"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie onDecember 3, 1945 with James Cagney reprising his film role.
James Cagney has long being associated with the phrase "You dirty rat!". Though he actually said in the movie Taxi! "Come out and take it, you dirty, yellow-bellied rat" and not "You dirty rat!", Cagney is heard saying "dirty rats" in this movie.
According to the DVD sleeve notes, prior to production, James Cagney trained intensively in the martial-art of judo in preparation for his role in this movie. Cagney trained under Ken Kuniyuki who was a 5th Degree Judo Master and insisted he perform his own stunts in the movie. He said in his memoirs: "I grew so fond of judo I used to keep in shape with it until a back injury I picked up doing something else put me on the sidelines." Moreover, another instructor for Cagney was former LAPD policeman John Halloran who plays the role of Captain Oshima in the film and can be seen in the movie's closing fight sequence. Apparently, Halloran quit the police force after FBI agents investigated him because he was an expert in judo.
As Iris Hilliard in this film, this was Sylvia Sidney's first screen appearance for about four years. She had last appeared on-screen in 1941 as Flo Lorraine in The Wagons Roll at Night.
Filmed in 1944 and released in 1945, this movie was made a few years after the 7th December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In 1993, a computer-colorized version of this movie was made.
Robert Armstrong who played Tojo wore a set of false teeth to make his jaw line as much like Tojo's as possible. However, with the teeth in place, when Bob spoke his lines he could not be understood. So, back to the studio Bob went, to stand in a soundproof booth and loop his lines, making what his character said understandable.
The DVD sleeve notes claim that this was one of the first American martial-arts movies. Though not a martial-arts movie by modern standards and definitions, judo is seen in the movie and with James Cagney performing it. Cagney insisted on doing his own stunts in the film.
The Japanese Tanaka Plan was examined in the documentary The Battle of China, episode 6 of the "Why We Fight" series by Frank Capra. According to the book 'Brassey's Guide to War Films' by Alun Evans, this movie is "Fiction highlighting fact, but a strange release date. One would have thought that the unearthing of the Tanaka Plan . . . might have received dramatic attention by Hollywood before Pearl Harbor, rather than at the end of the war. The Tanaka Plan, the blueprint for Japanese world domination - which actually specified the taking out of Pearl Harbor - was uncovered in 1927, but this dramatisation has James Cagney as U.S. newspaper man in 19'20s Japan printing the story."
The movie is based on the history behind Japan's alleged Tanaka Plan which is aka the Tanaka Memorial document. This allegedly was Prime Minister Baron Tanaka Giichi's militarist strategic plan for world domination prepared for Emperor Hirohito.
The Tokyo Imperial Hotel bar seen at the start of the movie is apparently an exact replica of the actual bar situated in the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
This film's opening prologue states: "While the entire world watched the early success of the German 'Mein Kampf', few were aware of the existence of an Oriental Hitler . . . Baron Giichi Tanaka. His plan of world conquest depended on secrecy for success. This story deals with its first exposure by an American newspaperman in Tokyo."
This was the second movie made by James Cagney's production company.
When Iris Hillaird (Sylvia Sidney) tells Nick Condon (James Cagney) that they cannot be together because she is half-Japanese and half-Caucasian, Condon replies that he too is of mixed race. "I'm half-Irish and half-Norwegian." In real life, James Cagney was the son of an Irish-born father and a Norwegian-born mother.