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The Boy and the Heron Opens in China to Box Office Success and Political Criticism

Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s most recent film has landed in China. Despite achieving high box office sales, the film received a fair share of backlash. By Ching Wai.

China - The Oscar-winning animated film The Boy and the Heron opened in China to a mixed response. The Hayao Miyazaki film was recently released in mainland China early April. While it gained praise and garnered an estimated RMB 735 million (US$104 million) after 19 days of its release, the film has also received a fair share of criticism.

Some accused filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki of an “insufficient reflection” over Japan’s war history. This is in spite of Miyazaki having a well-known anti-war stance, as Chinese nationalists claimed the filmmaker’s stance to be hypocritical since The Boy and the Heron presented Japanese characters as victims of the war.

“[The Boy and the Heron] gives you different ways to read the plot and to read different characters. So I would say it’s sometimes contradictory, sometimes inconsistent, that’s also why people feel confused… especially if they are not very familiar with Miyazaki’s own personal life history, his own childhood, his family [and the historical background]. When it comes to [the movie’s attitude towards the war], I think you could easily imagine there is going to be some kind of nationalist sentiment involved. But I think there are other kinds of viewpoints that are broader than just expression[s] of nationalism,” said Sheng Zou, an interdisciplinary media scholar at Hong Kong Baptist University.

The criticisms reflect the ongoing worsening ties between China and Japan, with issues such as the territorial disputes in the East China Sea, the recent Fukushima nuclear plant water release, and Japan’s increasing concerns over the security of the Taiwan Strait.

This is observed by a mainland-based political scientist, who said, “But now we see some [people] with ultranationalist and leftist views judge works of art, and it is sometimes extreme, especially in recent years. [Such harsh stances could] hurt objective presentation of history.”

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