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Film Still Archive/Museum of Modern Art.
Robert Stack and Yoshiko Yamaguchi in "House of Bamboo."
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Geishas & Godzillas
Which is odder -- the image of Japan in Hollywood movies or the image of Japan
in its own films?
No country has been the subject of so many extreme and contradictory signals as
Japan, in foreign films and in its own product. The Japanese have been seen as
proud warriors and shy bureaucrats, courtesans and devoted daughters, a most
cultured people and the most barbaric.
Long before Japan became America's wartime enemy, Hollywood movies displayed the
Japanese as an alien people, with a remote culture. Yoshiko Yamaguchi, pictured,
was thought to be one of China's top actresses until she later revealed her
Japanese ancestry after the war. She went on to make films in the '50s in Hong
Kong, Japan and the U.S. (King Vidor's "Japanese War Bride" and Samuel Fuller's
"House of Bamboo.")
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