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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2013
This paper explores the nature of film exhibition amongst the Chinese community in Manila during the Japanese Occupation of that city. Based on advertisements and film listings published in the Chinese-language press of the day (as well as on pre-war records concerning commercial Chinese entertainment in the Philippines), it explores the continuities in film exhibition practice undertaken by various theatre operators within the Binondo area of Manila both before, during, and after the war. The paper suggests not only that such practices represented a quite different trajectory from that experienced in other parts of Occupied Manila, but also that a more thorough exploration of the Manila Chinese during wartime—one which goes beyond questions of mere collaboration and/or resistance—will encourage us to question some of the assumptions that underpin recent scholarship about this community.
Research leading to the completion of this paper was undertaken with a generous fieldwork grant from the Association of South East Asian Studies in the United Kingdom. In Manila, I thank Teddy Co for his assistance, as well as Maximo Tan of the Yu Uy Tong Club. I also acknowledge the kind assistance offered by the staff of Kaisa Para Sa Kaunlaran and the Lopez Foundation. Finally, I thank the National Library of Australia for allowing me access to relevant sources. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the British Association for Chinese Studies Annual Conference in Edinburgh in September 2011.
1 See, for instance, Hau, Caroline, ‘Conditions of visibility: Resignifying the ‘Chinese’/Filipino’ in Mana Po and Crying Ladies’, Philippine Studies 53.4 (2005), pp. 491–531Google Scholar.
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13 In this case, within the Chinese collections of the National Library of Australia.
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18 Such an approach has been used successfully by a number of film historians in recent years: Gil Toffel's close readings of cinema advertisements in the Jewish Chronicle, Jewish Times and other local publications shows how a picture—albeit an admittedly limited one—of film exhibition in a given community can be drawn (in the case of a Jewish audience in inter-war London) from often the most ephemeral of sources. See Toffell, Gil, ‘“Come see, and hear, the mother tongue!” Yiddish cinema in interwar London’, Screen 50.3 (2009): 277–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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26 The only theatre to be listed as having existed in Binondo in Rosenstock's Manila City Directory, 1921 (Manila: Yangco, Rosenstock and Co., 1921), is the Madrid (on a thoroughfare of the same name).
27 Details are taken from a 1916 (but untitled) plaque hung within the Yu Uy Tong's offices in Manila.
28 There may well have been political factors behind this name change: Da Hua and Hua Guang might be translated as ‘Great China’ and ‘Chinese Glory’ respectively, whereas Da Guangming might be translated as the far more ambiguous (and less overtly nationalistic) ‘Great Light’—a name given to a number of Chinese theatres throughout Asia.
29 Despite its shared name, Manila's Rex was not affiliated with the string of Rex Theatres which were operated by the Shaw Brothers in Singapore and Malaya (and which did not open until the postwar years).
30 Details are included in an advertisement for the Rex (and its affiliated film distribution business) in Yang Jingtong (ed.), Feilübin Huaqiao nianjian (The Philippine-Chinese Almanac) (Manila, 1935), no page numbers; and also in Feilübin gongshangye kaochaji (A record of industries in Manila) (Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, 1929), p. 43 (which lists the distribution business as being located at the same address as the Rex); details of Mabuhay Picture Co. (and its affiliation with the Rex) are listed in Manila City Directory, 1939–40 (Manila: Philippine Education Co., 1940), p. 383. ‘Mabuhay’ is a Tagalog exclamation comparable with the Spanish ‘viva’ or French ‘vive’.
31 Although such a question lies beyond the scope of this paper, further research may go some way in establishing the links, if any, between the earlier Teatro Guiñol Chino (mentioned above) on this street and the Chinese theatres which sprang up here some years later.
32 Wong, Kwok-Chuin, The Chinese in the Philippine Economy, 1898–1941 (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1999), p. 94.Google Scholar
33 The wording is taken from an advertisement for the theatre in Yang Jingtong, op. cit., no page number.
34 Chen Ziyu, ‘Yu yi’ (foreword), Yaxiya yingxi gongsi xingqi kan (Asiatic Cinema Weekly) 1.1 (April 1928): 1.
35 This claim (‘guochan mingpian zonghui’) was maintained in the Asia's logo used in advertisements for the theatre in the Fookien Times (Xinmin ribao) as late as 1941.
36 The English name Dian Hua (given in the Manila City Directory, 1934–5, p. 192) is perhaps an approximation of the Hokkien ‘Tiong-hoa’ (Zhonghua; lit., ‘Chinese’)—the company's Chinese name (the latter being listed in Feilübin gongshangye kaochaji, p. 43.
37 Manila City Directory 1934–5, p. 941.
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42 Being established well after the Land Acquisition Act of 1919, which stipulated that new purchases of land and property could only be made by Philippine or American nationals, Cathay was leased, rather than owned, by Yang. Very few Chinese residents of Manila in this era held Philippine citizenship (and in fact many were dissuaded from doing so). Like thousands of his peers, Henry Yang was not able to take up Philippine citizenship until 1975 and the introduction under Ferdinand Marcos of a new naturalization law in that year. It would appear that in the case of both the Yu Uy Tong and Vicente Gotamco, the land upon which their respective theatres were built was purchased prior to 1919, and they were thus allowed to maintain these properties after that date.
43 Other theatres catering to the non-Chinese community were also established in the area due to its proximity to the main banking and retail districts, such as Elcano Street.
44 The Nationalists took a particular interest in Manila's Chinese community as a result of the widespread support that the community had shown for the Fujian Rebellion of 1933–4—an anti-Nationalist uprising that Chiang Kai-shek had consequently crushed. Tan, Antonio S., The Chinese in the Philippines, 1898–1935: A Study of Their National Awakening (Quezon City: R. P. Garcia Publishing, 1972).Google Scholar
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48 In order to avoid undue repetition, references to the relevant film advertisements in the Xinwen are made in the main text of this paper, rather than as individual footnotes.
49 Such as Fu, Poshek, ‘The Ambiguity of Entertainment: Chinese cinema in Japanese-Occupied Shanghai, 1941 to 1945’, Cinema Journal 37.1 (Autumn 1997): 66–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
50 Indeed, a fifth ‘theatre’ emerged out of the Occupation, when the Rex began to operate a smaller theatre known as the New Cathay (Xin Guotai) in the war years, using this as an outlet for the non-Chinese films it was able to obtain, whilst keeping the Rex operating as a site of almost entirely Chinese film exhibition.
51 All four theatres appeared in the Xinwen to wish readers a Happy New Year in 1944 within a similar message from the said association.
52 Velasco, op. cit., p. 40.
53 Tan (The Chinese in the Philippines During the Japanese Occupation, p. 63) notes that the ‘manager of the movie house of the Chinese Association’ was assassinated in September 1944. It is not clear which ‘movie house’ Tan is referring to here.
54 Maximo Tan, personal communication, 23 August 2010.
55 This is something it had started to do prior to the Japanese invasion. On a number of days in early 1941, the Coco advertised its recent refurbishment in the Fookien Times (Ximin Ribao), stressing its superior audio-visual facilities and the quality of air flow in the theatre itself.
56 A class of film that, interestingly, had been frowned upon by the Nationalist Chinese authorities prior to the war. On this topic, see Teo, Stephen, ‘The Hong Kong Cantonese Cinema: Emergence, Development and Decline’, in Lim, Song Hwee and Ward, Julian (eds), The Chinese Cinema Book (London: BFI Publishing, 2011), pp. 103–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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60 The Chinese titles of the two movies, Du Shiniang and Shisan Niang, were thus highly similar.
61 Harris, Kristine, ‘Modern Mulans: Re-imagining the Mulan Legend in Chinese Film, 1920s–60s’, Otto, Elizabeth and Rocco, Vanessa (eds), The New Woman International: Representations in photography and film from the 1870s through the 1960s (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2011), pp. 309–330.Google Scholar
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71 On this topic, see Taylor, Jeremy E., Rethinking Transnational Chinese Cinemas: The Amoy-dialect film industry in Cold-War Asia (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 143.Google Scholar
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73 The name was a play on words: yin lou literally means a ‘building of sound’, but the phrase is deliberately similar in pronunciation (with only a tonal difference) to the word for ‘jewellery store’—yinlou.
74 Fu, op. cit.
75 This is how the entire war period was presented (p. 188), for example, in the late Edgar Wickberg's contribution to Lynn Pann (ed.), The Encylopedia of the Chinese Overseas (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999)—the Occupation being relegated to a single paragraph in this 13-page entry.
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