Besides one small campaign against the film by a labour union, there have been no protests in Japan against Pride, the Japanese movie about Gen. Hideki Tojo, which opens on May 23 at about 140 theatres nationwide.

Toei Co., the Tokyo studio that made Pride, says the reaction has been positive at several screenings. Some people were deeply moved, and others left feeling proud of being Hapanese, Toei said.

"It's not intended to be so black and white, about whether Tojo was good or evil," producer Masao Sato said yesterday in a telephone interview. "That's not what films are supposed to do."

Although the studio spent eleven million dollars making it, three times its usual budget, the film hasn't become a news focus in a country that is far more hooked on Hollywoodthan Japanese films.

One of the few newspaper ads that have appeared says: "Tojo vs America: A solitary battle for the pride of a nation."

Still, Pride could end up being fairly popular, given the unusually sympathetic look it takes at Tojo, a man executed as a war criminal in 1948 and viewed as a villain by the world.

One review in the Asahi newspaper praised the "feverish" acting of Masahiko Tsugawa cast as the military leader. Another, in the Sankei, praised the authentic-looking sets.

Tojo, who served as prime minister from 1941 to 1944, gave the go-ahead for the attack on Pearl Harbour. In one scene in the film, Tojo refuses to believe that Japanese forces carried out the Nanjing massacre in China. The filmmakers defend the scene as faithful to Tojo's personality.

But China was outraged. This week, the China Daily carried a cartoon showing a piece of the film wrapped around a bloody Samurai sword topped with a skull.

"Hideki Tojo was the chief criminal of that warof aggression. We felt shocked and indignant," the state-run Xinhua agency quoted foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao as saying.

In North Korea, an article appearing in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper called the film "shameless."

Toei rebuffs the criticism as typical of China, noting that it also opposed Hollywood's Seven years In Tibet about the Dalai Lama.