Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia is the first attempt to explore how the tumultuous years between 1931 and 1953 have been recreated and renegotiated in cinema. This period saw traumatic conflicts such as the Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War, and the Korean War, and pivotal events such as the Rape of Nanjing, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of which left a lasting imprint on East Asia and the world. By bringing together a variety of specialists in the cinemas of East Asia and offering divergent yet complementary perspectives, the book explores how the legacies of war have been reimagined through the lens of film.

This turbulent era opened with the Mukden Incident of 1931, which signaled a new page in Japanese militaristic aggression in East Asia, and culminated with the Korean War (1950–1953), a protracted conflict that broke out in the wake of Japan's post–World War II withdrawal from Korea. Divided Lenses explores how the intervening decades have continued to shape politics and popular culture throughout East Asia and the world. Essays in part I examine historical trends at work in various "national" cinemas, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the United States. Those in part 2 focus on specific themes such as comfort women in Chinese film, the Nanjing Massacre, or nationalism, and how they have been depicted or renegotiated in contemporary films. Of particular interest are contributions drawing from other forms of screen culture, such as television and video games.

This book is an outcome of the conference, Divided Lenses: Film and War Memory in Asia, that the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center hosted in December 2008, part of the Divided Memories and Reconciliation research project.

The breakthrough agreement on the comfort women issue between Japan and South Korea on Dec. 28, 2015, was the culmination of at least four years of negotiations between the two governments. South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushed for the agreement; the Obama administration provided persistent pressure while resisting a mediation role. The danger of the agreement falling apart is apparent to officials in Washington and Seoul, and hopefully Tokyo too, writes Sneider.

Americans think of South Korea as one of the most pro-American of countries, but in fact many Koreans hold harsh and conspiratorial views of the United States. If not, why did a single U.S. military traffic accident in 2002 cause hundreds of thousands of Koreans to take to the streets for weeks, shredding and burning American flags, cursing the United States, and harassing Americans? Why, too, the death threats against American athlete Apolo Ohno and massive cyberattacks against the United States for a sports call made at the Utah Winter Olympics by an Australian referee? 

These are just two of the incidents detailed in David Straub’s book, the story of an explosion of anti-Americanism in South Korea from 1999 to 2002. Straub, a Korean-speaking senior American diplomat in Seoul at the time, reviews the complicated history of the United States’ relationship with Korea and offers case studies of Korean anti-American incidents during the period that make clear why the outburst occurred, how close it came to undermining the United States’ alliance with Korea, and whether it could happen again.   

Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea is recommended reading for officials, military personnel, scholars, students, and business people interested in anti-Americanism, U.S.-Korean relations, and U.S. foreign policy and military alliances.

David Straub has been associate director of the Korea Program at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center since 2008, following a thirty-year diplomatic career focused on U.S. relations with Korea and Japan.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.