Manchukuo - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

In Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition (film series) (1959) Kaji, the main protagonist, is a labor supervisor assigned to a workforce of Chinese prisoners in a large mining operation in Japanese-colonized Manchuria.

Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 film, The Last Emperor, presented a controversial portrait of Manchukuo through the memories of Emperor Puyi, during his days as political prisoner in the People's Republic of China.

Haruki Murakami's 1995 novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle deals greatly with Manchukuo through the character of Lieutenant Mamiya. Mamiya recalls, in person and in correspondence, his time as an officer in the Kwangtung Army in Manchukuo. While the period covered in these recollections extends for many years, the focus is on the final year of the war and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.

The 2008 South Korean western The Good, the Bad, the Weird is set in the desert wilderness of 1930s Manchuria.

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