Kukan: The Battle Cry of China (1941)

I’m not so sure that this is a “battle cry”, but more of an interesting travelogue of a nation where civilisation has prevailed for centuries and where life for many has changed little in that time. The pretext for journalist Niles Welch’s journey is, of course, the militaristic ambitions of the Japanese as their troops emerge from their Manchurian enclave to challenge both the established British and French colonial enterprises as well as those of Chiang kai-shek in the age-old interior of this largely agrarian land of hundreds of millions of people. Beginning in the city of Chungking, his journey is still largely unimpeded by their enemy as he traverses a country where flour is still stone milled, where roads are regularly washed out by torrential rains and where the rivers are arterial for trade and crucial for feeding a population whose two bowls of rice a day provided it’s staple diet. As Welch drives deeper inland we start to experience more of the traditional cultures of the land. Communism has yet to eradicate the ancient Taoism and the temples and the monks function now as they did millennia ago. Towards the end, we find ourselves amidst the golden temples of Lhasa where the Buddhist monks emphasise the significance of existing in harmony with a nature that can be both harsh and yet life-giving. His return journey serves to illustrate better the effects of the encroaching enemy though. As the bombings become more frequent and penetrative there is even an hint of jeopardy as to whether he might make it out of the country, with his film, before the flag with the rising sun flies above this land. Although he is prone to a few biggest/oldest/tallest in the world type superlatives, the narration is generally more appreciative and informative and it avoids becoming too jingoistic or zealous as it lets the camerawork speak volumes about a people who must, themselves, have been somewhat bamboozled by the very technology that was recording their struggle for posterity. It’s an authentic documentary well worth a watch that in many ways helps to put some of the values of more modern and Western culture into perspective.