'Merdeka': Japanese as RI's liberators
'Merdeka': Japanese as RI's liberators
By Eric Prideaux
TOKYO (AP): A major Japanese film distributor on Saturday
debuted a movie that critics say falsely suggests Japan helped
liberate Indonesia from Dutch colonizers after World War II.
Merdeka - "independence" in Indonesian - tells the story of
2,000 Japanese soldiers stationed on the Southeast Asian country
who stay behind after the war to aid local rebels in their
struggle against the Dutch.
Distributor Toho's two-hour film, screened nationwide
Saturday, portrays the Dutch as sadistic oppressors who revel in
torturing their subjects. The Japanese, meanwhile, sacrifice
their lives for their Indonesian compatriots - with one soldier
hurling himself upon a Dutch tank while clutching a bomb.
"During the war he fought for Japan. Now he's fighting for
Indonesia," sighs the wife of one of the main Japanese
characters.
The film's creators say their work is based on historical
events.
"I don't intend to glorify war at all, but that was the real
situation. If people don't learn about this, they won't come to a
proper understanding of history," said director Yukio Fuji.
But Syahri Sakidin, councilor at the Indonesian Embassy in
Tokyo, said that in reality only "a handful" of Japanese soldiers
remained after the war, and that it was unclear from historical
records whether they opposed the Europeans to free Indonesia or
only to keep the country within their own sphere of influence.
The Netherlands ruled Indonesia for about 350 years until
1942, when the country was taken over by the invading Japanese
military. The Dutch regained some power after the end of the war
in 1945 until completely withdrawing four years later.
During their three-year occupation, the Japanese subjected the
Indonesians to forced labor and sexual servitude, historians say.
"We never, never considered the Japanese a savior from
colonial power," Sakidin said.
He said Indonesian Ambassador Soemadi Brotodiningrat was
particularly offended by a scene in a prerelease version of the
film in which an Indonesian woman knelt and kissed the boot of a
Japanese soldier to thank him for defending her country.
Soemadi protested in March and the makers shaved five seconds
from the scene. In the final edit she is shown only kneeling
before the soldier, said Masahiko Suzuki, a spokesman for Toho.
Merdeka was released amid rising criticism from Asian
countries that Japan is trying to cover up its history of
imperialist oppression across the region during the first half of
the 20th century.
On Thursday, South Korean lawmakers asked a Japanese court to
ban the sale of a government-approved school history textbook
that they complained fails to mention the hundreds of thousands
of Korean and other Asian women forced into prostitution for
Japan's World War II soldiers.
Sakidin said many Indonesians keenly remember their own
sufferings at the hands of the Japanese.
"Indonesian people would never say they were fighting for us,"
he said.