Die Tochter des Samurai

After working on the film together, the famous mountain and Heimat film-maker Arnold Fanck and the Japanese director Itami Mansaku filmed two versions of the same script by Fanck in Japan. They became two very different films. One was for the international and one for the Japanese market, even though the version by Fanck was probably also released in Japan. The story is about the Japanese boy Teruo who returns to Japan after spending eight years studying in Europe. His parents have found him a wife whom he then has to marry according to the custom at the time. Teruo has however been in the West too long to accept this. His refusal is not accepted without a fight. There are long talks with his tutor about the importance of traditions for the fatherland. He is also forced to do hard menial labour in the rice paddies to break his will. The nature film-maker Fanck larded the story with many pictures of landscapes. He took so many shots like this back to Germany with him, that he was able to edit two more short films from the material (Frühling in Japan and Bilder von Japans Küsten). In 1943 a new version of Fanck’s film was made, entitled Die Liebe der Mitsu. The film had already been deemed ‘staatspolitisch und künstlerisch wertvoll’. Apparently this brotherhood with the Japanese allies was propagandistically useful to the Nazi regime. GjZ