Karloff was convincing in "West of Shanghai." But Neal is not a good enough actor to make us want to forget that he's playing outside his racial type because he's also playing outside of the range of his talent. J. Carrol Naish shows how it's done – his performance as the father, Reo Seki, is very subtle and accomplished and we stop thinking about any racial difference within minutes because of the skill with which he fills out the role. So there's a strong contrast here within this movie that really damages whatever is left of its dramatic strength. But it really would have helped as well if they had selected an actor for Taro Seki who had a somewhat less distinctive face without quite as strong a jaw as Neal.I did think it was pretty surprising that the narrative so completely abandoned Taro Seki (Neal)… I kind of kept expecting it to make a hero out of him again in the end somehow. Instead the film shifts to the point where Reo Seki is someone we can relate to more than the son who seems to be so American at the beginning of the film. So the movie benefits by not being as predictable as it could have been. It really allows Japanese culture to emerge with some dignity. Too bad they felt they had to fill it with absurd elements. For example in one scene when Japan declares war on China, a man with a rather comical but somehow scary Asian face (Paul Fung, apparently) jumps out and the American characters say something like "oh no, it's the Samurai Sword dance!" just as he starts to twirl and pounce ridiculously around the room. In another scene Japanese soldiers hand out opium to small Chinese children instead of bread.It would be really fantastic if the movie actually was what it appears to be – an exploration of how good people become evil people under the influence of fascist ideology. Some of the early scenes like the one where Taro Seki takes his girlfriend (Margo) to a baseball game that's interrupted by military drills and an instruction that "everything you see on the field should be viewed as military preparation", seemed to promise such a movie. But in reality it's a bit more ambitious than it probably should have been in terms of humanizing the Japanese, producing a film that from today's eyes (at least, mine) appears even more bizarre than some of the more one-sided propaganda films from the period simply because it's trying to do so much but then betrays that attempt whenever necessary or even perhaps convenient. The director, Dmytyrk, actually got in trouble later on in the 50s for some of the things he did in these films and in some of the films he made after the War ended. In this film for example we have a sympathetic Communist figure in "Boris" (George Givot). Dmytryk always had big ideas but his style of directing is very straightforward and in this particular film there's not much personality to distinguish it from your run of the mill B propaganda picture, except perhaps the attention that's been paid as I said above to keeping the humanity of the Japanese front and center, and this goes for both negative and positive portrayals of the characters.

This film was an attempt by Edward Dymtryk to show the Japanese as individuals, and not as stereotyped sub-humans commonly portrayed in the other films of the period. The goal was to show Japan's aggressiveness was the result of a militaristic culture that came to dominate the country by squashing out all forms of liberalism. The Office of War Information (OWI) approved of the approach for they were constantly dismayed by Hollywood's depiction of the Japanese, feeling that after the U.S. had won the war these types of negative portrayals would only hinder a solid relationship between the two nations. I think it could be argued that "Behind The Rising Sun" failed to meet expectations, and ended up being a confused piece of propaganda. This is what probably makes it rather fascinating to watch today. It never firmly develops any major sympathetic Japanese character except the one played by Margo, and the basis of her character is that she is intrigued by all things American. The Japanese character played by J Carrol Naish has changed his political outlook by the conclusion of the film to be against Japan's expansionist aspirations. He decides his best course of action is to kill himself. Tom Neal, who looks like he is auditioning for a part in a video for The Vapor's "I Think I'm Turning Japanese," is apparently supposed to be an example of how Japan's militaristic culture can take a happy-go-lucky fellow, and transform him into a ruthless and cold hearted killer. His transformation doesn't seem very believable. His actions seem to support the racists notions the viewer might have had at the time rather than cast doubt on them."We never let a cat break up a good poker game in Idaho" --Lefty I think my favorite scenes in the film involve Robert Ryan's character, Lefty. When he shoots his pistol at a cat, and the authorities show up and confiscate his gun he is completely befuddle. It's like he can't believe he is in a country that is so oppressive that a fellow can't even shoot a cat. His fight scene with Mike Mazurki is quite memorable too.

Today (even in 1943) this film is very racist dealing with Japanese son educated in US goes back to Japan and takes part in atrocities there and in China. The whole China sequences are very grisly and actually disturbing, such as nailing the baby to the door by his/her pigtail along with the usual raping and pillaging of the Chinese countryside. They even keep the Chinese drugged up with free heroin handouts from trucks that pull into the villages. There is just one "good" Japanese character in the movie, the female secretary who works for an American architect caught in Japan with some Western reporters when WW2 finally erupts. But then these characters get tortured and sentenced to death. On the whole film it is NEVER boring...never. It has very good production and fine actors (even though Japanese are all played by white Europeans a la Charlie Chan). Now get this! RKO was asked by US government to make a picture that would portray Japanese in a real and fair way instead of the crop of anti-Japanese pictures that were made already so to stave off racial hatred toward this group. It was rampant in US (not so, for Germans though, interestingly films about Nazi's always had numerous "good" Germans, never in propaganda Japanese films who were usually portrayed as sub human hordes.)Anyway this was Hollywood's answer to the problem. Unbelievable! Film though is considered an excellent yet hysterical example of WW2 propaganda at the time.