China’s anti-Japan dramas get a Gen Z makeover

The latest and most dramatic example is “Evil Unbound," a big-budget film about an infamous unit of the Japanese Imperial Army that conducted germ warfare and chemical experiments on live humans. The film was released last week to coincide with the anniversary of Japan’s invasion of China in 1931.

Set in northeastern China, where the unit was based, the film featured gruesome scenes depicting Japanese atrocities that would be familiar to earlier generations of Chinese moviegoers. They include scenes of people dying after being forcibly infected by venomous fleas and of experiments to induce frostbite by leaving undressed people outside to freeze. Dead babies were featured in abundance.

But the film also incorporated more novel elements, including a survival-game-like plotline that builds toward the movie’s climax, in which Chinese, Korean and Soviet captives try to escape the site while facing a series of deadly challenges, echoing videogames and South Korea’s popular “Squid Game" series.

The film also featured grotesquely stylized markers of Japanese culture, including courtesans clad in vivid-colored kimonos parading the hostages to their deaths, and surreal scenes of hovering young girls in kimonos encircling the sadistic villain and helping collect ingredients from gigantic medicine cabinets.

For decades, China’s Communist Party has commissioned a steady flow of World War II books, films and television series to bolster its legitimacy, much of which casts Japan as an implacable villain. With war memories fading eight decades after Japan’s surrender in 1945, Beijing has found ways to update an old formula.

For the release of “Evil Unbound," as with other patriotic fare, schools and work units across the country organized field trips for students and employees to watch the film. Online, social-media clips showed some younger students covering their eyes in fear. Many came with patriotic messages.

One clip on short-video platform Douyin, posted by a foreign-language school in Henan province, showed middle-school students in the film theater chanting in unison: “Let’s remember history and strengthen ourselves." Another video featured an elementary school student in Hangzhou vowing to study hard to build China into an even stronger country.

A recent screening of “Evil Unbound" in Beijing was attended by employees from a company who turned up with pamphlets touting the Communist Party.

Anna Wang, a 19-year-old college student in Beijing who recently watched the film, said movies like “Evil Unbound" were the main way that young people learned about history, given that many don’t read books.

“The movie tried to present the story in a certain way, but it didn’t feel well-executed. There were parts I didn’t quite understand," she said. She added that the film’s graphic depiction of violence had left an impression.

Wang Yezi, 45, who watched the movie in Beijing on its release day, said films like “Evil Unbound" allowed younger generations to remember history.

“Many in China, like children and young people, don’t have as much of a deep impression compared to our generation born in the 1980s and 1970s" of the war, she said. The film “deepened my disgust for the way the Japanese acted back then."

As memories of a war that killed millions in China fade, the new approaches are stretching beyond movie theaters. Chinese studios have sought to reach new audiences on their smartphones, tapping into the booming popularity of “microdramas"—short-format videos crafted for mobile devices—and using artificial intelligence to produce content better tailored to younger viewers.

The content is finding a largely receptive audience in a country that, under leader Xi Jinping, is growing more assertive on the global stage, even as it grapples at home with a weak economy and high youth unemployment. A sense of uncertainty about the future is prevalent among the young, while frustration is bubbling up over the yawning wealth gap and a general lack of opportunities.

Vilifying Japan is a handy way to rile the Chinese public and paper over the challenges that ordinary people face, said Friso Stevens, a Fulbright scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies in the Netherlands. “Japan is the favorite villain to bring back to life," he said. “Nothing beats whipping up negative emotions. It can create such a powerful force."

China’s Communist leaders have long relied on nationalism to help shore up the party’s legitimacy and advance foreign-policy goals. A well-trod approach focuses on Japanese aggression against China, particularly around what Beijing defines as a 14-year conflict starting with Japan’s seizure of northeastern China in 1931.

The Chinese narrative today emphasizes the Communist Party’s role in helping to secure the victory over Japan, while condemning Tokyo for trying to whitewash its militaristic past and wartime atrocities.

Even so, scholars say Beijing remains cautious about how to harness populist patriotism without triggering excessive outbursts of sentiment or undermining the party’s authority.

Relations with Tokyo have been buffeted by a string of violent attacks against Japanese citizens in China over the past year. In July, an assailant injured a Japanese national in eastern China by throwing an object that appeared to be a rock. In September last year, a Japanese elementary school student was stabbed to death in southern China.

Some of the recent films have done brisk business. “Evil Unbound" grossed more than $270 million in a week, while another big-budget feature film, “Dead to Rights," about Japan’s 1937 massacre of Chinese citizens in the eastern city of Nanjing, has grossed more than $420 million since its release in late July. The two films are among China’s top five movies this year, data from industry tracker Maoyan show.

While less commercially successful, another recent film, “Dongji Rescue," featured two Chinese stars with large followings among younger fans. The movie, which recounts the 1942 sinking of a Japanese ship carrying British prisoners of war and their rescue by Chinese villagers, boasted elements of a maritime epic. During a recent screening in Beijing, female moviegoers could be heard giggling through scenes featuring the two actors swimming and running around shirtless.

Away from the big screen, provincial broadcaster Hunan Television produced what it billed as a fully AI-generated made-for-smartphone microdrama. “Coordinates," a four-episode series about a captured Communist fighter who used a fake map to lure Japanese troops into an ambush, has been touted by local media as a technological achievement, as it required no real actors or scenery.

Other shows have ventured into science fiction to spice up their story lines. A 61-part microdrama, “I’m Three Years Older Than Grandma," depicts a Chinese cosplayer who accidentally travels back in time to 1942 and encounters her grandmother, who is a member of the anti-Japanese resistance. The cosplayer carries a magical pouch that can manifest modern medicine and equipment to the benefit of resistance fighters.

Some Chinese commentators have warned against trivializing the war for the sake of reaching new audiences. One worrisome trend, they said, is the production of highly caricatured “War of Resistance god-tier dramas" that feature ludicrously unrealistic story lines and scenes. A particularly infamous example from over a decade ago showed a Chinese fighter ripping a Japanese soldier apart with his bare hands.

In July, China’s National Radio and Television Administration instructed regulators and creators to avoid story lines that defy historical logic, as well as protagonists who perform “miraculous exploits" and possess “divine skills" that go against common sense.

“Excessively entertainment-oriented portrayals desecrate the nation’s suffering and disrespect the people who made sacrifices," read a recent commentary published in the state-run Economic Daily newspaper. “For the younger generation in particular, ‘War of Resistance god-tier dramas’ can convey erroneous historical perceptions and values."

Write to Yoko Kubota at yoko.kubota@wsj.com and Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com