This is a war time Japanese animation depicting the evil west as a Bing Crosby in black face spider. Japan is see here as a virtuous, and brave lady bug.
Interesting style, and the singing is swell!
Imperial Japanese Navy short. Shown in their movies houses during the war.
6 comments:
Quite amusing watching these Hirohito Cartoons. Don't it just make you want to do something awful to that evil Black Yankee spider?
Very pretty songs, and anime by the guys that brought us the Bataan Death March, and the Rape of Nanking among other jollies.
All cultures, including us, seem to have this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing going on.
Yeah, we got that going too.
The artistry is high. The guy who plays the spider has a fine voice. And somewhat ironically it looks like the cartoonists might have been influenced by Max Fleischer.
Definitely the Sons of Nippon, like many peoples, are full of contradictions.
While the officers and men of the Navy and the Army were merciless to prisoners of war and brutal to all non-Japanese civilians, they gave poetic names to their IJN warships, e.g., Morning Tide; Wind from the Hills; or Snowstorm.
At the Battle of Midway (June, '42), the names of the Jap carriers, Hiryu and Soryu, meant Red Flying Dragon and Green Flying Dragon. The U.S. Navy sank both at Midway.
In a world full of odd ducks, the folks in the Land of the Rising Son are among the oddest.
Officers of the Royal Navy have generally been perceived as 'nice chaps', in contrast to the fiendish and merciless Japanese.
That doesn't seem to have been the case on the night of 1 May 1945 when a British destroyer squadron intercepted and sank the heavy cruiser IJN Haguro. By their own admission the British 'fished a few specimens out of the water for interrogation' and left the rest to drown or be eaten by sharks.
A Jap destroyer rescued 300 Jap sailors the next morning - but by that time over 900 Jap sailors had perished.
You won't find this story in the popular accounts of the Pacific War: history is written by the victors.
I just read an account of the opposite happening where a Japanese cruiser saved British survivors from rough seas during the war.
We are all part Demon, and Angel. Which comes to the forefront depends on so many specific, fleeting, and immediate factors.
We are creatures of such beautiful dreams, and such frightful nightmares.
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