Nihon Eigasha

This film records the Japanese military's efforts to capture the Burma Road,one of the major supply lines to China, from the British beginning in December 1941. The film ends with the fall of Mandalay in May 1942.

Using mostly footage from Nippon News newsreels, this film explains the history of Japanese aggression, from the Manchurian Incident to the Pacific War. The governing classes of Japanese capitalism planned and carried out the war project to acquire foreign markets. and while most people were forced into poverty, the capitalists became rich. The special political police detained Communists and those who opposed the war. With the rise of fascism, Japan’s tragedy begins.

This was the only documentary made in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of 1945. Japanese filmmakers entered the two cities intent on making an appeal to the International Red Cross, but were promptly arrested by newly arriving American troops. The Americans and Japanese eventually worked together to produce this film, a science film unemotionally displaying the effects of atomic particles, blast and fire on everything from concrete to human flesh. No other filmmakers were allowed into the cities, and when the film was done the Americans crated everything up and shipped it to an unknown location. That footage is now lost. However, an American and a Japanese filmmaker each stole and hid a copy of the film, fearful that the reality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be hidden from history. Eventually, these prints surfaced and became our only precious archive of the aftermath of nuclear warfare -- a film that everyone knows in part, yet has rarely seen in its entirety.

A feature-length wartime documentary compiled by Nihon Eigasha, Malayan War Record: A Record of the Onward March chronicles Japan’s 1941–42 campaign from the Malayan Peninsula to the fall of Singapore. Built from Japanese newsreels and confiscated British material, the film depicts key operations and ceremonies surrounding the British capitulation at the Ford Factory, functioning as morale-boosting propaganda for home and occupied audiences. First part of the two-film Mare Senki series; the companion title is Birth of Syonan-to.

Second part of the Mare Senki (Malaya War Record) series produced by Nihon Eigasha in 1942. While the first installment documented the Japanese advance through Malaya, Birth of Syonan-to portrays Singapore under occupation after its fall in February 1942. The film shows the renaming of the city to Shōnan-tō (“Light of the South”), Japanese victory celebrations, military parades, and efforts to depict the transformation of the colony under Japanese rule. Designed as a propaganda feature, it aimed to legitimize occupation and emphasize Japan’s leadership in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.