Chinese film on WW2 germ warfare unit by Japan creates tension between the two countries

BEIJING:

Evil Unbound, which depicts Japanese germ warfare during World War Two, set a first-day box office record among the war films released in China this year, as Beijing seeks to highlight Tokyo's war-time actions and what it calls a lack of accountability.

The film dramatises the Japanese military research base Unit 731 in northeastern China that was notorious for live human experiments. Evil Unbound took in more than 345 million yuan ($48.5 million) on Thursday, according to ticketing platform Maoyan.

The depiction risks inflaming tensions between China and Japan, which occupied parts of China before and during World War Two.

According to Chinese state media, Unit 731 conducted tests from the mid-1930s to 1945 on an estimated 3,000 Chinese, Korean, Russian and Mongolian pris