The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda

Notes

191 Propaganda for Everyone 1. For all of the lyrics, see Komota et al., eds., Shinpan nihon ryükökashi (chükan), p. 113. “Shanhai dayori” is a 1938 song with a catchy tune harking back, Yazawa Kan says, to the trumpet melodies used in songs from the Russo-Japanese war. This similarity made it popular within Japan and throughout the rest of the empire; Yazawa, Sensö to ryüköka, pp. 75–76. 2. Komota et al., Shinpan nihon ryükökashi (chükan), p. 146. 3. The lyrics can be read and the song can be heard online at http://www.d1.dion .ne.jp/~j_kihira/band/midi/daitoa_ke.html. 4. I have personally heard Senryü’s routine live several times, and it is also available in recorded form on the CD Kokon tözai hanashika shinshiroku, produced by the APP company. I am indebted to Okamoto Köichi for providing me with a recording. In Japanese this rarely recorded routine is called Gäkon. Senryü performs the routine tongue in cheek. His ability to recall the myriad songs from this era and joke about them makes the routine amusing. He is by no means a right-wing comedian. 5. Kobayashi Yoshinori, Discourse on the War (Shin gomanizumu sengen Special sensöron), Discourse on the War II (Shin gomanizumu sengen Special sensöron 2), Discourse on the War III (Shin gomanizumu sengen Special sensöron 3), Discourse on Taiwan (Shin gomanizumu sengen Special Taiwanron). For some of the debate he has stimulated, see Kobayashi and King, Nyükoku kyohi [Taiwanron] wa naze yakareta ka. 6. Welch, The Third Reich, p. 2. Welch states that he examines the propaganda of the Nazis to “explain the popular base of National Socialism and its ability to sustain a consensus (of sorts) over a twelve-year period.” 7. Cunningham, The Idea of Propaganda, p. 4 8. Jowett and O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, p. 16 9. Minami, Shakai ishiki to rekishi ishiki, p. 385. 10. Ibid., p. 398. 11. Kashiwagi Hiroshi, “Senji senden no modanizumu,” Geijutsuronchö (December 1989): 38. 12. In his book The Pacific War, p. 208, historian Ienaga Saburö notes that “there was almost no organized illegal resistance in Japan” during the war. Japan did face extensive racism abroad, however, as the various US exclusion acts demonstrate. Many Japanese may have chosen to stay at home, rather than try to assimilate in a hostile foreign environment. 13. Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, pp. 34–35. Notes 192 / Notes to Pages 7–12 14. Nicholas Cull discusses the American view of propaganda in the introduction to Selling War. Gerd Horton, in Radio Goes to War, p. 16, points out that Americans were reluctant to accept propaganda because they felt it had dragged them into World War One. Brett Gary, Nervous Liberals, p. 9, states that in the United States, “propaganda came to be understood exclusively as a technique for the dissemination of antidemocratic ideas.” See also two books by Doob, Propaganda and Public Opinion and Propaganda. Rossingnol, Histoire de la propagande en France de 1940 a 1944. 15. There are some notable exceptions. See Dower, War Without Mercy and Japan in War and Peace; Havens, Valley of Darkness; Young, Japan’s Total Empire; Garon, Molding Japanese Minds; Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan. Except for Dower, few of these studies focus specifically on Japanese propaganda. See also Rei Okamoto, “Pictorial propaganda in Japanese comic art, 1941–1945.” 16. The Chinese and Japanese sources are too numerous to list here but representative of the Japanese interest in domestic wartime propaganda studies is Akazawa, Awaya, et al., eds., Sensöka no senden to bunka. 17. So diverse and demanding was wartime Japanese propaganda that it forced the Japanese to think about themselves in ways they never had; this included the Japanese language. Within the empire it began to be necessary for Japan to have a coherent, across-the-board policy regarding the teaching of Japanese to nonnatives. This debate caused an even greater flurry within intellectual circles regarding what type of Japanese to teach, and what constituted proper Japanese. For more on these debates that touched on the core of how Japan wished to present its civilization abroad, see Shi, Shokuminchi shihai to nihongo (zöhoban) and Kawamura, Umi o watatta nihongo. 18. This racial hierarchy was spelled out most clearly in the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s population policy program, originally published in 1942. Köseishö kenky...