About the Book
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
This is the first book in any language to examine the animated works of the Manchukuo Film Association known as Manying in Chinese a studio established by Japanese authorities during the occupation of Manchuria. Long thought lost to the war Manying’s films were rediscovered in 1989—yet in contrast to the studio’s newsreels documentaries and live-action feature films its animated works have largely gone ignored. In this book Daisy Yan Du draws on research in multiple languages and rarely accessed archives to reveal that Manying made animation central to its mission even harboring ambitions of building an animation empire across China and beyond. This unrealized dream did not simply vanish with the end of the war however: its specter lingered playing a previously untold role in the development of the Chinese Japanese and Korean animation industries. Filling a critical gap in our understanding of the development of East Asian and world animation this groundbreaking work tells the story of the surprising lives deaths and afterlives of Manying animation.