The Blind Man and the Elephant

Big Road (大路)
1934 - China - Directed by Sun Yu

Big Road is a republican era partially-silent film that is about a crew of workers who are, oddly enough, building a big road. The construction of the road becomes of national importance when the Japanese army arrives. However, the major confrontation in this film does not directly involve the Japanese. Instead, it is between the protagonist's work group and the corrupt Chinese land owner who was accepted a bribe to stop construction of the road. The Japanese are used as more of a plot device than a menacing antagonistic force.

Song of Youth (Chinese:青春之歌)
1959 - China - Directed by Chen Huaiai and Cui Wei

Song of Youth is your archetypal communist propaganda film, with a touch of bildungsroman. We learn about the evils of capitalism, individual ambition, the Nationalists, the Japanese, and even Hu Shi. The role of the Japanese in this film is again that of a distant aggressor. They have occupied Chinese land, and are therefore a problem of prime national importance. Similar to Big Road, the protagonist in Song of Youth does not directly fight against the Japanese. Instead, she must confront the elements of Chinese society that stand in the way of the communist revolution and Marxist-Leninism. The only time we see a "Japanese" on screen is when a Japanese military plane flies overhead. It seems to me that Big Road and Song of Youth are both more interested in talking about what's wrong with certain segments of Chinese society, than what's wrong with the Japanese invading China.

Fist of Fury/The Chinese Connection (Chinese:精武門）
1972 - Hong Kong - Directed by Lo Wei

This film is pretty straightforward. It's about an apprentice of the Jing Wu Men(精武門) martial arts school named Chen Zhen(Bruce Lee) using Chinese martial arts to beat up a group of Japanese from a Judo school in Shanghai. It's supposedly set in the 1930s, but this is anachronistic. The main motivation behind Bruce Lee's rampage is getting revenge for his master, Huo Yuanjia, an historical figure who died in 1910 after (according to this movie) being poisoned by the Japanese. The consequence of Bruce Lee's attack on the Judo school is that the Japanese get angry and attack the Jing Wu Men school, killing a good number of the Jing Wu Men teachers and students. Despite this, the surviving members of the Jing Wu Men school who initially opposed Chen fighting with the Japanese eventually realize that he was right all along, and come to believe that resistance against oppression, even if futile and resulting in your own death, is a worthy cause. This movie is also known for featuring the phrase "東亞病夫“ (sick man of Asia), and a scene where Chen tries to enter a park only to see a sign saying "No Chinese or dogs allowed" and have his entranced refused by a rather ridiculous looking Chinese actor in blackface playing a Sikh.

Devils on the Doorstep (Chinese:鬼子来了,Japanese:鬼が来た!)
2000 - China - Directed by Jiang Wen

This is the first Jiang Wen film I've seen and I'm quite impressed, it's one of the better films I've seen in a long time. It's not only stimulating on an intellectual level but also quite entertaining as well. The film focuses on a village in northern China near the end of the Sino-Japanese war in 1945. The villagers receive two prisoners of war, one Japanese soldier and one Chinese(possibly Taiwanese), who is a translator for the Imperial army. They are given instructions to interrogate the prisoners and hold on to them until they can be picked up. Many humorous antics ensue as the villagers do their best to deal with each other, the prisoners, and the Japanese soldiers from a nearby base.
This film was banned in China in part due to it's positive view of the Japanese and critical view of the Chinese, but I can't say I see this present in the film. The Japanese in this movie are given a degree of human character absent from most of the other films on this list, but they are humanized in a negative fashion; the emotions they exhibit are predominantly anger and fear. In other war movies, such as Mel Gibson's We Were Soldiers that attempt to portray the enemy in a positive light, the enemy is humanized in a positive way by showing his attachments to home or family.
Unlike Fist of Fury, Devils on the Doorstep features a large cast of Japanese actors, with quite a bit of Japanese dialogue. Derogatory terms such as 畜生(mongrel)、支那人(chinaman)、and チャンコロ(another slur for chinese) are often used. However, I have difficulty deciding what this film is ultimately trying to say about the war and Sino-Japanese relations. On the one hand, it seems to be making a grand statement about the ridiculousness of war and violence, but on the other hand the Japanese characters are so brutal and the Chinese villagers so naive that it's hard to identify with any of the Japanese characters or justify their actions. I think this complexity is a big part of what makes this an interesting film for me.

About Love (Chinese:戀愛地圖, Japanese:アバウト・ラブ)
2004 - China/Japan/Taiwan - Directed by Zhang Yibai (Shanghai), Ten Shimoyama (Japan), Yee Chih-yen (Taipei)

This movie is a collection of three different stories from three different locations: Japan, Taiwan and China. In each case we have a relationship with elements of sexuality or attraction between a Japanese and Chinese/Taiwanese. The film was made by three different directors, each one directing the part of the movie filmed in their home country. About Lovedefinitely seems to be a part of the Pan-asian film trend, attempting to increase the size of its market by including actors from different countries. The emphasis on romantic relationships between Japanese and Chinese leads me to believe that this film was at least partially made with the intent of improving retions and promoting a sense of international brotherhood. I personally found the Tokyo and Shanghai portions of the film to be rather bland, but the Taipei portion featured great cinematography and some long shot lengths that made for interesting scenes (for those of you who have seen it, I'm specifically thinking of the “康計康概伊啞" scene).

Fearless (Chinese:霍元甲)
2006 - Hong Kong - Directed by Ronny Yu

Fearless stars Jet Li as Huo Yuanjia, the same martial artist whose death Chen Zhen takes revenge for in Fist of Fury. After bringing disaster to his family through his arrogance, Huo heads to the rural hinterlands to learn about humility. After learning his lesson, he returns to urbanity and realizes China needs a national hero to defeat the arrogant imperialist fighters. He eventually finds himself in a four-on-one competition against fighters from various Western nations and Japan, where he will prove that China is not the sick man of Asia.
There are two characters who represent Japan in this movie. The first is the businessman Mita, played by Masato Harada. He is cunning and deceitful, willing to do whatever it takes to make sure he and the other Western businessmen he is in league with win their bet against Huo, including poisoning him so that he becomes seriously ill as he tries to fight the final round against the Japanese fighter. The fighter is Tanaka Anno, played by Shido Nakamura, and he is the pinnacle of virtue. He and Huo are able to forge a friendship based on a meeting they have before the fight. They find that they share similar ideologies regarding martial arts and life. During the fight, Huo succumbs to the poison and collapses on the mat. Tanaka responds by helping him to his feet and declaring him the winner of the fight. Mita and Tanaka have a confrontion in which Mita demands to know why Tanaka forfeited the match. Tanaka responds "I cannot deceive my heart."(私の心を騙せない) and "You are the shame of the Japanese people."(お前は日本人の恥だ).
What Fearless wants to tell us is that the Japanese are not an evil people, but it was under the leadership of certain evil people that evil things were done.

Conclusion?
I would have to do more reading and see more films(if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them in the comments) before I'd be willing to say anything conclusively on the subject, but I have noticed a couple interesting things:

1. The films that were produced closer in time to the events of the Sino-Japanese war are less concerned about demonizing the Japanese. They are evil, but they are distant.

2. The newer batch of films contain increasingly complicated views of the Japanese people and their actions in China. None of these films forgives Japan for what happened, but some admit that Japanese are humans too.