The 1987 “Empire of the Sun” is an intriguing example of Asian erasure. The tale takes place in mainland China, but the question of the Chinese allies is never answered.
This epic coming-of-age film is based on J.G. Ballard’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. Ballard (15 November 1930-19 April 2009) was born in the Shanghai International Settlement to British parents. The International Settlement was a British and American enclave where British and American citizens enjoyed extraterritoriality and consular jurisdiction under the unequal treaties. The treaties were not abrogated until 1943. The British component was first established after the British victory in the First Opium War (1839-1842). Unlike Hong Kong and Macau (where the UK and Portugal enjoyed full sovereignty), the foreign concession remains under Chinese sovereignty.
The film begins with a scroll that explains the situation:
In 1941 China and Japan had been in a state of undeclared war for four years. A Japanese army of occupation was in control of much of the countryside and many towns and cities.
In Shanghai thousands of Westerners, protected by the diplomatic security of the International Settlement, continued to live as they had lived since the British came here in the 19th century and built in the image of their own country…building banking houses, hotels, offices, churches and homes that might have been uprooted from Liverpool or Surrey.
Now their time was running out. Outside Shanghai the Japanese dug in and waited…….for Pearl Harbor.
Then we see coffins floating and the flag of the Rising Sun before entering a decidedly European-looking city with Chinese chauffeurs polishing luxury cars as young boys sing a Welsh song (Suo Gân) in a church. The Chinese women wait for their young charges in the pews. The film is seen from the point-of-view of Jamie “Jim” Graham (Christian Bale), a British upper middle-class schoolboy, who is in the choir. As the boy is chauffeured home in the car with his amah (Susan Leong) and Chinese chauffeur (Zhai Lai She), they pass Chinese drawing rickshaws and a Chinese beggar.
When the amah speaks Chinese, there are no subtitles. Are we supposed to care when she runs after “my plane,” the model airplane that Jamie has casually set afire and launched on to the grass while his father (Rupert Frazer) plays golf? When Jamie wonders who will win the war, his father tells him, “China isn’t our war.”
Jamie declares: “The Japanese will win. They’ve got better planes than the Chinese and greater pilots. I’m thinking of joining the Japanese Air Force, actually.” This upsets his father. Jamie is obsessed with airplanes and many models hang from the ceiling of his bedroom.
The radio reports that the Japanese are in Indochina and talks between the Japanese ambassador to the US and President Franklin D. Roosevelt have stalled.
The Westerners have a Christmas (fancy dress) costume party with Jamie dressing up as Sinbad. To get to the party (five miles west os Shanghai in a rural area), the chauffeured cars must go through throngs of Chinese peasants who are beaten away by Chinese enforcers with long thick sticks. Some of the peasants leave bloody marks on the well-polished black cars. Dressed in his beautiful costume, Jamie strays from the party and discovers a downed Zero and then a troop of Japanese waiting. They laugh, seeing Jamie in his costume which against their uniforms looks ridiculous.
Suddenly, the war infiltrates Shanghai and the Westerners begin to pile out of their houses and into the streets, with only a suitcase. Some quickly loose their suitcases. Jamie only takes a small model airplane. This time, there is no one to beat the so-called peasants away from their chauffeured cars. Their cars become an impediment and are deserted as the passengers and drivers leave them where they are. The cars are crushed by incoming Japanese tanks.
Unused to navigating crowds, Jamie is quickly separated from his mother (Emily Richard) and father. His mother’s last words to him are, “Go home.” Yet even the Chinese beggar that sat outside their gates is no longer there and a banner declares that this mansion is now property of the Imperial Japanese forces. He finds his amah and another servant taking out pieces of furniture; instead of taking the boy with her, the amah slaps him and then wordlessly leaves. A Chinese boy that he’s seen before pursues him, stealing his shoe, but Jamie is saved by a nameless Chinese woman and then by a Chinese-speaking American, Frank.
Attempting to prove his worth to two American expatriates, Basie (John Malkovich) and Frank (Joe Pantoliano), in order to find protective adults, Jamie, now renamed “Jim,” leads them to his neighborhood, but his family home is now occupied by Japanese troops. The Japanese take the three prisoner and transport them to Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center in Shanghai and they eventually end up in an internment camp in Suzhou (Soochow). Jim becomes an entrepreneur, trading things and services. He still works with and for Basie, but also for Dr. Rawlins (Nigel Havers) who runs a makeshift hospital.
“You taught me people will do anything for a potato,” Jim tells Basie.
Although Jamie befriends a young Japanese pilot trainee (Takatarō Karaoka), we are still seeing a war that started for the Chinese in 1937 and was part of the Chinese Century of Humiliation (百年國恥) without the Chinese. Jamie admires the Japanese and feels alienated from Great Britain, a place he has never been, and yet the China he knows, the China the film presents, is an artificial society existing inside yet remaining aloof from a China that is torn between the Chinese Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong. Jamie is rejected by the Chinese servants who once served his parents.
The exact end of the Chinese Century of Humiliation has been variously defined. Chiang Kai-shek declared the end in 1943 with the abrogation of all the unequal treaties, but Mao Zedong declared it with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. But when did it begin? With the China protesting the sale of opium by British traders. The First Opium War (4 September 1839 – 29 August 1842) occurred before Commodore Perry forced Japan open (1853). The Second Opium War happened soon after (8 October 1856 – 24 October 1860).
The audience of “Empire of the Sun” is asked the sympathize with the imperial forces that preceded Japan in China: the British. And the film does nothing to explain the war from the Chinese point of view nor explain what happened after World War II in China. “Empire of the Sun” oddly erases the Chinese from a story in China. The Chinese are chauffeurs, gardeners, nannies and beggars or part of the nameless throngs around the cars, beaten out of the way for the Westerners in their cars. Their dialogue isn’t translated just as the Japanese isn’t translated, even when Jamie is speaking it. The story then curiously exists outside of the context of China, even though China was a World War II ally of the US and the UK.
According to WarnerBros., Ballard noted:
“I think it’s true that the Japanese were pretty brutal with the Chinese, so I don’t have any particularly sentimental view of them,” Ballard recalled. “But small boys tend to find their heroes where they can. One thing there was no doubt about, and that was that the Japanese were extremely brave. One had very complicated views about patriotism [and] loyalty to one’s own nation. Jim is constantly identifying himself, first with the Japanese; then, when the Americans start flying over in their Mustangs and B-29s, he’s very drawn to the American.”
Yet one can see in the film that the Chinese were brutal toward the Chinese in the journey from Shanghai to the countryside party. The film sets up a contradictory model where imperialism by the British is good yet not as potent as American imperialism, but imperialism by the Japanese is bad and the colonized Chinese peoples are of little consequence. There’s something a bit contrived about the scene where Jim’s 
friend, the Japanese pilot draws his katana to peel the mango, but it does allow showing that friendship can cross the boundaries of race and Jim understands the sincerity of the Japanese youth over the American adults. One can argue that Jamie becomes Jim and Jim is quickly striped of his arrogant colonial ways, but the focus is still on White people and the Chinese intimates of Jamie’s family reject him. Even the loyal chauffeur, Yang, is easily forgotten as is the young Chinese youth who pursued the young solitary Jamie and only gets a shoe. What of the Chinese woman who attempted to aid Jamie? She’s also forgotten.
The question of China comes up again in “The Pacific.” When I originally saw the film, I was grateful for the nuanced depiction of the Japanese, but that was before I watched “The Pacific,” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”
China was a British ally during World War I (from 14 August 1917). On 11 March 1941, President FDR signed the Lend Lease Act which allowed the UK, China and other Allied nations to purchase military equipment with payment deferred until after the war. On 9 December 1941, China officially declared war on Japan as well as Germany and Italy. The US, UK, the Netherlands and New Zealand had declared war on Japan on 8 December 1941. I think it’s worth nothing how differently China is portrayed in World War II films compared to other Allied nations (e.g. France and the UK).
“Empire of the Sun” was nominated for six Oscars. It was also nominated for six BAFTA Awards and won three (Best Cinematography for Allen Daviau, Best Score for John Williams, and Best Sound for Charles L. Campbell, Louis L. Edemann, Robert Knudson and Tony Dawe).
“Empire of the Sun” premiered in Westwood, California on 8 December 1987 and was given a limited release on 9 December 1987.
Below are the lyrics for Suo Gân. Wales is a constituent unit of the United Kingdom. It’s official languages are English and Welsh.
Huna blentyn ar fy mynwes,
Clyd a chynnes ydyw hon;
Breichiau mam sy’n dynn amdanat,
Cariad mam sy dan fy mron;
Ni chaiff dim amharu’th gyntun,
Ni wna undyn â thi gam;
Huna’n dawel, annwyl blentyn,
Huna’n fwyn ar fron dy fam.
Huna’n dawel, heno, huna,
Huna’n fwyn, y tlws ei lun;
Pam yr wyt yn awr yn gwenu,
Gwenu’n dirion yn dy hun?
Ai angylion fry sy’n gwenu,
Arnat ti yn gwenu’n llon,
Tithau’n gwenu’n ôl dan huno,
Huno’n dawel ar fy mron?
Paid ag ofni, dim ond deilen
Gura, gura ar y ddôr;
Paid ag ofni, ton fach unig
Sua, sua ar lan y môr;
Huna blentyn, nid oes yma
Ddim i roddi iti fraw;
Gwena’n dawel yn fy mynwes.
Ar yr engyl gwynion draw.
Age of the Geek 