Throughout the film, that giant brain repeatedly materialized and receded, while the GI audience was informed of the terrible things it had been taught by the “warlords” and the “military gang.” Turning ancient Shinto beliefs into a weapon of modern indoctrination, the militarists had saturated that brain with “ancient nightmares” and “ancient hatreds,” with “bloody fairy tales and pagan superstitions,” with the “mumbo-jumbo” of a “murky past.” When the narrator made passing reference to “an old, backward, superstitious country,” the screen showed scenes of people burning incense outside a
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