Imperial Japan at Its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration of the Empire's 2,600th Anniversary (review)

On New Year's Day 1941, the Asahi shinbun began a special series of interviews with public figures under the title "A Shining Twenty-Seventh Imperial Century," proclaiming that "Japan, having in the twenty-sixth imperial century attained the global standard, must now advance into the twenty-seventh imperial century with its sights set on the global throne."¹ Coming in the immediate wake of empire-wide celebration of the putative 2,600th anniversary of Emperor Jinmu's ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne, such an intoxicating statement of purpose is indicative of what Kenneth J. Ruoff calls a "heady time" for many Japanese. In his new study of these celebrations, Ruoff seeks to recapture this atmosphere by avoiding "a teleology that analyzes Japan in 1940 through the lens of that country's military defeat five years later," arguing that the tale resulting from such an approach—that of a "dark valley" of unremitted suffering and victimization—is "so misleading as to be largely useless for understanding the diverse experiences of the Japanese in 1940" (p. 18). Ruoff is particularly interested in what he terms the "dutiful consumption" of the celebrations by those Japanese who visited imperial heritage sites within Japan, toured sacred sites in Korea and Manchuria, and shopped in major department stores. Drawing on numerous official and unofficial sources, he pursues their encounters with these places and with related media representations, perceiving therein evidence of Japan's "fascist modernity" (p. 12).

Ruoff has written an informative, stimulating book that is well-illustrated both visually and anecdotally, presenting the reader with monochrome photographs and color plates of contemporary artwork and spicing the narrative with revealing and often entertaining personal experiences.² His efforts do much to document popular consumption and travel related to the anniversary. Nevertheless, when the author defines his purpose more broadly to theorize about the overall situation of "Japan in the year 1940" (p. 4), he raises issues that constrain this reviewer's otherwise enthusiastic and positive evaluation of this monograph.

Ruoff has arrayed his findings in six chapters, beginning with the overview in chapter 1 of efforts by writers of that time to elucidate the nature of Japan's imperial history, thereby accelerating the history boom that accompanied the celebrations and, together with their publishers, cashing in on popular interest in the anniversary. After surveying the complicity of academic historians in promoting often dubious emperor-centered history, Ruoff devotes closer attention to the best-selling works of nationalist ideologue Ōkawa Shūmei, amateur historian Fujitani Misao, and feminist writer Takamure Itsue, criticizing the first two for propagating such history while taking a softer view of Takamure for at least challenging its patriarchic core.

In chapter 2, Ruoff directs the reader's attention to "phenomena that overlapped and frequently spurred on each other, participation in and consumption of the anniversary celebrations" (p. 5). The author identifies the act of listening to radio broadcasts of precisely timed rituals as a major method for popular participation in the celebrations. He adds that one other chief mode of involvement was labor service to expand and beautify sites associated with the imperial lineage. Ruoff estimates, for example, that some 1.2 million subjects of the empire took part "for a day or more" in light labor on and around the grounds of Kashihara Shrine in Nara, noting that thirteen days of such light labor by the Manchukuo Concordia Association appear to have been the maximum length of service and a term "longer than most brigades" provided (pp. 63, 64). Meanwhile, in an era of peaking sales in the recording and publishing industries, department store exhibitions provided a "nexus of dutiful consumption" (p. 74) through which people were able to participate in the 1940 celebrations. Ruoff concludes this chapter by emphasizing the fascination with technology that accompanied the celebration of an ancient lineage and suggests the applicability of the concept of...