CHINESE memories of the War of Jiawu are largely confined to the naval battle that occurred in 1894, and especially to General Deng Shichang, the heroic captain who led an unsuccessful suicidal attack and died.

He became a household name after the war epic “The Eventful Year of Jiawu” debuted in 1962, of which Deng was the protagonist. Back then, patriotic films were a bleak black-and-white genre, in the sense that lionizing of a hero always came at the expense of the antagonists.

The antagonist, in this case, was Liu Buchan, Deng’s superior officer and captain of the Dingyuan, the Beiyang Fleet’s flagship. He was falsely portrayed as a treacherous and cowardly figure. In the 2012 movie “The Naval Battle of 1894,” directed by Feng Xiaoning, Liu was finally rehabilitated. Although Deng is unquestionably the protagonist, the film did justice to the bravery and sacrifices of other officers.

The highlight of the 2012 film, however, is not its major battle scenes or visual effect. Instead, it is the way it documents the life of Beiyang Fleet officers — from boyhood to maturity.

After Deng, Liu and their comrades graduated from the Fujian Naval Academy, set up by the Qing court to train China’s naval officers, some of them were sent to Britain to study advanced naval strategy. Upon their return, they formed the backbone of what later became Asia’s strongest — and the world’s sixth-largest — fleet, the Beiyang Fleet.

The most intriguing thing about the film is its imaginative storyline. In Britain, the Chinese students met their nemesis — Japanese classmates Ito Sukeyuki, future commander of Japan’s Allied Fleet, and Togo Heihachiro, future admiral of Japan’s Imperial Navy. The regular bickering between the Chinese and Japanese cadets mirrors the two nations’ desperation to outdo each other in their modernization endeavor.

In fact, these scenes were purely fictional. Togo studied in Thames Nautical Training College, a commercial shipping college, while Liu and his Chinese peers studied at the Royal Naval College. They never met each other before slugging it out in the naval showdown on the Yellow Sea.

Since factual accuracy is a long-running problem plaguing Chinese historical films, these fictitious plots are understandable — even pardonable if they add color to the drama.

But although the film was a departure from past Chinese movies about Sino-Japanese conflicts, in that it wasn’t keen on whipping up anti-Japanese feelings, it didn’t reflect history wart and all. Two important omissions stand out in this regard.

Omissions of facts

The film is evasive on the cause of the Nagasaki Incident in 1886, when the Beiyang Fleet visisted the Japanese port city and a melee ensued between its sailors and Nagasaki’s residents and police. The melee left 10 Chinese and five Japanese dead and scores wounded. According to the film, the Japanese attacked the sailors without any provocation. But it was in fact the Chinese who stirred up the trouble.

Some drunken Chinese sailors were arrested for creating a disturbance in a local brothel and severely stabbing a Japanese policeman. To secure their release, their comrades trained Dingyuan’s guns on Nagasaki. The Japanese were forced to free the sailors, apologized and offered compensation. Their anger resulted in the violence.

This incident reflected badly on the Beiyang Fleet, whose regulations forbade visits to brothels. It is presumably the attempt to “save face” that galvanized the director to depict only the attack, not the cause thereof.

But this isn’t a smart move, because without knowing the awe the Dingyuan inspired in the Japanese, one would be clueless about the dynamics of Japan’s earnest naval build-up.

Another flaw in the film’s narrative is the tepid treatment of Korea. The War of Jiawu was primarily about the struggle for influence in Korea, a former Chinese protectorate. But references to Korea are few, due perhaps to the director’s misplaced concerns about the war being seen as an imperialist and unjust war. This, again, erred on the side of political correctness.

Although the 2012 movie set the records straight for some vilified personalities, it still is a “main theme” movie which reflects more the official and “polished” version of history.

Then how about the Japanese filmmakers? Are they any more objective than their Chinese counterparts in handling the subject?

The popular documentary series “Saka no Ue no Kumo” (“Clouds Over the Slope”), adapted from Shiba Ryotaro’s novels by Japanese broadcaster NHK, offer a glimpse into Japanese perspectives. Alas, it doesn’t fare any better in terms of objectivity.

In one episode, after sinking the Kow-shing, a British commercial ship carrying Chinese troops on a voyage to Korea, Japan did all it could to justify this brazen assault and exculpate Admiral Togo, who issued orders to fire upon Kow-shing.

The NHK series didn’t show what happened afterward. Many Qing soldiers who fell overboard didn’t drown, but were killed by Japanese machine gun fire — in what was a savage assault on “civilization,” a term Japan liked to bandy about.

With this omission, one can only expect such brutalities as the Lushun Massacre to be glossed over as well. Indeed, except for the confrontation between Masaoka Shiki, a Haiku poet-turned-reporter and a Japanese officer that hinted at the lack of discipline of Japanese troops, there is nary a mention of the atrocity committed in Lushun, where about 20,000 Chinese were slaughtered.

Despite the groundswell of positive feedback it generated, the NHK series similarly tiptoes around issues that would cast Japan in an unfavorable light. It lacks the courage to squarely confront the country’s war guilt.

That said, the series is indeed remarkable in terms of the subtlety of its plot. In the fourth episode, for instance, the prospect of war loomed large after Kow-shing’s sinking. Nonetheless, Komura Ziyutaro, Japan’s minister in Beijing, had the nerve to attend a banquet held by Qing mandarin Li Hongzhang.

Li, assuming he had British support, mocked his uninvited Japanese guest for his diminutive stature, only to be taunted that “a man like your excellency is tall but useless.” To add insult to injury, Komura also ridiculed Li for “cowardly sending his troops in a British ship.” Li was speechless and lost face in front of the Western guests, who did little to help the host or hackle the Japanese.

This spat is enormously revealing because it is emblematic of the contrast between the two countries at the time.

Japan was small but aggressive. China was a pushover despite its size. Much to his chagrin, Li’s plan to play off the West against a hostile Japan was but an illusion.