-
Chapter 3: Advertising ad Propaganda
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
68 I t is easy to understand why Japanese civilian and military officials denigrated advertising and deemed the industry vulgar. The society at large emitted a collective groan when it confronted examples of the excesses of advertising products, such as certain feminine hygiene aids and devices for impeding sexual curiosity in young men. However, the government was in a quandary because it desperately needed professionals to aid in the production of wartime propaganda. Propaganda products, senden seihin, did not just create themselves . Government and civilian propaganda agencies required talent to draft, write, produce, and print the myriad propaganda items for imperial consumption , both within Japan and more importantly abroad. For their part, advertising executives and the industry in general recognized they had a window of opportunity to join with the government, jump on the war bandwagon, and raise their professional prestige. Opportunism and the desire to increase profits merged nicely with patriotic fever. Small-scale advertising companies, not the military or the government, often produced the propaganda in government advertisements, tourism posters, and related items. These producers often wrote or reworked the propaganda that gave the Japanese the idea that Japan was modern, efficient, healthy, and thus deserved to lead Asia. For the first time and based on initiatives developed during the SinoJapanese war and the Russo-Japanese war, mobilization combined with promotion of consumer products. Japanese living in the most remote rural town in northeastern Japan could own part of the empire, buy a ticket on the Ajia train through Manchuria, go touring, and participate in modern Japan. Consumer appetites supported the nation’s imperial quest by making commerce and war a significant part of popular culture. Society for the Study of Media Technology Consumer tastes filtered into the public consciousness in part because advertisers applied their techniques to wartime propaganda. Propaganda technicians banded together in voluntary associations to supplement what they saw as a deficient bureaucratic propaganda product. Companies were not the only CHAPTER THREE Advertising as Propaganda Advertising as Propaganda / 69 institutes to sign up for propaganda work. In major cities like Osaka and Tokyo voluntary research groups assembled to work in association with the Cabinet Board of Information and the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, producing posters for dissemination and exhibitions. One active group, the Hödö Gijutsu Kenkyükai, or Society for the Study of Media Technology, began on February 28, 1940. The group developed under the leadership of Yamana Ayao, Imaizumi Takeji, Arai Seiichirö, Saitö Tarö, and others. The bylaws, printed some months later, enunciated that the association wanted to“unify the country and people” and promote research into propaganda technology for activities within Japan and abroad.1 In an advertising trade journal, Imaizumi waxed eloquent, explaining that the only way for Japan to succeed in the war with China was for the country to adopt a more totalitarian ideology, which he understood as the coalescence of personal goals and national aspirations.2 The Society for the Study of Media Technology held its first meeting at a restaurant in the swank Marunouchi section of Tokyo. Professional propagandist and government consultant Koyama Eizö joined first as a member and later became chair of the volunteer organization in early 1944. At its height the group had enrolled around fifty members, and it did not disband until a month after Japan’s surrender in 1945. Many of the members were also active participants in another voluntary association, the Puresuaruto group, centered in the Kansai region. Puresuaruto, an Esperanto word, means the “aesthetics of publication .” According to the fifth issue of their magazine, subscribers and writers aimed to collect all sorts of propaganda materials ranging from posters, pamphlets, labels, magazine covers, billboards, etc., from Japan and throughout the empire and analyze them as media creations.3 Propaganda was also good business for the companies that employed all of these professionals. The Morinaga Advertising Agency, where several founding members of the Society for the Study of Media Technology worked, created a product tie-in with the propaganda disseminated for the popular song “The Patriotic March.” The march sang of “leading the people of the four oceans” and “establishing a just peace” throughout the world. The tune did not originate within government circles; officials had sponsored a song contest and the winner had produced these motivating lyrics.4 The fact that the Society for the Study of Media Technology professionals voluntarily banded together on their own free time, while still maintaining full-time jobs, demonstrates...