Japanese Characters in Film: The Cheat, Sayonara and Rising Sun

This process of demonizing or diminishing Asians is not absent from the film industry in the United States. This report will explore this issue by comparing three films featuring Japanese subjects. The Cheat, Sayonara, and Rising Sun. These films are drawn from three different eras, but each in its own way tends to highlight the character of the Japanese as "others" whose customs, attitudes, and norms are radically different from those of Anglo America.

Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 film, The Cheat, has been praised as one of his masterpieces (Doherty 46). The film features a society wife who embezzles $10,000 from a Red Cross fund. When she loses the money through an investment, she is approached by a Burmese prince played by Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa who attempts

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racial prejudice against the Japanese - a problem that is compounded because a number of soldiers become romantically involved with Japanese women in defiance of U.S. military policy. Tim Dirks (1) has stated that Gruver is forced to take a position on this issue when his friend marries a Japanese woman and he then falls in love with a Japanese dancer and chooses to marry her. In Sayonara, the Japanese are presented largely through female characters who are charming, beautiful, submissive, and ultimately irresistible. The film challenges stereotypes of the Japanese and American military policy which it presents as inherently racist (Jardine 1). Bosley Crowther (1) said that the film, directed by Joshua Logan, is visually poetic, but perhaps overly simplistic in its efforts to portray love as having the capacity to overcome racial bias and prejudice as well as cultural differences. It is no accident that while the female Japanese characters are highly sympathetic, the male Japanese characters are less so and seem to share many of the same biases toward interracial marriage that the U.S. military presents. In discussing Sayonara, Marchetti (125) claims that it contains a dual romantic story line with the major and hi
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Rising Sun, South Japanese, Yellow Peril, Asian Marchetti, Eddie Sakamura, Sayonara Marchetti, II Japanese-Americans, Tom Doherty, Joshua Logan, Gina Marchetti, rising sun, accessed online november, accessed online, november 27 2007, online november, online november 27, november 27, 27 2007, yellow peril, japanese villain, japanese characters, world war ii, world war, cobb 87, sayonara rising sun,
Approximate Word count = 2423
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)