BEIJING – The release of a Chinese movie on the Imperial Japanese Army’s notorious Unit 731, which was originally scheduled for Thursday, has been put off in a possible move by Beijing to avoid fanning anti-Japan sentiment and damaging bilateral relations.
The release date of the film on local movie ticket purchase apps has been changed from July 31 to 2025, while millions of people online have expressed their interest in the film about the unit, which according to historians conducted biological and chemical warfare research in China during World War II.
The movie’s production company has declined to comment on the postponement. Those waiting for the release have shown support for the movie in online posts, saying “history should not be forgotten.”
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Sino-Japanese conflict, which Beijing calls the 1937-1945 War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.
Set in China’s northeastern region, the movie conveys an anti-war message and aims to “reveal the crimes” of Unit 731 through a focus on ordinary individuals, according to media reports.
The unit’s research is believed to have included lethal experimentation and testing on humans. Prisoners of war were secretly experimented upon to develop, among other things, plague and cholera-based biological weapons, according to historians.
The Japanese government says it has not found any evidence confirming the unit conducted experiments on human subjects.
In 1997, Japan’s Supreme Court, in a ruling concerning state screeners’ objection to a history textbook’s description of the unit’s actions in China, said “the view had been established within academic circles to an undeniable extent that Unit 731 had killed many Chinese people through biological experiments.”
