VLVL2 context: Japan- and Nazi-related news story

[pynchonoid]

Japan film scraps Hitler promotion

A Japanese film distributor has cancelled plans to
display a painting by Germany's Nazi leader, Adolf
Hitler. 

The move followed a protest by a Jewish human rights
group that the display risked trivialising the
holocaust.

The work, showing a church in Vienna, was to be
displayed at a Tokyo theatre on Saturday to promote a
film loosely based on Hitler's life - the Max.

When the film was released in Europe last year, it
prompted the charge that it was an attempt to humanise
Hitler.



A spokesman for Toshiba Entertainment, the film's
Japanese distributor, reportedly said that too much
interest in the painting had led to the exhibition's
cancellation.

"The reaction was overwhelming. We received too many
inquiries," the spokesman was quoted as saying by the
AFP news agency.

"People asked us questions like how long the painting
would be shown or how much it could cost," he said.

The company said it was worried about appropriate
security for the display.

It was not clear whether cultural sensitivities also
played a part in the decision to drop the exhibition.

The US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center's associate dean
Rabbi Abraham Cooper criticised the planned display
Tuesday, saying in a statement on its website it
"could have the effect of trivialising the evil of the
man and the horrors he unleashed on humankind".

Sensitivities 

The film shows Hitler's evolution from struggling
artist to extreme nationalist, and is centred around
his relationship with a Jewish art dealer - the Max of
the film's title.





Some critics have said that the film suggests Hitler
would never have risen to power if he had been
successful as an artist.

Toshiba had earlier acknowledged that displaying the
painting of Vienna's Karlskirche, also known as Saint
Karl's Church, by the dictator may fuel allegations
that Japan was indifferent to racial sensitivities but
had defended its use.

"The showing of the watercolour is meant to back up
the message of the film - to show that Hitler had a
human side to him and that is all the more reason why
he is terrifying because a despot could be born
again," said spokesman Daisuke Kobayashi.

Hitler drew and painted thousands of pictures in the
early years of the 20th century, though his
application to join the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts
was rejected.

Story from BBC NEWS:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3456169.stm>

Published: 2004/02/04 12:13:42 GMT

© BBC MMIV


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