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context: movies > history
Censorship
From 1917 on, and especially in the '30s and wartime, when protest films came up against an increasingly authoritative and militaristic government, there was censorship. This sometimes included cuts for more sexual content - Kurosawa's debut suffered this, and it is said that only Ozu's admiration and support saved it from a ban; and kisses were routinely excised. Cuts for political reasons were far more common, particularly around depictions of war and attitudes to it. All Quiet On The Western Front suffered nearly 300 cuts, and Renoir's magnificent La Grande Illusion was completely banned. Japanese directors suffered too - Ozu had a disrespectful scene of school military training cut, for example. When the SE Asian war expanded to include America, the government clamped down completely: the ten big companies were forced to merge into three companies, which would be permitted film stock only if they produced two movies a month each to the government's satisfaction - this of course led to lots of straightforward propaganda movies.
Kurosawa's They Who Step On THe Tiger's Tail suffered a unique fate. In 1945 it was deemed too American and democratic, and banned by the Japanese; and then the US occupation forces' own censorship office banned it for being too feudal and Japanese.