Fumio Kamei

He eventually began working at Photo Chemical Laboratories (PCL), one of the precursors to Toho, where he made a name for himself making documentaries - or "culture films" (bunka eiga) as they were called at the time - that were strongly influenced by Soviet montage theory.

[1][2][3] After Japan's defeat in World War II, Kamei participated in the re-organization of the newsreel company Nippon Eiga-sha, or Nichiei, which had weathered wartime controls then disbanded after the surrender.

The film, produced by Akira Iwasaki and largely assembled from pre-war and wartime newsreels and still photographs provided by Nichiei, condemned the expansionist nationalist policy of the Japanese Empire, which the film argues was the result of a capitalist system.

[5][6] The Japanese Tragedy was approved by the Occupation's Civil Censorship Detachment after a series of deletions pertaining to the treatment of war criminals, but did not find distribution outside of a few independent local theatres.

[6] Kamei also made fiction films such as War and Peace (Sensō to heiwa), co-directed with Satsuo Yamamoto, but he primarily continued to produce independent documentaries protesting such issues as American bases in Japan, the nuclear bomb, discrimination against burakumin in Japan, and environmental destruction.