To commemorate the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender to the Allied powers, this unique volume explores World War II from an often-overlooked perspective: that of the Japanese home and military fronts. Extraordinary color photographs, film stills, and prints capture a nation eager to expand, and provide a glimpse of Kamikaze pilots, the young Emperor Hirohito on a state visit to England, the attack on Pearl Harbor, propaganda posters from the occupation of China, troops praying for victory, and allied prisoners of war at work.
"The result of years of research, this ... collection of photographs is a powerful document showing Japan's turbulent rise and fall, from its expansionist beginnings in the nineteenth century, through imperial adventures in China, the rise of militarism during the 1930s and early successes, to the dramatic and devastating defeat at the hands of the Allies in 1945"--Jacket
Until recently it had been assumed that no colour photographs existed in Japan until the victorious US forces arrived in 1945. However, following a year-long research project, an extraordinary colour record began to emerge. Rare photographs reveal imperial Japanese troops in Manchuria in 1931, preparations for war in 1939, occupation troops in 1940 and the Japanese war machine in action throughout the Second World War. This book contains a unique and fascinating archive of colour photographs, film stills and prints from one of the most momentous periods in world history, including never-before-seen photographs of Japanese troops in action and extremely rare colour photographs of the attack on Pearl Harbour.
From an acclaimed World War II writer comes an incisive retelling of the key month, July 1944, that won the war in the Pacific and ignited a whole new struggle on the homefront.
Approximately three million Japanese died in a conflict that raged for years over much of the globe, from Hawaii to India, Alaska to Australia, causing death and suffering to untold millions in China, southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, as well as pain and anguish to families of soldiers and civilians around the world. Yet how much do we know of Japan's war?In a sweeping panorama, Haruko Taya and Theodore Cook take us from the Japanese attacks on China in the 1930s to the Japanese home front during the devastating raids on Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, offering the first glimpses of how this violent conflict affected the lives of ordinary Japanese people.'Oral History of a compellingly high order.' Kirkus Reviews'This book seeks out the true feelings of the wartime generation [and] illuminates the contradictions between official views of the war and living testimony.' Yomiuri Shimbun
This book examines a set of paintings produced in Japan during the 1930s and early 1940s that have received little scholarly attention. Asato Ikeda views the work of four prominent artists of the time—Yokoyama Taikan, Yasuda Yukihiko, Uemura Shōen, and Fujita Tsuguharu—through the lens of fascism, showing how their seemingly straightforward paintings of Mount Fuji, samurai, beautiful women, and the countryside supported the war by reinforcing a state ideology that justified violence in the name of the country’s cultural authenticity. She highlights the politics of “apolitical” art and challenges the postwar labeling of battle paintings—those depicting scenes of war and combat—as uniquely problematic. Yokoyama Taikan produced countless paintings of Mount Fuji as the embodiment of Japan’s “national body” and spirituality, in contrast to the modern West’s individualism and materialism. Yasuda Yukihiko located Japan in the Minamoto warriors of the medieval period, depicting them in the yamato-e style, which is defined as classically Japanese. Uemura Shōen sought to paint the quintessential Japanese woman, drawing on the Edo-period bijin-ga (beautiful women) genre while alluding to noh aesthetics and wartime gender expectations. For his subjects, Fujita Tsuguharu looked to the rural snow country, where, it was believed, authentic Japanese traditions could still be found. Although these artists employed different styles and favored different subjects, each maintained close ties with the state and presented what he considered to be the most representative and authentic portrayal of Japan. Throughout Ikeda takes into account the changing relationships between visual iconography/artistic style and its significance by carefully situating artworks within their specific historical and cultural moments. She reveals the global dimensions of wartime nationalist Japanese art and opens up the possibility of dialogue with scholarship on art produced in other countries around the same time, particularly Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The Politics of Painting will be welcomed by those interested in modern Japanese art and visual culture, and war art and fascism. Its analysis of painters and painting within larger currents in intellectual history will attract scholars of modern Japanese and East Asian studies.
Employs hundreds of images and written records from Japanese periodicals during World War II to trace the nation's transformation from a colorful, cosmopolitan empire in 1937 to a bleak total war society facing imminent destruction in 1945. This volume offers a representation of the official Japanese narrative of the war in contemporary terms.
