Leprosy Isolation Policy and a Propaganda Film Named <Spring on A Small Island> in Prewar Japan

This article analyzed the historical and ideological background of the movie <Spring on a Small Island>. First of all, this study pointed out why the Japanese government pursued an all-out and aggressive quarantine policy in the 1930s, the influence of eugenics thought, and the Western view of leprosy as an epidemic disease in the colony. The act of quarantining a patient with leprosy disease into a sanatorium has been dubbed as slogans such as “purification of the motherland” and “purification of the nation”. This was a slogan based on eugenics that resonated with “national hygiene,” and was a different action from quarantine measures against other infectious diseases. The film <Spring on a Small Island>, produced in the background of this era, has been known to film researchers as a movie depicting “humanism” under the name of “bungei-eiga(literary film)”. This paper revealed that this explanation was actually an evaluation that accepted the propaganda phrase at the time according to the planning intention of the commercial department at the time. This article also analyzed how the film tried to express the national policy of ‘purifying the motherland’ visually. <Spring on a Small Island> had close cooperation with the authorities from production to screening. The most important expression for patients with leprosy disease was found to be suppressed as it did not fit into a “purified” country, and at the same time, the use of the word “quarantine” was also suppressed. The film did not take into account the narrative that they were excluded from society by not describing realistically about patients with leprosy disease. Rather, by replacing the beautiful scenery with the patient's expression, the scenery served as a metaphor for a bright and hopeful place away from the place where they currently live, and gave the audience a sense of mission to guide the patients with leprosy into such a bright scenery.