ALL OF US STRUGGLE WITH THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING THE PEOPLES AND CULTURES OF ASIA. After slides and novels, the first thing that comes to mind is to show a film in class: whether good or bad, a film can bring a narrative “to life” the way no slide or novel can. Or so we think. All moving-image media that might be used in the classroom have problems. The instructor needs to be aware that all films (newsreels, documentaries, compila­tion films, studio films) are usually made not by academic specialists, but by filmmakers, whether freelancers or those on long-term contracts. Films are designed to be sold first to possible financiers (all of whom have their own motives) and only then to audi­ences. Filmmakers make films with the bud­gets they are given, even when it means cut­ting corners on research or paying for the best illustrations. This is true even of the vaunted PBS “documentary,” with its impri­matur of the NEH and other respected orga­nizations. PBS is a not-for-profit organiza­tion; the makers of its films are not. Thus, even the PBS documentary is put under the same budgetary constraints and other com­promises in production that studio films are: the more money, the better the production. However, there is rarely “more money.”¹ Routinely, historically important content, such as images of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s braces or wheelchair in newsreels, is edited out or otherwise altered.² Events are routinely staged. For example, in The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003), a documentary about shepherds in present-day Mongolia, two boys ride to town to fetch a violinist for an impor­tant ritual for the camels. The boys are filmed with a camera in front of them or in anticipa­tion of the spot where they will arrive from outside the frame.³ This technique signals to the viewer the extent to which this film leads, rather than follows, the action. Filmmakers often use the voice-over nar­rator to impose a particular ideology or to send culturally distorted messages. For example, the 1988 mini-series, Japan, produced by PBS station WTTW in Chicago, shows a clip of a furious sword fight in the rain between nineteenth-century gangs. This clip, taken from a studio film, uses voice-over commentary by Jane Seymour making a sweeping pontification on the natural cru­elty of the Japanese people.⁴ This technique is also present in Frank Capra’s 1944 The Battle of China,⁵ and the 1945 Know Your Enemy: Japan.⁶ The best way to deal with problems like this is to mute the audio and make one’s own commentary. Academics use specialized terms for doc­umentaries that can help instructors evaluate their classroom usefulness. For example, “direct documentary” refers to an event or process entirely recorded by a moving-image camera. Therefore, one cannot make a direct documentary about the past: one cannot record the past. On the other hand, “compila­tion film” refers to those PBS and other pro­ductions characterized by their assemblages of talking heads, snips of newsreels, photos, illus­trations, documents, stat­ues, buildings, the voice-over by a seen or unseen narrator, and re-enact­ments. Compilation films are problematic because of the often inappropriate choices of the compiled materials due, as men­tioned above, to a lack of suitable illustrations or budget. The filmmaker’s cavalier attitude toward the audience, “who will never know the differ­ence,” does not belong in films for classroom use. Nevertheless, the attitude is prevalent in one of the most questionable prac­tices of contemporary compilation films—the substitution of re-enact­ments for appropriate visuals. Often, re-enactments are not identi­fied as such—and can be inaccurate or mis­leading.⁷ Studio films, because of their much bigger budgets, usually do a better job of re-enacting specific events or recreating specific periods of time. These re-enactment scenes function like mini-documentaries, especially when they illustrate traditions still practiced. Mizoguchi Kenji’s 1953 Ugetsu shows briefly the process of making pottery: the pot­ter at the wheel turned by his wife; his broth­er-in-law lifting the pots onto scaffolds to dry in the sun; his wife ladling glazing inside and outside the pots; loading the kiln; and, finally, keeping the kiln going all night.⁸ Again, his 1952 The Life of Oharu briefly shows how a courtesan is presented to her new customer for the first time. She kneels opposite him with a servant to her right. She leans forward gracefully, takes up a saké saucer, and three times dips it in front of her, raises it to the side of her face, and at the same time makes a very slight figure-eight motion with her chin. When she is finished, she replaces the saucer and the woman beside her calls out, in a very stylized manner, her name and rank in the pleasure quarters.⁹ The ritual as re-enacted in Oharu can be reasonably expected to be authentic since there were many places where such a ritual had been preserved: guides to the pleasure quarters throughout the years were many; organized prostitution and its brothels and tea houses were active in Japan until made illegal in 1956; and many popular plays, especially Kabuki plays set in the licensed quarters, were still being performed on stage. It is not necessary to show a film in its entirety. Show the first twenty minutes or so of The Concubine and the Assassin and see how many reproductions of Qin and Han arti­facts the students can recognize.¹⁰ Compare the documentary section on the tea ceremony in Daimy¬¹¹ with the last scene in Gonza the Lancer,¹² also on the tea ceremony. Have stu­dents read a story about the Japanese magis­trate Judge Ooka Tadasuke¹³ and show the section from the direct documentary about China, Heart of the Dragon: Correcting,¹⁴ that deals with two sisters trying to sue their brother for money their mother had left them: both will illustrate the continuing tradition of morality versus the letter of the law. Using portions of video in conjunction with other materials is not easy. However, it is better to do the research and use the you trust rather than have your students pick up questionable ideas you will never be able to erase from their data banks.