This article examines cinema as an important instrument of national information and propaganda by comparing America’s Fin-Syn Rules with the agreement by Japan’s five major film companies to withhold Japanese films from television.
Based on a column by Masayuki Takayama, it considers how television, shortsighted decisions by the Japanese film industry, and the spread of a self-denigrating view of history contributed to the decline of Japanese cinema.

July 13, 2020
The following is based on a serialized column by Masayuki Takayama titled “We Do Not Need Antiwar Films,” published in the July 16, 2020 issue of Shukan Shincho.
The columns written by Masayuki Takayama and Yoshiko Sakurai bring each issue of Shukan Shincho to a distinguished conclusion.
Indeed, I purchase Shukan Shincho every week in order to read the essays written by these two authors.
This article once again proves that Masayuki Takayama is a journalist without equal in the postwar world.
A television quiz program once asked which country produced the largest number of films in the world.
In recent years, some unexpected countries have emerged as major film-producing nations.
Nigeria, despite having very few cinemas, was producing more than twice as many films as Hollywood.
China also produces mountains of films with a strong air of propaganda, but the correct answer to the quiz was India.
Studios crowd the area around Bombay, now known as Mumbai, and the industry has been nicknamed “Bollywood” by combining the city’s former name with Hollywood.
India produces approximately two thousand films a year, about three times the number produced by Hollywood.
Japan itself was once a great film nation whose industry surpassed even Hollywood, then the world’s leading film center.
There were numerous companies and studios, including Toho, Toei, and Nikkatsu, and annual cinema attendance reached 1.1 billion, roughly ten times the population of Japan.
Standing-room-only audiences were commonplace.
Cinema was truly the king of entertainment.
There were also countless heroes.
When Kurama Tengu galloped across the screen on a white horse, applause erupted throughout the theater.
Until Ryotaro Shiba appeared, the Shinsengumi had long been portrayed as villains.
Yakuza films were ideal vehicles for Koji Tsuruta, a former kamikaze pilot, and Ken Takakura.
In Takakura’s later years, however, he was for some reason often cast in gloomy antiwar films, which was unfortunate.
Yujiro Kayama, known as the Young General, was well suited to the role of a young military officer.
Dokuritsu Gurentai, in which Frankie Sakai defeats the Eighth Route Army, was first-rate entertainment.
Why, then, did such a powerful Japanese film industry decline?
The first reason was the arrival of television.
Early television screens were only seventeen inches wide and displayed images in black and white.
Cinema, by contrast, offered full-color CinemaScope.
Toei was releasing two new films every week.
From the perspective of the film companies, television should not have been an enemy worth fearing.
Nevertheless, in 1958, the year in which the licensed red-light districts disappeared, the five major Japanese film companies arrogantly entered into an agreement not to provide Japanese films to television stations.
Their attitude was that, if television stations wanted to broadcast films, they should build their own sets, train their own actors, and produce their own dramas.
The television stations, placed in a difficult position, imported American programs such as Rawhide, Combat!, and Father Knows Best.
Vic Morrow became a hero in Japanese living rooms.
NHK also earned strong ratings with Sachiyo Toake in Basu-dori Ura.
As television became more entertaining, fewer people went to cinemas.
In fact, within several years of the five-company agreement, cinema attendance continued to decline and eventually fell to one twentieth of its peak level.
On this occasion alone, Japan should have followed the example of the United States.
In the United States as well, the three major television networks, including CBS, stood in the path of Hollywood.
However, cinema was not merely entertainment.
It also served as an important instrument of national propaganda.
The United States portrayed itself as a democratic and compassionate nation, while Germany was depicted as thoroughly evil.
Japan was also assigned the role of villain and portrayed as a country that abused and killed innocent Chinese people.
In this way, public opinion was cultivated to accept the atomic bombings as justified.
Because cinema was such an important medium of information and propaganda, the United States Congress acted and established what became known as the Fin-Syn Rules.
Put simply, television networks were not to fill their schedules solely with programs they had produced themselves.
Production was instead to be entrusted to film studios and independent producers.
As a result, Hollywood prospered even further, while television stations were also able to broadcast high-quality films and dramas.
There were also cases such as Clint Eastwood, who rose from television to become a major Hollywood star.
Japan had no comparable national vision.
Half of its film studios went out of business, while television stations became capable of producing only mediocre dramas.
There might still have been hope if the remaining studios had continued to make excellent films.
Instead, a self-denigrating view of Japanese history entered the industry.
This was the second cause of the decline of Japanese cinema.
For example, a story in which a Japanese intelligence agent infiltrates a country that abducts Japanese citizens and organizes acts of terrorism, destroys its nuclear facility, and rescues the hostages would probably appeal to many viewers.
Yet such a project would be stopped on the grounds that it might “provoke North Korea,” as Yoshifu Arita and others have argued.
Even when Hayao Miyazaki attempts to portray the Zero fighter honestly, antiwar activists around him will not permit it.
The result is that filmmakers can do little more than kill a young girl in order to make the audience cry.
Who would choose to watch films like that?
Japan nevertheless possesses powerful material for serious films.
One example is the Battle of Ramou.
Facing a fierce attack by Chinese forces commanded by American officers, Japanese troops, shortly before their final destruction, gave white flags to five Korean comfort women and told them, “They will kill only Japanese people.”
The five women survived.
The Japanese officers and soldiers were annihilated.
This is a true story.
Within this single event can be found the entire reality of the last war and the character of the Japanese people who lived through it.
These are the kinds of films I want to see.
Not simplistic antiwar films.
I want films that face the facts directly and portray both the reality of war and the Japanese people who lived and died within it.