The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda, and: Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese (review)

These two volumes complement and sometimes modify each other while projecting seldom-seen images of Japan during World War II. Barak Kushner's The Thought War is a concise, at times briskly informal, excursus into Japanese propaganda efforts, while Sam Yamashita's Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies contains translations from the wartime diaries of two Japanese servicemen, three adult civilians, and three schoolchildren. Together these two books reveal a good deal more about Japan at war than has been available heretofore in Western languages.

If propaganda is understood in its classic sense of truth or falsehood deliberately spread to promote a cause, The Thought War detects wide evidence of it in political ideology, public relations, advertising, hortatory admonitions to citizens, and even in the coercive tactics of the thought police. This soundly researched book highlights the multiple, often ill-coordinated sources of Japan's wartime propaganda. The Cabinet Information Board, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rival military services, police, public agencies, and official pronouncements about topics such as better health and hygiene all sought to advance Japan's war aims, as did the less well-known activities of the media, advertising firms, tourism advocates, and the entertainment industry. The author asserts that "Japanese wartime propaganda was actually more effective than postwar scholars thought. Wartime Japanese propaganda helped mobilize Japanese society to establish an empire in Asia, and the propaganda lived on after Japan's military defeat . . . [to] help rebuild the country in the postwar era" (p. 3).

The main message of Japanese propaganda presented the country as exemplar of a new Asian modernity—clean, efficient, productive, scientific—a model for other nations and a source of pride for Japanese. Kushner correctly observes that, despite American misconceptions, "the image of the emperor is not what sold wartime propaganda" (p. 84); instead, what did so was the vision of Japan as a non-Western success story. He points out the seemingly paramilitary role of the Japanese police during both wartime and the occupation, the media's desire to retain some control over their own destiny by cooperating with state propaganda, and the commercial benefits accruing to the advertising and entertainment companies that supported the war. Especially effective are the accounts of how advertising agencies and comedy troupes (mainly those of the impresario Yoshimoto Kōgyō) generated their own prowar propaganda. A number of drawings and other images are reproduced to illustrate the text.

The Thought War highlights the role of Koyama Eizō, a professional propagandist whose influence extended deep into the occupation era. A graduate of Tokyo Imperial University, Koyama wrote three books on propaganda touting the uses of music, advertising, and tourism in advancing the national project. He "specifically noted how tourism could help bring about better relations between China and Japan" (p. 35), in concert with an October 1938 campaign by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Like many advocates of establishing national parks in Japan in the 1930s, the ministry heralded the profits to be gained from foreign visitors: it is "difficult to conceal the pleasure of inviting to Japan friendly foreign guests whose expenditures would offer some measure of relief in this time of economic emergency." Even more important, the ministry asserted, was that "those of us who are involved in international tourism do not only wish to correct and improve foreign understanding of Japan, but desire to raise the overall level of awareness abroad concerning Japan's proper actions during this holy war" (pp. 34–35)—this coming hard on the heels of Japan's atrocities at Nanjing and elsewhere. During the postwar occupation, the Americans employed Koyama and other "known wartime propagandists because these professionals were the only ones...