Man Behind The Sun
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Template:Cleanup-date Man Behind The Sun (also called Black Sun 731 and Men Behind The Sun) is a 1987 Chinese film by Mou Tun Fei, about Unit 731.
The film details the various cruel medical experiments Japan's Unit 731 inflicted upon the Chinese & Russian prisoners of war taken in the Sino-Japanese war and Chinese civilian population at the tail-end of World War II. The experiments were done to further of Japan's bacteriological weapons which they thought be the only way to defeat the allied armies. It was based in a remote region in north-east China, a puppet-state known as Manchukuo. The film itself contains little in the way of expository dialogue, what little information offered is in the form of narration.
The film is extremely controversial for its use of actual autopsy footage of a young boy and also for a scene in which a cat is thrown into a room to be eaten alive by hundreds of starved rats. There is some question as to the legality of the film, since there are laws against animal cruelty in many countries, including China. Some critics have suggested that the cruelty of the cat being eaten alive by starved rats is an analogy of psyche of the Imperial Army, that the Chinese are the rats (numerous and cowed) and the Japanese are the cat (predatory and authoratative) and infers that a benign population can rise up and defeat even the fiercest enemy.
It later surfaced that once the Americans found out about the research that they arranged a deal with Unit 731 whereby they became immune from prosecution in exchange for their data and findings so that they could have the upper hand against the Soviets in germ warfare
Some contend that the violent treatment of the subject matter degrades any strong message the film might have conveyed, that the events in the film are based on historical evidence that in a more thorough work would have been examined critically, and that the work is little more than repulsive cinematic exploitation. Despite the importance of bringing a discussion of any historical atrocities to a wider audience, it is far from clear whether the film achieves any educational objective.
(A) Chinese title: 黑太阳 731 (pinyin: hēi tài yáng 731)
External Links:
Cited from Japanese Unit 731, Biological Warfare Unit, War Crimes Against Humanity:
Trial
Thirty people were brought to trial by an Allied War Crimes Tribunal in Yokohama, Japan, on March 11, 1948. Charges included vivisection and wrongful removal of body parts; 23 were found guilty of various charges. Five of the guilty were sentenced to death. None of the death sentences were carried out. By 1958, all those convicted were free. The Soviet Union also held trials. Sentences there were carried out.
War Crimes Trial High-level Japanese war criminals were tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The prosecution team was made up of justices from eleven Allied nations: Australia, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The Tokyo trial lasted two and a half years, from May 1946 to November 1948. The principle charges were making aggressive war and allowing atrocities against POWs and civilians. (...) "
- The trial of Unit 731
- Unit 731 - Nightmare in Manchuria
- Japan's Germ Warfare and the Korean War
- Chinese Holocaust Museum
- U.S. Authorities Well Aware of Japan's Using Biological Warfare in China - The Deal Between the United States and Former Members of Unit 731
- U.S. Authorities Well Aware of Japan's Using Biological Warfare in China - The Deal Between the United States and Former Members of Unit 731 – article with markers
- Japan's Germ Warfare and the Korean War as PDF
- JAPANESE WW II ATROCITIES; 60 YEARS LATER
Movie Critics
- [1]
- [2] (in French)
- IMDB entry
- Robert Firsching's review