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Propaganda, Japanese--History, Nationalism--Japan--History, and Propaganda in art--History

Following a period of strict isolationism from the West, Japan began a series of modernization efforts, starting in the Meiji Restoration, that transformed the nation from a scattered feudal state to an expansionist empire. Accompanying these changes, state-sponsored and grassroots commercial propaganda became an omnipresent influence in all aspects of Japanese life.Fanning the Flames takes a comprehensive look at how Japan deployed popular arts for propaganda that created an imperialist fervor. Inside are scholarly essays by experts, with more than 100 rich color illustrations from the collections of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, including woodblock prints, photos, posters, and the rarely examined street paper plays called kamishibai, many of which had been destroyed or lost by the end of the Second World War.Spanning from the First Sino-Japanese War through World War II, these important documents build a visual narrative that charts the rise of an imperialist nation and demonstrates how expansionist policy disseminated through mass media to shape a modern Japan, forever changing political relations between East and West and between Japan and its neighbors.

Mass media and culture--Japan--History, Nationalism--Japan--History, Sound recordings--Social aspects--Japan--History, and Communication--Social aspects--Japan--History

Long before karaoke's ubiquity and the rise of global brands such as Sony, Japan was a place where new audio technologies found eager users and contributed to new cultural forms. In Electrified Voices, Kerim Yasar traces the origins of the modern soundscape, showing how the revolutionary nature of sound technology and the rise of a new auditory culture played an essential role in the formation of Japanese modernity.A far-reaching cultural history of the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, radio, and early sound film in Japan, Electrified Voices shows how these technologies reshaped the production of culture. Audio technologies upended the status of the written word as the only source of prestige while revivifying traditional forms of orality. The ability to reproduce and transmit sound, freeing it from the constraints of time and space, had profound consequences on late nineteenth-century language reform; twentieth-century literary, musical, and cinematic practices; the rise of militarism and nationalism in the 1920s and 30s; and the transition to the postwar period inaugurated by Emperor Hirohito's declaration of unconditional surrender to Allied forces—a declaration that was recorded on a gramophone record and broadcast throughout the defeated Japanese empire. The first cultural history in English of auditory technologies in modern Japan, Electrified Voices enriches our understanding of Japanese modernity and offers a major contribution to sound studies and global media history.

Nationalism--Taiwan--History--20th century, Nationalism--Korea (South)--History--20th century, Rural youth--Political activity--Korea (South)--History--20th century, Rural youth--Political activity--Taiwan--History--20th century, Rural youth--Political activity--Japan--History--20th century, Young men--Political activity--Japan--History--20th century, Nationalism--Japan--History--20th century, Young men--Political activity--Korea (South)--History--20th century, and Young men--Political activity--Tai

By the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands of young men in the Japanese colonies, in particular Taiwan and Korea, had expressed their loyalty to the empire by volunteering to join the army. Why and how did so many colonial youth become passionate supporters of Japanese imperial nationalism? And what happened to these youth after the war? Nation-Empire investigates these questions by examining the long-term mobilization of youth in the rural peripheries of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. Personal stories and village histories vividly show youth's ambitions, emotions, and identities generated in the shifting conditions in each locality. At the same time, Sayaka Chatani unveils an intense ideological mobilization built from diverse contexts—the global rise of youth and agrarian ideals, Japan's strong drive for assimilation and nationalization, and the complex emotions of younger generations in various remote villages.Nation-Empire engages with multiple historical debates. Chatani considers metropole-colony linkages, revealing the core characteristics of the Japanese Empire; discusses youth mobilization, analyzing the Japanese seinendan (village youth associations) as equivalent to the Boy Scouts or the Hitler Youth; and examines society and individual subjectivities under totalitarian rule. Her book highlights the shifting state-society transactions of the twentieth-century world through the lens of the Japanese Empire, inviting readers to contend with a new approach to, and a bold vision of, empire study.

Motion pictures--Political aspects--Japan--History--20th century, Motion pictures--Japan--History--20th century, Nationalism and the arts--Japan--History--20th century, and Mass media and nationalism--Japan--History--20th century

In Promiscuous Media, Hikari Hori makes a compelling case that the visual culture of Showa-era Japan articulated urgent issues of modernity rather than serving as a simple expression of nationalism. Hori makes clear that the Japanese cinema of the time was in fact almost wholly built on a foundation of Russian and British film theory as well as American film genres and techniques. Hori provides a range of examples that illustrate how maternal melodrama and animated features, akin to those popularized by Disney, were adopted wholesale by Japanese filmmakers.Emperor Hirohito's image, Hori argues, was inseparable from the development of mass media; he was the first emperor whose public appearances were covered by media ranging from postcards to radio broadcasts. Worship of the emperor through viewing his image, Hori shows, taught the Japanese people how to look at images and primed their enjoyment of early animation and documentary films alike. Promiscuous Media links the political and the cultural closely in a way that illuminates the nature of twentieth-century Japanese society.

Judges--India--Biography, Tokyo Trial, Tokyo, Japan, 1946-1948, and Nationalism--Japan--History--20th century

Radhabinod Pal was an Indian jurist who achieved international fame as the judge representing India at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and dissented from the majority opinion, holding that all Japanese “Class A” war criminals were not guilty of any of the charges brought against them. In postwar Japanese politics, right-wing polemicists have repeatedly utilized his dissenting judgment in their political propaganda aimed at refuting the Tokyo trial's majority judgment and justifying Japan's aggression, gradually elevating this controversial lawyer from India to a national symbol of historical revisionism. Many questions have been raised about how to appropriately assess Pal's dissenting judgment and Pal himself. Were the arguments in Pal's judgment sound? Why did he submit such a bold dissenting opinion? What was the political context? More fundamentally, why and how did the Allies ever nominate such a lawyer as a judge for a tribunal of such great political importance? How should his dissent be situated within the context of modern Asian history and the development of international criminal justice? What social and political circumstances in Japan thrust him into such a prominent position? Many of these questions remain unanswered, while some have been misinterpreted. This book proposes answers to many of them and presents a critique of the persistent revisionist denial of war responsibility in the Japanese postwar right-wing movement.

Nationalism--Japan--History--20th century

The 1970s were a period of dramatic change in relations between Japan and the People's Republic of China (PRC). The two countries established diplomatic relations for the first time, forged close economic ties and reached political agreements that still guide and constrain relations today. This book delivers a history of this foundational period in Sino-Japanese relations. It presents an up-to-date diplomatic history of the relationship but also goes beyond this to argue that Japan's relations with China must be understood in the context of a larger “China problem” that was inseparable from a domestic contest to define Japanese national identity. The China Problem in Postwar Japan challenges some common assertions or assumptions about the role of Japanese national identity in postwar Sino-Japanese relations, showing how the history of Japanese relations with China in the 1970s is shaped by the strength of Japanese national identity, not its weakness.

Nationalism--Japan--History--20th century

In 1940, Japan was into its third year of war with China, and relations with the United States were deteriorating, but it was a heady time for the Japanese nonetheless. That year, the Japanese commemorated the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of the Empire of Japan. According to the imperial myth-history, Emperor Jimmu, descended from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, established the'unbroken imperial line'in 660 BCE. In carefully choreographed ceremonies throughout the empire, through new public monuments, with visual culture, and through heritage tourism, the Japanese celebrated the extension of imperial rule under the 124th emperor, Hirohito. These celebrations, the climactic moment for the ideology that was central to modern Japan's identity until the imperial cult's legitimacy was bruised by defeat in 1945, are little known outside Japan. Imperial Japan at Its Zenith, the first book in English about the 2,600th anniversary, examines the themes of the celebration and what they tell us about Japan at mid-century. Kenneth J. Ruoff emphasizes that wartime Japan did not reject modernity in favor of nativist traditionalism. Instead, like Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, it embraced reactionary modernism. Ruoff also highlights the role played by the Japanese people in endorsing and promoting imperial ideology and expansion, documenting the significant grassroots support for the cult of the emperor and for militarism. Ruoff uses the anniversary celebrations to examine Japan's invention of a national history; the complex relationship between the homeland and the colonies; the significance of Imperial Japan's challenge to Euro-American claims of racial and cultural superiority; the role of heritage tourism in inspiring national pride; Japan's wartime fascist modernity; and, with a chapter about overseas Japanese, the boundaries of the Japanese nation. Packed with intriguing anecdotes, incisive analysis, and revelatory illustrations, Imperial Japan at Its Zenith is a major contribution to our understanding of wartime Japan.

Universities and colleges--Japan, Learned institutions and societies--Japan, Nationalism--Japan--History, Kokugaku--History, Shinto and state--History, and Religion and state--Japan

Kokugaku in Meiji-period Japan offers a new perspective on scholarly networks and the foundations of modern Japan. Utilizing never explored original sources and with a unique focus on the persons involved, Michael Wachutka elucidates how kokugaku as a cornucopia of traditional knowledge played an important role in raising a new generation of truly national citizens. Commonly perceived as a purely premodern Edo-period phenomenon,'national learning'counterbalanced an overly Westernization of society in the process of nation building and identity formation.In addition to kokugaku activities in religious administration and higher education, Wachutka provides a compelling account of the organization and endeavour of three successive academic societies whose most prominent members served as junction of kokugaku's intellectual network in Meiji Japan.

Nationalism--Japan--History and Nationalism--Germany--History--20th century

This important new study focusing on the ultranationalist regimes in Germany and Japan during the 1930s and 1940s examines in biographical format the roles played by individuals significantly involved in the drive for global hegemony. Employing a considerable range of new source materials and eyewitness testimony on the German side, it highlights the roles of the Nazi Party ‘enforcer'and Gestapo representative in East Asia, Josef Albert Meisinger, and of the officer commanding German naval forces in the Pacific region, Admiral Paul Werner Wenneker, agent Richard Sorge as whose relations with the Japanese Navy in the 1930s were observed and recalled by Engineer-Commander George C. Ross, the UK assistant naval attaché in Japan. The reactions of the German aero-engineer, Willi Foerster, a client of the Soviet radio operator, Max Clausen, to both Meisinger and Wenneker in the 1940s are also documented. On the Japanese side, new evidence is employed which examines the influence of the right-wing business and political figure, Sasagawa Ryôichi, on domestic events during the era of ‘Tennô-fascism'and its aftermath. Similarly, an analysis of the role of the head of wartime Japanese military intelligence in eastern Europe, General Onodera Makoto, based in Stockholm, indicates the extent of opposition within the Japanese army to factional groups wedded to Nazi ideology and strategy and the ongoing support in Japan for anti-Soviet and anti-communist policies in the post-war era.

World War, 1939-1945--Social aspects--Japan, Nationalism--United States--History--20th century, World War, 1939-1945--Social aspects--United States, World War, 1939-1945--Participation, Japanese American, World War, 1939-1945--Participation, Korean, Imperialism--History--20th century, Racism--Japan--History--20th century, Nationalism--Japan--History--20th century, and Racism--United States--History--20th century

Race for Empire offers a profound and challenging reinterpretation of nationalism, racism, and wartime mobilization during the Asia-Pacific war. In parallel case studies—of Japanese Americans mobilized to serve in the United States Army and of Koreans recruited or drafted into the Japanese military—T. Fujitani examines the U.S. and Japanese empires as they struggled to manage racialized populations while waging total war. Fujitani probes governmental policies and analyzes representations of these soldiers—on film, in literature, and in archival documents—to reveal how characteristics of racism, nationalism, capitalism, gender politics, and the family changed on both sides. He demonstrates that the United States and Japan became increasingly alike over the course of the war, perhaps most tellingly in their common attempts to disavow racism even as they reproduced it in new ways and forms.

Nationalism--Japan--History--19th century, Nationalism--Japan--History--20th century, and Internationalism

Throughout the history of modern Japan there has been a continuous struggle to create an integrated conception of how a politically and/or culturally autonomous Japan might relate to a pluralistic and interactive world. The aim of this study is to scrutinise nationalist and internationalist rhetoric by means of comparatively constant factors such as personal views of humanity, civilisation, progress, the nation and the outside world, and thus to develop new approaches towards the question of the relationship between Japanese nationalism and internationalism. This project brings together a group of comparatively young scholars who analyse how different generations of opinion leaders in the Japanese pre-war modern era tried to solve what they perceived as the dilemma of nationalism and internationalism.