This completely individual and very interesting account of the uses of propaganda in Japan concludes with the observation that it would be historically naive to pretend that Japan had changed overnight after its defeat in World War II. After all, Japan has had a very long history of socially mobilizing its people.
"Propaganda helped unite Japan in its bid to modernize in the prewar era, and the importance of such activity did not fade after the surrender. Japan lost the war, but through determination and careful application of propaganda it did not lose the nation."
Propaganda itself is interpreted differently in Japan and in the West. Even now the common term "senden" has connotations different from "publicity," which is often thought its English equivalent. Abroad, "publicity" is not generally thought well of and "propaganda" has become a dirty word. In Japan, however, as the author tells us, few Japanese viewed propaganda as a necessary evil; instead, it is defined as "a desirable tool for keeping society unified and on the track toward modernization."
Indeed, since the "opening" of Japan, the prime use of propaganda was to supply reasons for modernization. And, later, for the vast majority of Japanese, wartime propaganda stimulated feelings not about the emperor, but about Japan's modernity, a quality that, it was believed, would culminate in a beneficent empire.
Modernization, it was thought, would put Japan on the same level as those imperialistic powers that were perceived as menacing Asia. Hence the useful concept of the Far East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, a structure that envisioned a completely modern Japan shepherding the needs of a still backward Asia.
Here propaganda had new uses. For Japan, the problem of convincing China that Japan's mission was to liberate Asia hinged on the idea of "shisosen" or "the thought war." This was the term consistently used to describe the fight for ideological supremacy in Asia and later against the West.
The fight lasted for 15 years and eventually involved half the globe. As the author notes, "a war of this magnitude, ferocity, and breadth demanded active participation from a population that believed in the cause." And, as his book goes on to demonstrate, war was supported on a much broader level than is usually suggested.
In 1940, a conservative publication (the "Bungei Shunju") published the results of an extensive poll that questioned the increasing social control of the government. An overwhelming two-thirds of the urban respondents thought that social controls should be further strengthened to help support Japan's aims in China.
Japan's Asian adventures, then, had majority national support. A hapless populace in the grip of a relentless military machine is a later conception. During the war itself, popular support was strong -- the population believed in its mission.
Japan, says the author, had -- largely through propaganda -- mobilized its population to an extent unattainable in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Franco's Spain. Japan faced little discontent, no attempted coups, and very few intellectuals and anti-fascists fleeing the country.
Consequently, perhaps, Japanese wartime propaganda survived the war. This was because a small coterie of bureaucratic cronies did not dominate, as they did in Nazi Germany. Instead, a large body of individuals created both the wartime and the postwar propaganda.
If initiating a war requires propagandistic strategies, concluding a war demands something similar. Indeed, as history professor John Dower has observed, "the same stereotypes that fed superpatriotism and outright race hate were adaptable to cooperation."
Thus the same Japanese agencies that only weeks earlier had touted spiritual fortitude in repelling barbarians quickly switched to ordering Japanese imperial subjects to accept the occupation so that Japan could again rise.
Before the arrival of the expected "invasion," police notices on how to treat the Allied forces were being posted. In the event of a plane accident, people were now ordered to help pilots and passengers, although only two weeks before the end of the war, an unfortunate downed pilot was clubbed to death by local farmers.
So, the author tells us, upon surrender, Japan did not simply subordinate itself to occupying forces. "The Japanese met the Allies at the doorstep and in true Japanese style made U.S. soldiers take off their shoes before entering." And within a very short time the United States, perhaps having observed Japanese propaganda people in action, were defending their right to continue government work, and hiring them themselves.
Barak Kushner's book is, I think, the first to treat propaganda as a profession in wartime Japan. He follows it through its various stages and is particularly interested in its popular acceptance -- wartime comedy, variety shows, how entertainers sought to bolster their careers by adopting the pro-war message, which then filtered down into society and took hold.
Using almost entirely primary materials, which have not before been translated, Barak re-creates the wartime world in which propaganda was the truth. In so doing, he has given us an eminently readable account of an unknown aspect of the war and has defined our understanding of it.
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