ANPO: Art X War is a 2010 historical documentary highlighting the phenomenon of creative resistance in WWII-era Japan and the immediately ensuing post-war period. Shown through art made throughout the era, snippets from interviews with artists, as well as brief commentaries from historical experts on the period, ANPO follows the popular response within Japan to the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan, the military agreement that essentially left local security hegemony to the United States.

From the American historical perspective on the post-WWII period, we paint Japan with an exceedingly broad brush. They were the guys that wouldn’t stop fighting, held out until the end, had the atomic bomb dropped on them, and virtually disappeared off the map. The reality is that Japan lost its place marker in our view of world history after the war because the United States overtook the responsibility of to managing its security in the aftermath. Stiff-arming the Japanese into the creation of Constitutional Article 9 –– forbidding them from having an active military –– the United States used the country as a regional zone for army bases, naval commands, and beyond.

With such strong regional control, it was difficult for civilians to speak out against American interference. A disparity between the unexpressed emotions of the people and that which was considered appropriate to discuss in public led to a unique form of creative resistance. Artists of the time period turned to unique mediums to speak truths that they simply couldn’t bring to the public eye: many of these pieces weren’t actually uncovered, analyzed, and attributed to artists until decades later.

Now, as one of the most stable and democratic countries in Asia, Japan is uniquely primed to bring light to the art created under ANPO. In Art X War, artists come forward and talk about their pieces, giving us a unique perspective on the viewpoints of the time period that were never truly brought to light until much later. Pieces explore somber topics –– life under a militaristic society, abuses by locally-stationed American soldiers –– but also carry hopeful narratives, stories of a people who are eager to overcome the conflict of the past and help bring their nation into the future.

Much of history is told through the eyes of its winners. It begs the question of whose history we are actually learning in class. In my experience, Japan is an afterthought to begin with, the last paragraph on the last page of a WWII chapter in a European History class, going a little something like “and then we dropped the A-bomb, and the war was over, the end.” The truth is, no matter how much literature, film, art we consume, without diversifying our sources, we’re only getting half the story. Art X War gives unique first-person accounts from a narrative that is often overlooked in our discussion of the post-war world.