Playing War: Children and the Paradoxes of Modern Militarism in Japan 9780520968233

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Vulnerability Hypothesis
Part I: Playing War
Chapter 1. Field Games
Chapter 2. Paper Battles
Part II. Picturing War
Chapter 3. The Moral Authority of Innocence
Chapter 4. Queering War
Epilogue: The Rule of Babies in Pink
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Playing War

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Playing War children and the paradoxes of modern militarism in japan

Sabine Frühstück

university of califor nia pr ess

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2017 by Sabine Frühstück Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Frühstück, Sabine, author. Title: Playing war : children and the paradoxes of modern militarism in Japan / Sabine Frühstück. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2016058644 (print) | lccn 2017000500 (ebook) | isbn 9780520295445 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520295452 (pbk : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520968233 (e-edition) Subjects: lcsh: Children and war—Japan. | Children and war—Japan— History. | Militarism—Japan—History—20th century. | War—History— 20th century. Classification: lcc hq784.w3 f78 2017 (print) | lcc HQ784.W3 (ebook) | ddc 303.6/6083—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016058644 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Vulnerability Hypothesis 1 pa rt i .

pl ay i ng wa r Chapter 1 • Field Games 19 Chapter 2 • Paper Battles 59 pa rt i i .

pic t u r i ng wa r Chapter 3 • The Moral Authority of Innocence 107 Chapter 4 • Queering War 165 Epilogue: The Rule of Babies in Pink 211 Notes 221 Bibliography 227 Index 259

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i l lust r at ions

1. Boys playing a war game in Miyagawa Shuntei’s Ikusa gokko, 1897 20 2. A page from the elementary school reader New Citizens’ Reader, 1899 32 3. Elementary school children receive military training in 1896 34 4. Georges Ferdinand Bigot’s La petite guerre dans les écoles Japonaises, 1904 38 5. Press photograph of Tokyo boys playing war, 1914 39 6. “Children’s heaven,” from the magazine Tainichi Gurafu, 1932 49 7. Photograph of boys playing war by Satō Shigeo, 1936 50 8. A children’s game of war, from a 1932 publication 50 9. War-playing Japanese boy, Life magazine, 1938 52 10. Children’s war game, in Japan’s Children, 1941 53 11. Domon Ken’s shot of a “samurai-style” battle in the street, 1955 57 12. Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku 1940 66 13. Pictorial map in ad, circa 1933 75 14. Cover of Science for Elementary School Students, 1939 76 15–17. Haga Masao’s “Military Grandpa” cartoon, 1938 79 18. Advancing army of mice from Children’s Club (Yōnen Kurabu), 1936 83 19. Page from Tagawa Suihō’s 1938 cartoon volume, Norakuro kesshi taichō 85 20. Captain Higuchi, by Mizuno Toshikata, 1895 108 21. Yamagami Entarō’s The Commander of Our House, 1939 110

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22. Boy in uniform, photographed by Kobayashi Sadayo, 1939 111 23. The Midget Heroes of the National Foundation Festival, 1938 113 24. Adolph Hitler on the cover of Kōdansha Picture Book: Hitler, 1941 117 25. Preparing comfort letters and comfort bags, in Nippon no kodomo, 1941 119 26. A playful take on comfort bags, 1939 120 27. Soldier and children on the cover of Children’s Book: On Soldiers, 1931 123 28. A family visits soldiers in the hospital, in Nippon no kodomo, 1941 124 29. One field of the Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku, 1940 126 30. Imperial Army soldiers give candy to Chinese children, in Children’s Club, 1938 129 31. Soldier offering candy, Kōdansha Picture Book for Good Children: Japan’s Army, 1940 130 32. Cover of Children’s Book: Being Friends with Neighbors, 1940 142 33. Using Meiji Seika caramels to draw connections, 1939 145 34. Kawasaki Taiji’s Village Nursery for 5–7-Year-Olds, 1944 146 35. Deko and her bear, Dekoposo, enliven a 2005 defense white paper 179 36. Girls in uniform, according to It’s Moe! The GSDF School, 2008 183 37. Promotional image from the television series Girls & Panzer 185 38. A Self-Defense Forces recruitment poster, 2016 187 39. Mamor, a magazine supported by the Defense Ministry, 2015 190 40. A security alliance, as embodied by two child figures, 2010 195 41. A cockroach represents the unidentified enemy, 2010 197 42–43. Mari-tan teaches readers how to swear like a marine, 2009 204 44. Ad for Mari-tan’s English Drill on an SDF strategy analysis, 2011 206

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In the 1970s, we played Indian: essentially, how to survive in the not-at-all wild South of Austria, feasting on potatoes and franks grilled over a fire we built in the middle of the forest every day of the summer. For us, war had a lot to do with the almost complete silence of one grandfather and the other’s occasional proclamations that he would never join any party, organization, or church again. When one grandmother marveled at how much better life was for us, we knew she had in mind how her own children starved during the long war years. Father’s childhood stories included one about a favorite pastime at the age of six: sneaking into the morgue with his friends to open coffins and—frightened and excited at the same time—look at what was left of the soldiers’ bodies that had been returned from the front lines. Another was about a friend who had been blown up by a leftover hand grenade. And though Mother had been born only at the end of the war, she identified for me every former SS member in town. To us, war and play did not readily comingle. The moments when I feel I am inside a book-in-the-making, instead of hoping that there is one inside me, are most precious. And yet, if it weren’t for others’ probing questions, posed in their work or in person, I would not have arrived at looking at the core issues this book addresses in the particular ways I do, or see anything at all. I thank Tanaka Masakazu and the members of the Kyoto-based Armed Forces in Asia research group, as well as Aaron Belkin, Anne Walthall, David Leheny, Heide Fehrenbach, Helga Nowotny, James Marten, Jennifer Robertson, Julia Adeney-Thomas, Klaus Taschwer, Laurie Monahan, Liisa Malkki, Mark Selden, Orna Naftali, Roger Goodman, Sepp Linhart, Sheldon Garon, Tarak Barkawi, Thomas Ludwig, Tom Gill, and Valentina Boretti. ix

I am grateful to the masters of antiquarian book stores and fairs, where over two decades I found some of the items that appear in this book, and to the librarians, particularly of the International Library of Children’s Literature, Tokyo, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Lloyd E. Cotsen kindly allowed me into his enormous collection that was then being sorted in a Los Angeles warehouse, before it became the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University. I owe thanks for the critical conversations I had with audiences at the many institutions that invited me to present and discuss various incarnations of parts of this book. Among them were talks at the University of Michigan, the University of Vienna, the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna, the Nissan Institute at the University of Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University, the Reischauer Institute at Harvard University, Princeton University, Cambridge University, the Modern East Asia Center at Leiden University, Tel Aviv University, the Louis Friedberg Center for Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Free University of Berlin, and the University of Virginia. I acknowledge the productive exchanges with organizers and participants at the conferences “War and Childhood in the Age of the World Wars: Local and Global Perspectives” (German Historical Institute in Washington, DC), “Education, War and Peace” (University of London), “Children and War: Past and Present” (University of Salzburg), and “Child’s Play: Multi-sensory Histories of Children and Childhood in Japan and Beyond” (University of California, Santa Barbara), as well as at the panels presented at the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, the American Historical Association, and the German Association for Social Science Research on Japan. As always, the support of my colleagues in the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies and the Reinventing ‘Japan’ Research Focus Group of the University of California at Santa Barbara has meant a lot to me. Sabbatical time and grants from the Division of the Humanities and Fine Arts, the Academic Senate, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara, in addition to a Senior Fellowship at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna and a research grant from the Northeast Asia Council, greatly facilitated my researching this project. I owe thanks to Ronald Egan, who made it possible for me to complete the writing during the better part of a year as x

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Visiting Scholar at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford. As for those who engaged with the manuscript at the later stages of the process, Kirsten Janene-Nelson has been the most wonderful editor. David Ambaras and one other, anonymous reviewer raised important questions and made crucial suggestions as to how to more succinctly articulate the book’s arguments. At the University of California Press, nobody will ever beat Reed Malcolm at his game. Editorial assistant Zuha Khan has been a gem. I am indebted to Bonita Hurd for her brilliant copyediting, along with fabulous project editor Kate Warne. I dedicate this book to my daughter, Hannah Marie Ludwig, in lieu of a real children’s book.

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Introduction the vulnerability hypothesis

this is a book about childhood, war, and play. I wrote it to show how children and childhood have been used as technologies to validate, moralize, humanize, and naturalize war and, later, with similar vigor, to sentimentalize peace. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the everchanging conceptions of modern and “postmodern” (Gray 1998), “old and new wars” (Kaldor 2007), insist on and exploit a specific, static, and bifurcated notion of the child: one that deems that the child, though the embodiment of vulnerability and innocence, nonetheless possesses an inherent will to war, and that this seemingly contradictory creature constitutes the very nature of the human.1 It is in this sense that, at its core, modern militarism— a juggernaut unto itself—is infantile. In examining the intersection of children and childhood and war and the military, I hope to both identify the insidious factors perpetuating this alliance and rethink the very foundations and underlying structures of modern militarism. I interrogate how essentialist notions of childhood and militarism have been productively intertwined, how assumptions about childhood and war have converged, and how children and childhood have worked as symbolic constructions and powerful rhetorical tools—particularly in the decades between the nation- and empire-building efforts of the late nineteenth century and the uneven manifestations of globalization at the beginning of the twenty-first. The modern figure of the child has emerged from a set of contradictory assumptions about children: that children are innately attracted to war, and that they are exceptionally vulnerable to its violence. This concept of childhood has thus served as a trope of both innocence and immaturity and wildness and uncontrollability. Within this fused view, children have been variably thought of as being simultaneously in need of 1

rescue, protection, guidance, control, and suppression. At one time, children’s bodies were close to the ground, playfully pursuing territorial advances, almost physically one with the soil. They were envisioned as ever-ready soldiers, constantly signaling that war is natural, inherently human, and indefinitely inevitable. At another time, children were seen as all innocence and as equipped with a pronounced moral authority that relies on that very innocence. As carriers of human emotions, children appeared as proof of the authenticity and naturalness of these emotions—and, finally, epitomized by their very (demographically speaking) disappearance, they functioned as signifier and representation of national decline. Through various means, children’s emotions have been incited, suppressed, and molded so as to embrace militarism and war. Japan’s modern wars left “their mark on the social body” (Foucault [1997] 2003: 158–160) not only because they took the form of invasions but also because war was becoming a military institution internal to society, an element of order and discipline. Indeed, modern military institutions are not established just for the purpose of protecting society against external enemies; they also endeavor to protect society against its own formlessness, against the surge and chaos that will rule if allowed to do so. As such, the conception of war that governs this book is not the “noise of the battle” but the “order and silence of perfectly constituted troops” (Foucault [1975] 1991: 168) or, rather, of well-trained and emotionally charged children. This book pushes beyond the conventional definition of militarism as the “predominance of the military class or its ideals,” or the “exaltation of military virtues and ideals” together with “a policy of aggressive military preparedness” (Merriam-Webster.com, 2017). Instead, I conceive of militarism, as does Cynthia Enloe, as “a compilation of assumptions, values, and beliefs . . . about how the world works.” Among those distinctive core beliefs are the notion that the world is a dangerous place, that there are naturally those who must be protected and, conversely, those who must protect, and that every mature and serious government must have a military to secure the protection of its people (Enloe 2004: 219). In this book, then, the nurturing of such militarism in children and through the use of children, and the resulting militarization of children and childhood, are examined as a modern, multimodal, and enduring effort. I tell the story of how, in Japan and beyond, childhood, war, and play have intersected between the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Japan is not a typical modern nation-state; few other nation-states 2

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have shared Japan’s trajectory, traveling as it did from war after war in the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth, to the peace and state pacifism known since shortly after 1945. Yet, viewing this intersection of childhood and war through a Japanese lens allows me to examine the durability and malleability of militarism as an intrinsically modern concept that, paradoxically, relies on a specifically modern and stable notion of children and childhood. In Japan, the interfaces and linkages between childhood and war, children and soldiers, were first made during the late nineteenth century. They have continued ever since—albeit in dramatically shifting ways. This introduction provides two brief histories and an overview of the chapters that follow. The first historical snapshot highlights some of the key institutional changes that produced the codification of what one might understand to be modern childhood. The second reviews Japan’s modern history of both a series of wars beginning with the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 and then the period of peace and pacifism that led up to our current turbulent moment, one of new concerns about the welfare of children and hotly contested new security legislation that came into force in March 2016.2

codifying childhood In the fall of 1886, Ueki Emori (1857–1892), a prominent member of the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, first proposed that individuals rather than families should be the basic units of a society, and that children should be considered individuals rather than merely entities beneficial to their parents (Sotozaki 1956). Though family rights continued to be prioritized over individual rights throughout the century following his statements, the partial codification of this radically modern conception of childhood did get established, ultimately turning into a long-term process that would institutionally, politically, legally, and culturally declare children vulnerable, innocent, and in need of protection and care—and, on occasion, in need of discipline and control. Most of the children these precepts refer to were very young, ranging from babies to children beginning middle school. Though childhood became recognized as a time separate from adulthood, with each child the concept varied. “Childhood” as a construct could be seen to encompass only a few years or it could be extensive—depending on different conceptions of maturity, expectations of independence, and legal measures and practices related I n t roduc t ion

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to education, welfare, labor, and criminality. But more important than the exact age group involved was a vision of the child being, not just a part of the nation, but also a prototype of the people—people who, like the child, should be educated, conquered, seduced, and, if need be, cheated in order to bring them from a place of weakness to one of strength, all for nation and empire. Children were, alternatively and sometimes simultaneously, thought of as loveable and horrible, vulnerable and demonic, valuable and burdensome. Policy makers, military strategists, educators, social welfare engineers, and ordinary men and women alike believed that children, though “worthy” of having rights, should be deprived of agency; they considered children, though vulnerable, to also be a potential threat to social order. Though this was but one notion of childhood, several others have also dominated, coexisted, contradicted, and reinforced one another. Regardless, the one factor they shared was the view of childhood as being distinct from adulthood. One beginning of the institutionalization of that separation was the Foundling Law (Sutego yōiku kome kyūyo hō) of 1871.3 This law aimed to ensure that basic livelihood was available to the most unfortunate children, stipulating that the state must provide foundlings up to the age of fifteen (later, thirteen) with enough to eat (Namaye 1974: 321–323). In an additional development, from 1874 onward new poverty legislation (Jukkyū kisoku) prescribed the support of children younger than thirteen—this at a time when about 10 percent of children between eleven and fourteen and about 90 percent of children fifteen and older were employed. Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, about 50 percent of all employees in the growing textile and match industries were children under fourteen; about 66 percent of the child factory workers were girls. Indeed, children of elementary school age accounted for roughly 15 percent of the entire factory workforce (Fujino 2009: 881–888; Ambaras 2006: 41). These realities spawned a decades-long debate about the protection of children (and girls in particular) until 1916, when a law prohibiting children under the age of thirteen from working more than twelve hours a day, seven days of a week, finally went into effect. In the wake of this law’s implementation, school attendance rates soared. New academic disciplines, including child psychology, pedagogy, and pediatrics, blossomed—disciplines whose practitioners focused on the significance of early childhood health and education in general and the significance of play for the development of children’s minds in particular. Two experts, Takashima Heisaburō and Matsumoto Kōjirō, were among the first to revisit suggestions that had been made by both the Ministry of the Interior and the 4

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Ministry of Education about the production of “educational toys” and the pedagogical value of play and games à la Fröbel’s in kindergartens; they also spoke of “educational toys” (Saitō 1985: 131). Like most child psychologists at the time, Takashima and Matsumoto adopted and adapted the ideas of pedagogue Friedrich Fröbel, who had established the first kindergarten program in Germany in 1837. A student of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Fröbel’s views on education centered on the importance of play, games, and toys in the intellectual, spiritual, and social development of children. He created a philosophy and program of education for children aged four to six intended to serve as a transition between home and school, infancy and childhood. His philosophy was to nurture and protect children, shield them from outside influence, and support their natural inclination toward learning by engaging them in activities and play. Indeed, his so-called Fröbel gifts—“educational toys” (kyōiku gangu) and other childcare products—informed the efforts of self-appointed child expert Takaichi Jiro to research, manufacture, and sell childcare products, work that from 1908 onward took place in the Fröbel Building, which later housed the Japan Toy Research Society (Koresawa 2009: 4). As these endeavors and others gained traction, more and more people outside the academy began to think of the period of infancy as educationally productive (Koresawa 2009: 6–8); thereafter the conversation spread across several intellectual and academic fields, trickled into a wide range of new popular science journals and parents’ self-help guides, and quickly found its way (mostly) into middle-class households. In addition to being shaped by these educational and entrepreneurial interests, the further codification of the vulnerability of children took major turns as the result of scandals caused by several instances of severe child abuse. In 1909, for instance, a man and a woman who were eventually referred to as “the devil couple of Asakusa” refused to care for their son, fed him only once a day, and punished him by burning him all over his body when he cried. When the neighbors complained and the police stepped in, the couple was taken into custody; the child was rescued and nursed back to health before being eventually handed over to a privately run home-care business (Mishima 2005: 31–33). The case resulted in a call for legislation to protect “innocent children from crimes.” Actual implementation, however, took many more years; numerous other children died at the hands of their caretakers before the 1933 Child Abuse Prevention Act (Mishima 2005: 34–36) was implemented. This law constituted yet another piece of legislation that codified children’s vulnerability, innocence, and need of protection—sometimes even from their own parents. I n t roduc t ion

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All the while, the modern naturalization of women as the primary caretakers and educators of children at home and, later, increasingly at grade schools too was well under way. For example, the 1905 republication of Kaibara Ekken’s once-influential neo-Confucian ethics treatise, Greater Learning for Women (Onna daigaku)—which detailed his conviction that “most women’s stupidity” was such that “it was best for them to distrust themselves and instead obey their husbands” in order to avoid inducing “an erroneous system” with their “blind affection” for their children (Kaibara [1905] 2010: 33)—arrived at a time when this kind of thinking had begun to lose its hold on contemporary conceptions of the role of mothers in their children’s lives. Previously, mothers, grandmothers, and maids had been involved in raising children, but, as a result of Greater Learning for Women, not much had been thought of their capacity to educate them. From the beginning of the twentieth century onward, parents—and mothers in particular—were expected to love them properly. Then, maternal love was no longer “blind affection.” It was becoming obligatory, natural, instinctual, and normative. Around this time, a handful of public intellectuals revisited Ueki Emori’s 1886 question of children’s rights in pursuit of a “child-centered society” that would produce healthy, happy, and well-loved children capable of becoming “ideal students” (Jones 2010). Subsequently, guidebooks for home use, such as The Health Reader for Daughters, Wives and Mothers (Musume to tsuma to haha no eisei dokuhon), and Methods of Pregnancy, Safe Birth, and Child Raising (Ninshin to ansan to ikujihō), described at length how “good wives and wise mothers” were to train and guide their offspring toward adulthood, advising on topics ranging from the benefits of breast-feeding to the volatility of untrained emotions.4 Historians of Japan have grown accustomed to the notion that the increasing militarism of the 1930s, and eventually the total war from 1937 to 1945, suffocated these largely middle-class efforts, and that key components of what had come to constitute a progressive, modern notion of childhood in the 1920s—vulnerability, dependence, and other clear distinctions from normative adulthood—slipped out of sight. This book, by contrast, argues that the militarism of the first half of the twentieth century was productive in appropriating for its own purposes the very innocence and vulnerability that the moderns had ascribed to children. In the spirit of the increasing idealization of mothers as primary caretakers of children, subsequent child welfare legislation, such as the 1937 Law for the Protection of Mother and Child (Boshi hogohō), continued to exclusively connect child welfare to mothers. 6

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Under the impact of increasingly aggressive pronatal politics, both women’s frequently expanding bodies and children’s growing ones became rhetorically tied to the future of the empire (Frühstück 2003: 7–8). Subsequently, some women viewed the law not primarily as a policy to ease poverty but as state remuneration for fulfi lling their wartime duty of giving birth to and raising ever more members of the next generation (Tomie 2005: 239). The imperialist regime of the 1930s and early 1940s came to tightly embrace children, increasingly converting them into little (militarized) adults (shōkokumin) through, for instance, their mobilization for work in munitions factories and for other previously adult roles at the home front. For example, more than 150,000 male teenagers were recruited as “student soldiers” after September 1943; eventually, some teenagers entered the special attack units during the final, desperate months of the Asia-Pacific War (Ienaga, Kobayashi, and Yamauchi 1967: 6; Neary 2002: 209–213). In many ways, the end of World War II constituted a major watershed regarding how states and their agencies were to best protect children and, more specifically, control the relationship between children and military concerns. In Japan, child welfare became regulated by the 1947 Child Welfare Law (Jidō fukushihō), which replaced the earlier legislation discussed above (Goodman 2002: 136). By 1948, the baby boom of the postwar years saw the improvement of family-planning legislation and technology, including the legalization of abortion, which became primarily based on considerations of the welfare of the woman rather than of the child (Norgren 2001). In 1952, partly in response to the 1951 Japanese Charter of Children’s Rights (the Children’s Charter)— which claimed children should be respected as human beings and as members of society, and should be brought up in a healthy environment—the Japanese Association for the Protection of Children (Nihon kodomo o mamoru kai) was founded to pursue “the creation and spreading of a healthy children’s culture” (kenzen na jidō bunka o sozo to fukyū). In 1994, Japan ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989. This ratification was particularly important since, up until that point, in legal terms, children had been primarily viewed as vulnerable dependents of their parents rather than as separate individuals (Goodman 2000: 165; Yamamura 1986: 34; Matsushima 1996: 141). While the domestic debate about the Convention mostly reflected international discussions on what exactly constituted “the interest of children,” it lingered particularly on the concern that the establishment of children’s rights might lead to egocentrism and social confusion on the part of Japan’s youngest citizens (Goodman I n t roduc t ion

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1996: 131, 2000: 158; Matsushima 1996: 142). Critics of the Convention declared that the implementation of the charter would rob Japanese children of a “real childhood,” and that it would instead inflict both overprotection and experiential deprivation with respect to sibling and peer interaction and free-play opportunities (Hara and Minagawa 1996: 23). More importantly for the story this book tells, in 2004 Japan also ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’s Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict but modified the declaration to note that Japan recruited only those eighteen or above into the Self-Defense Forces. Though Japanese children were once stylized as the promised site of Japan’s national reproduction, as “treasures” (Jones 2010), the “country’s jewels,” and as the “single most important area of social policy making” (Goodman 2000: 5; White 1987: 13), today children are said to be in crisis. Demographically speaking, that “children’s crisis” appears to be most obviously manifested in their dwindling numbers. Yet the Convention also invigorated a number of children’s rights movements that concern themselves particularly with the “loss of childhood” and the “commodification of children”; at the same time, a small number of horrific crimes committed by children triggered a disproportionally substantial debate about “wild,” “dangerous,” and even murderous youth as possible signals of a society that no longer functions effectively (Field 1995; Arai 2010, 2016; Numata 2003). Alternatively traced to teachers’ weak status and lack of interventional power, families’ failure to raise emotionally secure children, or the widening gap between children and adults—in addition to a host of other factors and theories—the occurrence of these crimes by children has fed anxieties about Japan’s economic and moral decline over the last quarter century (Ogi [2000] 2013). Collectively, these diagnoses suggest that a reexamination is under way of one of the key modern assumptions about children: namely, that they are first and foremost vulnerable members of society in need of adult care, guidance, protection, and control. In short, the “vulnerability hypothesis,” noted in this introduction’s title, has come under scrutiny as never before.

(a brief history of) war and peace Late in the nineteenth century, Japan emerged as a modern, militarist, and imperialist nation-state; but that militarism, then key to modern nation and empire building, did not come easy. For decades after the introduction in 8

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1872 of mandatory military service for every twenty-year-old male considered fit for service, thousands of young males broke the law rather than serve the requisite three (and later two) years in the military. Indeed, some young men resented the idea of joining the ranks so much that they clung to their parents until the last minute before leaving for the barracks. Army physical examination reports scoffed at young men who appeared “effeminate”; had starved themselves so as to be classified as underweight and, thus, at least temporarily unfit for service; or had even injured themselves to escape the draft (Frühstück 2003: 30). Many village communities also disapproved of the requirement to the extent that they often declined to formally send them off or welcome them home on their return (Yanagida 1957: 236; Lone 2010). Altogether, broader militarization efforts remained largely unsuccessful until Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895. It took another ten years and another war, this time against Russia (1904–1905), for Japanese authorities to recognize the political benefits of mobilizing the home front, a recognition that resulted at first in the creeping and then exploding mass mobilization for total war between 1931 and 1945. On 15 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers of the Second World War. Promulgated on 3 November 1946, Japan’s constitution formally broke with the militarism that had until then defined the modern nation-state, and it officially codified pacifism in its Article 9. The antimilitarist and antimilitary era that followed has continued into the twenty-first century. In fact, today Japan occupies eighth place (after Iceland, Denmark, Austria, New Zealand, Switzerland, Finland, and Canada) in the 2015 Global Peace Index rankings, which were designed to reflect the impact of domestic and international conflict, societal safety and security, and militarization.5 That said, time and again throughout the postwar era, Japanese governments have debated Japan’s approach to military capability, the willingness to and constitutionality of deploying Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) abroad, and the possibility of exercising military force. For decades, the large majority’s attitudes regarding the Self-Defense Forces’ legitimacy and performance have ranged from hostile to ignorant to complacent, to the extent that a distinct public silence shrouded the SDF up to the early 1990s. The SDF themselves have carefully avoided public attention and, for the most part, become used to the mainstream population’s almost complete detachment and disinterest in the armed forces. Only occasionally has public opinion experienced a positive upswing, as seen after the large-scale disaster relief I n t roduc t ion

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missions following both the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake and the 2011 triple disaster—earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown—in northeastern Japan. In Japan and abroad, the relatively more favorable opinion of the SelfDefense Forces today continues to be informed by their engagement in missions other than war—notwithstanding concerns about North Korea’s and, particularly, China’s military aspirations in the region. Though public opinion has gradually warmed to the SDF—partly owing to the increasingly wellsponsored and sophisticated efforts of their public relations apparatus in molding their public image in the wake of domestic disaster relief activities, and in tandem with a generational shift—that opinion remains overwhelmingly pro–Article 9 and antiwar.6 And so, despite Japan’s formidable military capabilities, as well as its increasing integration with the U.S. armed forces, a large majority of the population insists Japan remain committed to antimilitarism. Yet, seventy years after the end of the Asia-Pacific War, significantly more observers than in previous decades discern the reemergence of a political will to have (in particular, male) service members kill and die in the name of the Japanese nation-state. Political scientists in particular suspect that, while Article 9 may not be amended in the near future, putting it on the political agenda might have made more acceptable (seemingly) lesser changes, like establishing the Ministry of Defense or allowing the export of Japanese military technology (McElwain and Winkler 2015). Article 9 aside, the Japanese state appears to be engaged in a “salami tactic” (Samuels 2007) meant to bring about such a scenario, one that points toward the “new dynamism” (Hughes 2015) of a “resurgence of [military] power” (Pyle 2007). Among the latest signs of this developing trend are Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s July 2014 decisions to change the interpretation of the Japanese constitution and to recognize Japan’s collective right of self-defense (shūdanteki jieiken)—the popular response to which was critical. Some commentators welcomed these political moves as potent tools to “reveal the lie of the onecountry pacifism” (Higuchi 2014).7 Mainstream media, numerous legal and political experts, academics, and at least some Self-Defense Forces ranks alike warily conceive of the decisions as being designed to prepare the nation, its laws, and its Self-Defense Forces for the possibility of a full-blown involvement in war despite the constitutional prohibition of such (Asahi Shinbun, 17 September 2015; Japan Times, 26 August 2015; Martin 2014; Wakefield and Martin 2014). Meanwhile, the Communist Party in Japan, one of the largest 10

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nongoverning communist parties in the world, demands a halt to the “war proposal” that would “deliver Japan’s young to the battlefield.”8 Concerning the enormous effort the Meiji government expended in transforming Japan into a modern (militarized) nation-state almost a century and a half ago, a number of considerations should give Abe’s administration pause. One consideration is that three generations of service members have joined the Self-Defense Forces assuming that they would never participate in war; as such, amended policies are likely to result in even fewer ranks. Given that the SDF already suffer chronic manpower shortage—membership in the classes from sergeant down, for example, are at less than 70 percent of the prescribed numbers—the forces can ill afford to lose more new recruits. Indeed, between 2003 and 2009, when Japan dispatched Self-Defense Forces units to Iraq, there was a sharp increase in the number of students quitting the National Defense Academy, as well as of Self-Defense Forces members retiring early. In 2015, the rates of high school students applying to join the rank and fi le of the SDF dropped by 10 percent compared to the previous year. While there is no evidence that this development is the direct result of recent legal changes, it is clear that Japan’s young are not hankering to sign up for war. Indeed, many current service members, based on anecdotal evidence at least, would rather quit if participation in war became a realistic scenario and, in any case, are apprehensive about new security legislation (Frühstück 2007; Brasor 2015; Sentaku 2015). A second and perhaps more important consideration is the fact that, owing to the current demographic crisis, there will be ever fewer young men and women who can be recruited into the ranks of the SDF (Sentaku Zasshi 2015). And third, the passage of new security legislation has turned out to be just the beginning of a long, grueling constitutional debate (Asahi Shinbun, 17 September 2015; McElwain and Winkler 2015).

discipline and order Until recently, firm boundaries have contained and separated the study of children and childhood from the study of war and the military. Historians and anthropologists have only just begun to examine the deep interconnections, interpermeations, and mutually constitutive power of both spheres that disciplinary boundaries have helped to obscure. Among the first landmark studies to penetrate these boundaries within the context of war in I n t roduc t ion

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twentieth-century Europe were Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau’s La guerre des enfants, 1914–1918 (1993) and Antonio Gibelli’s Il popolo bambino: Infanzia e nazione dalla Grande Guerra a Salò (2005), both concerning World War I; and Nicholas Stargardt’s Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis (2005) and Olga Kucherenko’s Little Soldiers: How Soviet Children Went to War, 1941–1945 (2011), which discuss World War II. In addition to including analyses of public thoughts about wartime education and indoctrination of children, as well as comprehensive accounts of children’s own perceptions, attitudes, and experiences, each of these works provides ample fodder for a question that Manon Pignot (2012: 5) asked most bluntly: “How have we come to believe that Africa has invented the child soldier?” Th is belief is easily comprehensible considering the substantial body of recent scholarship, memoirs, reports, and literary and filmic depictions of child soldiers from the global South (Singer 2005; Beah 2007; Fukunaga 2015). Pignot’s volume The Child Soldier from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Century: A Critical Approach (L’enfant-soldat XIXe–XXIe siècle: Une approche critique) contributes to the building of historical investigations of child soldiers worldwide.9 In Japan the historiography of children and childhood is a substantial field. The Japanese translation of the highly acclaimed L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime by Philippe Ariès (Sugiyama and Sugiyama 1980) is a critical touchstone for a growing body of scholarship that has been charting new territory ever since, ranging from The History of Children in Japan (Nihon kodomo no rekishi sōsho, 1997–1998) and the twenty-volume Book Series of Japanese Children’s Games (Sōsho Nihon no jidō yūgi, 2004), both edited by Kami Shōichirō, to fine studies of design and material culture for children (Jinno 2011; Koresawa 2009, 2015). The study of children during wartime was particularly invigorated by the death in 1989 of wartime emperor Hirohito. While these analyses have remained almost exclusively restricted to the Asia-Pacific War, they provide an impressive range and depth of primary materials and scholarship: from the six-volume series Children during War: Junior Citizens of the Shōwa-era (Sensō no naka no kodomo: Shōwa shōkokumin bunko korekushon), produced mainly under the editorship of Yamanaka Hisashi, to the twenty volumes of primary texts that constitute The Japanese Pacifism Collection (Nihon heiwa-ron taikei, 1993), several of which also contain substantial numbers of texts on children and childhood, and which were selected and provided with commentaries by an editing team under the leadership of Ienaga Saburō, a prominent historian who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 and 2001. 12

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Given the quantity and accessibility of substantial sources and archives, as well as the rich body of Japanese scholarship, it is nothing short of astonishing that, to date, there is no monograph in a language other than Japanese exclusively devoted to issues related to children and war in modern Japanese history. In fact, non-Japanese historians of childhood and youth have barely discovered Japan. Among the trailblazers are three authors of studies mainly concerned with the early twentieth century: Kathleen Uno (1999) powerfully relates the significance of social reform with regard to children and childhood; David Ambaras (2006) lays bare the social construction of “bad youth”; and Mark Jones (2010) describes the largely middle-class movement of the early twentieth century that endeavored to build a “child-centered society.” Two collections of essays partly devoted to the history of childhood and war and a special issue of Japan Forum (28, no. 1 [March 2016]) are further manifestations of change with regard to scholarly interest (Kinski, Salomon, Grossmann 2016; Frühstück and Walthall 2017). A handful of books on the Asia-Pacific War have touched upon children’s experiences under the double frame of “propaganda” and “indoctrination.” In Certain Victory: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media, David Earhart (2008: 186–191) effectively describes how propaganda and indoctrination efforts have steered “children’s minds toward militarism,” while Sharalyn Orbaugh (2015) shows in Propaganda Performed: Kamishibai in Japan’s Fifteen-Year War how an old form of street theater lent itself to propaganda purposes (see also Kushner 2009). Though the historical profession, particularly in the Anglo-American sphere of influence, has embraced the study of war and the military—if not children’s place within it—until rather recently anthropologists have stayed away from both. As Catherine Lutz (2009: 367) states about the U.S. military: “With the notable exception of the Vietnam War years, there has been an eerie silence in our field.” Ironically, this is despite both a renewed interest within the military in recruiting the discipline of anthropology and its members and the recent focus on the concept of “cultural awareness” in educational and training practices and its combat deployment (Frühstück 2010). The controversial Human Terrain System—which employed anthropologists and other social scientists in order to provide military commanders and staff with an understanding of local populations (human terrain)— notwithstanding, and despite the increasingly normalized pairing, in the United States, of peacetime military spending and permanent war footing, anthropology as a discipline continues to struggle with whether and how I n t roduc t ion

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to critically examine the most deadly and expensive state institution (Lutz 2009: 368). Moreover, those few who have critically concerned themselves with the military in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere might as well have been from a planet different from that of the anthropologists studying children’s issues like infant mortality, poverty, abuse, and other extreme hardships (Scheper-Hughes and Sargent 1998). The recent interest in studying child soldiers in the global South is a lone exception that has challenged earlier perspectives—some would say hopelessly bourgeois, global, northern-middle-class perspectives—discussing children recruited into militias and legitimate armed forces alike in mostly authoritarian regimes or the non-Western world (Macmillan 2009; Beier 2011; Kahn 2008; Rosen 2005; Youth Advocate Program International [1997] 1999; Naftali 2014). At the same time, anthropologists have only just begun to delve into studying the militarization of children in nation-states, including the United States and the United Kingdom, that allow youths (individuals legally classified as preadults) to train or serve in their armed forces. The anthropology of Japan’s armed forces has been an equally neglected field of inquiry, albeit for different reasons. My Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army was the first book-length ethnography of the Self-Defense Forces in any language, including Japanese (Frühstück 2007, 2008). And despite a vibrant gender and sexuality studies field, the first extensive analyses of the gender order in the Self-Defense Forces appeared only recently (Satō 2004; Frühstück 2014). Analyses from various ethnographic angles have also begun to produce a handful of publications (Frühstück and Ben-Ari 2002; Ben-Ari and Frühstück 2003; Ames 2010; Tanaka 2015). But thus far, nobody has taken up the child/war and child/soldier connections in Japan.

the book This is not a comprehensive survey. It is an analysis of various engagements, encounters, exploitations, and clashes of children and childhood with war and the military across the modern and contemporary periods. Composed in two parts—one on playing war, the other on picturing it—and presented in four chapters, the book begins by describing (mostly) how Japanese children have played war. 14

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Chapter 1 addresses the question of how Japanese children have learned to conceive of war as play and how, in the words of a war game manual of 1913, “children’s little wars” connected and interacted with the “grand game”—a term that over the years has referred to the annual grand maneuvers of the Imperial Army and Japan’s wars in Asia (Horn 2007: 219). I describe various modalities of and debates about children’s war play and its rules and regularities—from the hills and along the rivers of nineteenth-century rural Japan to the killing fields of twenty-first-century cyberspace. Throughout, children’s war games have shared the qualities of instruction, training, and disciplining, thus embodying the modern notion of “continuous war” that has dramatically gained currency with the rise of the nation-state, the centralization of the power to make war, and the simultaneous marginalization of war to the borders of nation-states (Foucault [1976] 1986: 8–9). Chapter 2 shows how, as the Japanese state moved from nation-building to empire-building, children’s organized war games, which often involved maps, became ever more closely tied to training children’s bodies and minds in the playful appropriation of territory. In playrooms, playgrounds, books, magazines, and paper games, children mimicked the contemporaneous practices of cartography, reconnaissance, war, and colonization. Children’s war games, then, were intertwined with the experience of nature, territory, and the empire. Today, it is that very physical experience that electronic game producers try to recapture for the (primarily male) war game players despite their sitting in front of computer screens, sometimes for hours on end, rather than roaming the fields. Chapter 3 examines the “use value” (Hutnyk 2004) of children—as well as the necessity and inevitability of such use—in the ideological reproduction of war. I suggest that this ideology lies in what I call the “emotional capital” that has been attributed to children—namely, the assumption that children are politically innocent, morally pure, and endowed with authentic feelings—and in the expectation that adults will respond to the sight of children with a specific, predictable set of emotions. Th is emotional capital has been primarily employed through the unapologetic insinuation of sentiments such as sympathy, empathy, friendship, familiarity, and gratitude. In this way, the child’s vulnerability, innocence, and malleability—all considered innate characteristics—have been enlisted in order to offer a sense of redemption to soldiers and to offer a form of appeasement to children and the home-front population. In short, I ask how it is that pictures and texts that tied children to soldiers have reproduced a multisensory emotional register that has had I n t roduc t ion

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simultaneously repressive and productive, restrictive and liberating, effects. I see these pictures and narratives as a major mechanism of a number of closely related and often overlapping spheres of the cultural and political production and reproduction of the will to war. Chapter 4 turns to various modes of “queering war”—the ways the SelfDefense Forces and the U.S. Forces, Japan, have manipulated the categories of childhood and war in order to appeal to (eventually recruitable) children. While military recruitment materials around the world have claimed the capacity to turn formerly unformed and directionless children into adults and, particularly, boys into men, the Self-Defense Forces, more than any military establishment elsewhere, have taken a different route, instead variously infantilizing, feminizing, and sexualizing service members, potential recruits, and sympathizers. Such efforts are the means by which the SelfDefense Forces’ public relations apparatus attempts to ensure its viability in an environment marked by the contentious legacy of Japan’s imperialist war in Asia—as well as by an ever-shrinking population, whose young generation shows next to no signs of a will to war, thus potentially hampering the current administration’s aspirations. Not since the beginning of the twentieth century has a newly fervent rhetoric about the condition and future of Japan’s children and childhood so closely coincided with an equally heated debate about (the specter of) Japan’s rise as a military and war-making power. In debates regarding both issues, the figure of the child has been rhetorically mobilized to represent both national decline and a weakening of the late capitalist belief in a yet brighter, richer, and happier future. At the same time, children and their emotional value— replete with their presumed vulnerability, innocence, and sweetness, which have been so regularly utilized over the decades—appear to hold more use value for the military today than at any other moment since the end of the Asia-Pacific War. Yet the terrain has shifted: the militarization of childhood of the modern era has lost ground to and is closely intertwined with the ever-multiplying mechanisms that further the infantilization of militarism.

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pa r t i

Playing War

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chapter 1

Field Games

training children’s bodies, advancing the empire In the 1732 memoir Tales of Long Gone Times (Hachijūō mukashibanashi) an eighty-year-old man recorded the following about child’s play: “On May 1st, they put up a small flag and lots and lots of children gathered. On the 5th, the children agreed on a place to meet on the 6th. Somewhere between dozens to as many as one hundred children met at the agreed time. Among them, about twenty or thirty children were selected based on their fighting ability. Then they fought taking care not to injure one another” (Shinmi 1732). The author noted that the children upheld a certain level of order and discipline with respect to the arrangements, the selection of participants, and their conduct, all notwithstanding the spontaneous character of this game. And yet, he nonetheless saw their play as proof of their being “horrible children of Edo,” certain that their combative play by day would lead to destructive activities by night, perhaps including breaking into people’s homes to steal and destroy. In the two centuries that followed, some commentators on such games had mixed attitudes toward the children who played them (see fig. 1), while many others seemed disturbed by what they saw. Diaries and critiques by prominent figures—ranging from Dutch studies scholar Sugita Genpaku (1733–1817) to warlord and essayist Matsuura Seizan (1760–1841) to cultural critic and media historian Miyatake Gaikotsu (1867–1955)—suggest that such play was inspired by the publication of war tales. For example, Oze Hoan (1564–1640) wrote one of the earliest works of the Edo period: Taikō-ki, an epic novel of war and glory centering on the biography of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It became an immediate best-seller when it was first 19

fig. 1. In Miyagawa Shuntei’s Ikusa gokko (1897), two groups of boys face each other in a war game. Printed with the kind permission of Kumon Museum of Children’s Ukiyo-e.

published in 1625. Nearly two hundred years later, in 1797, it was released as Ehon Taikō-ki and illustrated by famed painter Okada Gyokusan; this edition saw even wider distribution, launching a “fad for books and prints concerning Hideyoshi and the battles to unify Japan” that resulted in numerous later works bearing the same and similar titles (Aston 1905: 223; Kornicki 2001: 396). About a hundred years on, another chronicle, Rumors of Early Modern Times (Kinsei fūbun: Mimi no aka) by Kondō Juhaku, referred to a similar children’s war-game scenario in dramatically different terms. In 1855, a group of [Japanese] children gathered to play an ordinary war game, but in this game the children split into two sides, one American and the other Japanese. Each side had a leader, the Japanese side led by a twelve-year-old and the American side by a fourteen-year-old. The fourteen-year-old, being older, was considered the stronger, and for that reason alone he was able to draw ten new members to his side from the enemy. The children gathered bamboo rods and flung them about wildly[,] pretending to be in the heat of a battle. That day the American side claimed victory. The next day the children gathered to play again. The leader of the Japanese side, however, was late. When he arrived, he had brought with him bamboo rods that had been whittled down to sharp points. The Japanese leader suddenly thrust one into the boy who was playing the leader of the Americans, and the boy immediately fell to the ground in pain. People from the neighborhood and the fallen boy’s parents came to his aid, but the wound proved fatal. The angry parents took the matter to court. The court ruled in favor of the young boy who had killed the American leader. The court believed that he had done the proper thing and had defended his country by defeating the enemy: America. As a reward he was given a lifetime stipend and his followers were commended for their behavior. (Kondō Juhaku, ed., Kinsei fūbun-mimi no aka [Tokyo: Seiabō, 1972], 163; quoted in Minami 1989: 26–27)

While we today may consider this anecdote peculiar, even shocking, Kondō revealed no such conflict of consciousness. He did not look to contemporary literature for clues. He simply, matter-of-factly, noted that this was just one of many incidents that revealed the widespread antiforeign sentiment held by Japanese commoners—and, one might add, their children— following the 1853 arrival of the “Black Ships” (Kurofune), the name given to Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s fleet. That fleet’s arrival had been chiefly responsible for the much-resented opening of Japan to the West after roughly 250 years of a largely “closed country” policy and a time of “great peace” (Roberts 2012).1 Kondō also did not allude in general terms to attitudes about Field Games

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the connections between aggressive military action and child’s play. We might speculate that he thought nothing of children enacting an ongoing adult conflict. Alternatively, he might have considered an incident involving war play leading to the death of a child as one particularly effective in describing both the mood of the time and the drama that mood was capable of unleashing. In the hundred years or so since then, instances of children playing at war became a contentious subject. I am interested in how assumptions about three topics—children and childhood, play, and war and the military—have intersected, and how these intersections evolved in the decades that followed: from the nation- and empire-building efforts that began shortly after the incident Kondō recounted in the middle of the nineteenth century, to the uneven manifestations of globalization at the beginning of the twenty-first. More specifically, I regard children’s war games as manifestations and generators of rhetoric about the nature of children and the roles they ought to play. These games posed problems for a nation intent on militarization and imperialism. I describe the virtues attributed to children in order to symbolically sustain pacifism and carry the burden of Japan’s future. Such physical or virtual games, I argue, have on a number of occasions throughout the twentieth century and in the twenty-first prompted dramatic shifts in adult attitudes. Sometimes these shifts have been closely aligned with theories about child development; at other times they have been driven by the requirements of a nation in crisis. For example, at one time, as in Kondō’s story, public rhetoric proposed that war games were to be understood as children’s unfortunate and dangerous enactment or impact of (adults’) recent, ongoing, or impending violent conflicts. At another, children’s war games were cited as (childish) manifestations of an innate human desire to destroy and kill. And while Japanese parents, journalists, social critics, child experts, and government authorities of one generation called for the control and suppression of such games, often the next generation just as aggressively promoted them—even to the extent of wanting them incorporated into school exercise regimes carefully choreographed and controlled by teachers and military instructors. Indeed, some generations of parents urged that war games regularly appear on the pages of children’s books and magazines—so as to establish such games as a tool to demarcate and reproduce both war as an inherently human endeavor and children, particularly boys, as always being already (and, thus, inherently) soldiers. 22

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During the first half of the twentieth century, there was no linear progression from one attitude to another. Rather, educational and political elites in Japan and elsewhere—in agreement on the importance of children growing up fit for war—argued about which training, education, and play would best prepare them for that purpose. They did so somewhat enthusiastically after the Sino- and Russo-Japanese Wars and more aggressively upon the onset of the Asia-Pacific War. Henceforth, they facilitated the creation of a children’s culture that increasingly prompted children—whether on school grounds or in the field or on paper—to playfully explore, subordinate, and control the empire in the making. We might imagine that, separated from adult supervision and control, children played games of war that tapped into their joy in “playing with power” and fostered “childish omnipotence” (Kinder 1993).2 I explore the role of such instances of childlike omnipotence in sustaining children’s war games—on the ground, on paper, and on screen—from the late nineteenth century to today. From early on in this story, children’s war games provided children with opportunities to apply and deepen their knowledge of territory, maps, and geography. In many ways children’s war games mimicked the playful colonization of territory, first in the field and on paper and then within a virtual topography. It is not so much that each new style of war games eliminated the styles that had preceded it; instead, the styles coexisted, bled into each other, and mutually informed techniques, strategies, and tactics. From the beginning of the twentieth century onward, educational and political elites reenvisioned war games as ideal tools for nurturing in children an enthusiasm for war. Many spoke and wrote about how, through children’s engagement in war games, children and soldiers were infinite reflections of one another. Playing war, many adult commentators imagined, would inevitably lead to the will and ability to make war. Contemporary critics disagreed, however, on whether children shared an enthusiasm for such play that could be understood as “natural” and thus inherent in all children, or whether they perhaps felt an equally inherent resistance toward war games. For instance, Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), prominent commentator on his times and founder of Japanese folklore studies, suggested there was a special relationship between children and militarism. He observed that, before the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), only those in elementary school considered “soldiering something splendid” (Yanagida 1957: 236). Beyond those youngest children, he confidently claimed, “the militaristic spirit simply did not exist.” He did not posit whether this was because children conflated war Field Games

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games with war, thinking of both in terms of entertainment and fun, not death and destruction; nor did he indicate whether he meant to imply that anyone who shared such enthusiasm necessarily viewed war with a child’s mind. Regardless, with Japan’s victory over China in 1895, all of that changed. The “Japanese public’s enthusiasm for the military climbed to fever pitch,” and, according to Yanagita’s recollections, “it gradually came to be considered a great distinction for a young man to be conscripted” (236). In actuality, the relationship between children and militarism had been more ambivalent and contested than Yanagita recalled. The meanings of and the interrelations between modern notions of childhood, play, and war varied a good deal depending on whether that play was the preoccupation of a handful of children after school, simulated grand maneuvers of the Imperial Army enacted by masses of schoolchildren and recorded in newspapers, or the imagination captured in children’s books, magazines, and other manifestations of children’s culture. These are my questions: How were the rules and regularities of war play negotiated, and who had a say? What made adults so firmly disagree on the value or risk of such play, and on whether children’s war games should be suppressed as dangerous, furthered as a vehicle of discipline and militarization, or viewed as an expression of children’s inherent and still intact human nature? These questions lie at the heart of what I explore, especially in the nefarious underpinnings of such a philosophy. For, if children have a natural inclination to play war—as many adult commentators around the globe have claimed throughout modern and contemporary history—perhaps the adult will to make war is natural, normal, and thus, at times at least, inevitable and unavoidable, perhaps even something to be fully embraced. Of course, there is a flip side to this thinking as well: if children’s desire to play war can be incited, perhaps their will to make war as adults can be developed early on, to the inevitable and indefinite betterment of the military machine. Despite court rulings such as the one cited above, the feudal government (1185 to 1867) time and again prohibited children from playing dangerous games, including stone wars, water games with cold water, and even snowball fights; these efforts only intensified with the foundation of the modern nation-state in the wake of the Meiji restoration in 1867. For example, on 1 September 1875 the sale of toy pistols was prohibited. Similar prohibitions of other dangerous games followed, including playing horse on bamboo stilts (takeuma asobi; Ujiie 1989: 88–89) and, in 1881, elementary school pupils’ play on the street (according to the ordinance Shōgakusei no rojō yūgi no torishimari). 24

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But even with such interdictions, children’s war games and other dangerous play continued. As historian Mikito Ujiie notes, tourist guides for domestic travelers regularly described children’s fights (kodomo no kenka), often including such details as how dozens of children got together to “engage in war” and how “the commander” of such a battle was typically “a youth of doubtful reputation” (akushonen). And yet, while their play was public enough to have been thus noted, back at home the children tried to hide indications of their unproductive and dangerous play from their parents— fully aware that many would have disapproved (Ujiie 1989: 93–100). At the end of the nineteenth century, foreign visitors also recalled having observed children by the hundreds engaging in battles (Ujiie 1989: 87). Around the time that William Elliot Griffis, a prominent Meiji government advisor, stayed in Japan (1871–1874), the ubiquity of children’s war games was such that public worry about children’s safety had become national news. Rather than being viewed as merely the personal concerns and quarrels of childhood, these games were suspected of being inspired by recent conflicts like the Boshin War (1868–1869) or ongoing, real-time conflicts such as the Saga Rebellion (1874)—both unsuccessful efforts by samurai to overthrow the new Meiji government. As a result, war play was perceived as a social phenomenon with dangerous potential: the potential not only to contradict modern notions of “proper” childhood but also to challenge the social and political order if children were left unsupervised. According to the Yomiuri Shinbun of 22 February 1877, “children’s war games in the field hold plenty of dangers,” and yet, “lots of children got together to play soldier. They fought, district against district, with bamboo sticks and small stones and some got injured” (4). Shortly after, on 21 March the same newspaper reported that the Education Department of Tokyo Prefecture had advised primary school teachers to reprimand pupils who engaged in “play that imitated the military” (ikusa no mane to shite; 1). Yet just one month later, on 12 April 1877, the Yomiuri lamented how more than one hundred children had staged a play battle “imitat[ing] the military” (1)—with many injured in the process. That same year, Edward S. Morse—another foreign advisor to the Meiji government and the Tokyo Imperial University’s first professor of zoology— suggested that such “bad games” were inspired by that year’s Satsuma Rebellion against the new Meiji government (Morse [1917] 1978: 297). According to newspapers of the day, children’s war games escalated around New Year’s Day of the following year. In one account, a group of fift y to sixty Field Games

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children, including six- and seven-year-olds, split in two groups—eastern and western armies—with a fi fteen-year-old serving as the commander. Every morning a war cry launched a fresh skirmish fought with stones and bamboo sticks—continuing until the evening, only to begin anew the next day. Eventually, the children were even joined by men as old as twenty-five and twenty-six in what by then was called their “great war of every evening” (maiyū no daisensō). In response, on 22 March 1878 the daily paper Chōna Shinbun established a column titled “Watching Commentary” (“Kansen shōgen”). According to the column of 30 March, a children’s army, made up of ten members between the ages of six and fifteen, had started a war on the north side of a local shrine that resulted in a variety of injuries, including to individuals’ eyes. The columnist appealed to the local community, demanding that parents, schools, and businesses collaborate to prevent children from engaging in such dangerous play (Ujiie 1989: 90–91). The columnist’s appeal highlighted a series of contradictory moves—years in the making—in which the new Meiji government, the education establishment, the military, and the fledgling modern print media had all separately attempted to both decouple the samurai class from its identity as warmongers and link children to the welfare and power of the nation. These efforts began in earnest in 1872, when the Meiji government implemented two laws that had revolutionary, modernizing, and democratizing effects. One was the universal and mandatory Conscription Act, which coincided with the dismissal of the old warrior class, the samurai, as men who had “led an easy life, were arrogant and shameless, and murdered innocent people with impunity” (Lone 2010: 15). The other was the Fundamental Code of Education: mandatory elementary education for both boys and girls, which was introduced the same year by Mori Arinori, the architect of Japan’s modern education system. Together this new legislation rewrote what it meant to be a child and, at the same time, reset the boundaries for male maturity. As the new education system unfolded in the decades that followed, new terms named and distinguished the young primarily by level of schooling. The Education Law (Kyôikurei) of 1879 classified all children of elementary school age—from six to twelve—as jidô; “student” (seitô) came to universally apply to children between elementary school and university. The Kindergarten Ordinance of 1927 distinguished kindergarteners as yôji; later the education laws implemented after the Asia-Pacific War distinguished between kindergarteners (yôji), elementary school children ( jidô), middle school and high school children (seitô), and university students (gakusei) (Moriyama and Nakae 2002: 26

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18–21; Kinski 2016). With the introduction and development of a universal school system, the exact age of a child—which had once mattered much less, and whose significance had greatly varied across different classes—became a significant marker of the bounds of childhood. For a while children’s and youth groups in rural areas remained more important communities than the schools, but these new terms, and the age identities that went with them, gradually replaced the older ones. Before long, gone were terms that had identified the “child that was young enough to still nurse” (chigo), the child that had “messy hair and laughed a lot” (warawa), and the child so young that it “was not quite yet a human being” (kozō)—in addition to numerous other phrases that either signified children of various ages and statuses or referred to other individuals found to (inappropriately) behave like them (Moriyama and Nakae 2002: 8–19). In 1905, 90 percent of Japan’s children attended or had attended school. In addition to the new nationwide education system, other knowledge systems also took shape around 1900, contributing to a view of children as a medium through which adult family members and society as a whole were guided and controlled. Modern Japanese education legislation, from the Fundamental Code of Education to the Imperial Rescript for Education (Kyōiku chokugo) of 1890 and beyond, conceptualized children as yet-to-beformed individuals primarily designed to realize adult goals for the nation (Okano and Tsuchiya 1999: 15–19; Amano 1990: xiii–xiv; Inagaki 1986: 79). Pedagogues, physicians, politicians, and other contemporaries concerned with the future of the Japanese empire in turn began to promote programs both to further children’s physical exercise and cleanliness in schools and to better balance scholastic training—which had come to dominate school education—with physical modes of training. In addition, welfare institutions for children were developed, and child protection laws were implemented (Frühstück 2003). The representatives of the new field of pediatrics confidently promoted the notion that childhood ought to be a realm separate from adulthood. They insisted that children were particularly vulnerable and worthy of study, special care, and protection—all the while working to ever more clearly distinguish and separate children from adults. For instance, in 1909 the prominent pediatrician Takashima Heisaburō claimed that only “in countries where civilization has not progressed, ignorant people abuse children, deny them education, and view them as their personal possession. In civilized countries, child protection activities are flourishing” (Ambaras 2006: 86–87). Similar ideas were fashionable in Field Games

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modern and modernizing nation-states around the world, often attributed to the Swedish feminist Ellen Key, who had claimed the new century to be the “century of the child”; indeed, such was the title of the 1909 English translation of her 1900 publication Barnets århundrade. Newly alerted to such concern about childhood, anxious parents in Japan and elsewhere increasingly turned to pediatric experts for advice. A range of such experts (most of them men) urged parents, especially mothers, to educate themselves on the best methods of childrearing, regarding nutrition, home medical remedies for minor ailments, reading materials, and the benefits of proper play (Frühstück 2003: 50–52). They also encouraged mothers to “carefully monitor and channel their children’s potentially evil instincts and turbulent passions until they evolved into mature, well-adjusted people” (Ambaras 2006: 95). Schools did their part. New physical exam systems, first in military barracks and, later, in elementary schools, allowed physicians to define, name, and hierarchize the markers of healthy childhood. These examinations valorized maturity and manhood in medical and social scientific terms—for decades excluding girls and women beyond the elementary school level. Likewise, military physicians determined that a healthy twenty-year-old male of at least 150 centimeters (4′9″) and 50 kilograms (110 pounds) was to be considered a first-class conscript. Meeting these standards was a source of pride for some young men and their families and communities; others felt great anxiety about the possibility of being drafted. The results of these health exams indicated that the young generation’s condition was inadequate, even weak, alerting military men, pedagogues, medical doctors, politicians, and other contemporaries concerned with charting the future of the empire to the necessity of developing programs for the improvement of youths’ physical fitness and hygiene. In particular, the Sino-Japanese War demonstrated cause to both lament the quality of boys’ physiques and vigorously call for their improvement. Bearing a striking resemblance to other debates about children’s bodies around the world, this Japanese debate centered on the proper balance between learning and training, freedom and discipline, protection and control, intellect and force. As height was considered the primary indicator for assessing children’s well-being, newspapers over the years meticulously noted annually the average height of children. Between 1900 and 1959, for example, the average height of fourteen-year-old boys increased by six inches, that of twelve-year-old girls by four inches.3 As school physicians discerned that girls and boys became stead28

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ily taller and heavier, they also wondered whether the new nervous conditions they perceived among schoolchildren were caused by the burdens of extended schooling, autoerotic practices, or the exhausting aspects of modern urban life. School and military authorities alike thus accumulated a host of data on youngsters’ health—and found it to be terribly lacking.4 Rural male youth, authorities suspected, spent their years between school and conscription lounging around, drinking, and chasing girls. Because laziness, drinking, and venereal diseases were seen as detrimental to the vision of a civilized, modern, powerful nation-state, both schools and the military aggressively addressed these issues. Schools introduced an ever more strenuous exercise and discipline regimen in ever lower grades. In addition to introducing relentless marching and calisthenics, the military increasingly aimed at restricting and managing recruits’ access to commercial sex, as such was believed to be the main source of soldiers’ venereal diseases (Frühstück 2003: 2015). By the early 1880s, despite these efforts, military medical personnel conducting the physical exams for conscription-age twenty-year-olds still frequently noted that some young men demonstrated feeble health, lack of enthusiasm for military training, and effeminate demeanor. Similarly, Japanese schoolchildren were seen as lacking in essential discipline. Th is latter finding was intriguing given the fact that many schools had taught gymnastics as a form of paramilitary training as far back as 1853, before many of these old schools were converted into elementary and middle schools, after which school exercises played an increasingly important role in encouraging good health, unity, and cooperation. And so schools next adopted the army infantry manual in setting up their physical education programs; first implemented in secondary schools, these military exercises were soon mandatory in elementary schools as well. At the same time, individual educators called on the public to do more to steel the character of children. The strength of boys’ bodies came to be considered crucial to the strength of the nation. Education ministers ordered additional physical exercise for elementary school children; the more advanced elementary school boys were, in addition, assigned military exercises accompanied by the singing of war songs. Pupils were encouraged to lead a healthy lifestyle. Subsequent school ordinances prescribed raising the consciousness of the national polity, instigating the spirit to defend the fatherland, and strengthening loyalty and allegiance (Lone 2010: 132–133). Many of these efforts took place within a country at peace; consider, then: what of the environment at home during times of war? Field Games

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playing to the tune of japan’s modern wars At the onset of the Sino-Japanese War, Japan’s first modern war, which was primarily fought over the control of Korea, hundreds of schoolchildren engaged in war exercises carefully choreographed by their teachers and military instructors. Indeed, care was taken in all details: even boys’ school uniforms were altered, their baggy sleeves trimmed so that they would move in concert with the pumping arm. The singing of martial songs celebrated the courage of Japanese soldiers, declared enemies were taking flight, glorified enlistment in the Imperial Army, and evoked historical precedents of former aspirations to bring about a Greater East Asia (Eppstein 1987: 438; Manabe 2013). All this glory had a distinct purpose: the Sino-Japanese War engaged a mass army, its troops drafted in a conscription system that, theoretically at least, could include any able-bodied man aged twenty or older—and, of course, a boy all too quickly reaches age twenty. And yet, since the fighting mostly took place in faraway Korea, there were limited opportunities for Japanese society to envision the action at the front lines. Back home in the meantime, children’s war games increasingly served as a rhetorical platform: children’s “nature” was to be productively unleashed and managed. The proper balance between the two, however, remained contested. Children’s war games could engage any number—from a few dozen students to several thousands. The larger ones sometimes simulated the grand maneuvers of the Imperial Army taking place nearby. Some rural folk met the arrival of large Imperial Army troops with a measure of hostility, as the army’s reputation was for some ambiguous and for others downright negative. At the same time, the army’s maneuvers often enjoyed a certain appeal as rare, impressive public spectacles, entertaining theatrical displays intended more to impress the public than to prepare troops for combat—in short, adult war games of sorts (Yoshida 2002; Lone 2010). At the annual grand maneuvers held in Gifu in the spring of 1890, for instance, thirty thousand men and about twenty naval vessels participated. It was, Stewart Lone (2010: 18) suggests, “the biggest show in town.” In a similar vein, military camps also welcomed the public to share in the anniversary of their founding. On such occasions, several thousand tickets were issued for relatives and friends of the troops, along with parties of schoolchildren, local dignitaries, and ordinary citizens. The Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) marked yet another forward march in the trend of associating childhood with war by debating the notion of children as future soldiers in more concrete terms than ever before. For 30

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starters, toy guns were back, their 1875 ban repealed. They were even featured in elementary school textbooks, in which parents were encouraged to buy toy swords, rifles, and bugles for their sons. Retailers of goods for primary schools began advertising wooden Murata rifles for use in schools’ military-style drills, and school trips to military-related sites—army bases, historical battlefields—became more common. Invented and designed by Murata Tsuneyoshi, the Murata rifle was the first rifle produced in Japan; it was adopted in 1880 and then replaced by the Nisaka rifle after the RussoJapanese War. At the same time, the “home front” was aggressively mobilized. Newspapers and magazines regularly reported about activities undertaken in support of the war, and women’s organizations became important players in encouraging and providing such activities (Garon 1997). School textbooks matter-of-factly featured weapons and the military in ways that suggested a normal trajectory of boys growing up and becoming soldiers—and war play as a logical route for them to get there. One, the 1899 New Citizens’ Reader (Kokumin shindokuhon) for elementary school children, features an illustration of a boy holding a toy rifle and a sword, accompanied by his mother and a dog, inside a toy store (Bungakusha 1899; see fig. 2). Under the heading “Toys” the text reads, “In the store there are all kinds of toys lined up. One boy’s mother bought him a rifle and a sword.” The reader also contained a chapter on marching in formation and a drawing of a group of elementary school boys—some clothed in traditional Japanese clothes, others in school uniforms, but all armed with sabers and rifles—marching along to the command of one lead boy mounted on a large dog as if it were a horse, saber raised as if ready to attack. Another chapter speaks of soldiers marching with their weapons shouldered. “My older brother is one of them,” brags the boy narrator, who goes on to say: “When I grow up I will become a brave soldier, too.” A new school subject called “spiritual education” (seishin kyōiku) contributed to the normalization of connecting, even equating, male maturity and military service, and boys’ war play with men making war. Outside the classroom, a Military Virtue Society established after the Sino-Japanese War promoted traditional military skills, such as swordsmanship and archery. Over the years, the school curriculum became increasingly militarized, especially in lessons for physical education. With the pronounced emphasis on toughness and the embrace of militarist values in schools, “playing soldier” was promoted both in schools and in children’s books and magazines. One man who was a child at the beginning of the twentieth century remembered himself and other children Field Games

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fig. 2. A page from the elementary school reader New Citizens’ Reader for Use in Elementary Schools (Kokumin shindokuhon jinjō shōgakkōyō), 1899. Private collection.

“naturally” splitting up in mixed groups of boys and girls and playing war together. War games could be played “by just about any child from the rural poor to the urban underclass,” and so they were among the most popular children’s games during the 1920s. No equipment was needed to play them, not even a ball (Kami Shōichirō 1977: 54–58). By this time, the previous adult ambivalence toward such games began to subside, even when the games were conducted by children alone, and even when they led to injuries. But since the games were no longer exclusively or primarily self-organized, whatever defiance boys might have previously felt in playing them on their own seemed to have been lost. Likewise, the earlier practice of role-playing past or present conflicts gave way to anticipating the wars of the future—or, at least, anticipating the boys’ future participation in war. As a result, textbooks shifted toward a new tolerance for and an encouragement of dangerous play for boys. 32

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In the hope that such games would further a sense of intimacy with and admiration of soldiers and soldiering, textbooks even prescribed war games (heitai gokko) at school. This transformation of war into child’s play at school also took the form of mock battles, which were variously referred to as “war exercises” (sensō undo), “mock war” (mogi sensō), or “children’s war” (kodomo no sensō). In addition, school textbooks claimed that Japanese boys were the strongest in the world and that singing military songs made a boy a proper Japanese man (Lone 2010: 55, 68–69). While children did continue to marshal their own war games for fun, large-scale children’s war games were thereafter held under the watch of teachers and military instructors, as they were seen as preparation for later military training. Based on the few photographs of such events that survived (see fig. 3), children did not consider such war play—commanded by teachers and military instructors—to be much fun. And while both boys and girls participated, the boys in at least one such photograph were armed with rifles and wore caps, while the unarmed girls wore headscarves. Among the grownups were male and female teachers, as well as at least one man who, by the look of his cap, could have been a member of the military. To some extent, the transformation of play went hand in hand with the transformation of the words representing play. This was part of a wave of naming that swept the nation, in which a variety of phenomena perceived to be new were named, and phenomena that had changed to such a degree that they were no longer recognizable were renamed. For example, texts from as early as the twelfth century included terms like ikusa. Meaning “military,” ikusa could also stand for “soldier,” “war,” and “battle.” As both asobi and gokko signify play, ikusa asobi and ikusa gokko had long referred to playing war. But in 1868, The Chronological Tables of Takee (Takee nenpyō) introduced the terms heitai (soldier) and sensō (modern war), which led to the new phrases “playing soldier” (heitai gokko) and “playing war” (sensō gokko). This terminological change derived both from the fact that the modern army was now composed not of samurai but of conscripts (heitai), and from the engagement in modern wars beginning with the Sino-Japanese War (Hanzawa 1980: 10–12). Despite this orderly formal nomenclature, however, older terms continued to appear in twentieth-century publications, and children still engaged in a variety of war games of their own: in the fields, in the backyards of houses and temples, on the streets, and in exercise areas of military barracks. Though such games could be played in indefinite variations, the basic principle was always to Field Games

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fig. 3. Elementary school children receive military training in Kamakura in 1896. Printed with the kind permission of the Library of Congress.

separate into two groups, friends and foes—usually one as Japan and the other as China. Modeling their hierarchy on the actual military, children designated ranks and roles before commencing battle, carrying toy weapons that, over time, were ever more realistically fashioned after those of the Imperial Army. Starting on a signal, the children—often, all boys—enacted various maneuvers, from moving toward one another in large packs to one-on-one fighting. The battle was declared over when the enemy position was conquered, the general overwhelmed, or the flag captured (Hanzawa 1980: 13–17). According to a historian of childhood, Hanzawa Toshirō (1980: 20–23), most of the war games children played on their own fell into four main styles. 34

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Their procedures varied somewhat according to region, time period, and the children’s ages, as did the degree to which children incorporated guns, swords, flags, trumpets, and other makeshift weapons into their play. Some living in hilly terrain adopted an offense/defense model (kōbō-kata), with twelve to fi fteen participants roaming the hills and valleys of their neighborhood. With this model the attacking army tried to close in on the defensive army without being detected, while the defensive army defended its position. If the attacking army reached the defenders’ position and raised their flag, they were declared the victors. However, if they were all “killed” before reaching the flag, the defenders were considered the winners. A variation of the offense/defense model was the flag-competition model (hata no sōdatsusen-kata), wherein battle focused on capturing and raising the flag, an endeavor often accompanied by the singing of military songs and the playing of trumpets. The snowball-fight model (yukigassen-kata) was played during the long winters in northern Japan’s Hokkaidō and Tōhoku regions, areas that were often snowed under for months at a time. Of course, unstructured snowball fights and the like had always been played, but it was only after the Russo-Japanese War that children designated themselves as opponents in war, complete with military ranks and battlefield positions. Indeed, in no previous snowball fights had one battle, once completed, been followed by new orders and the commencement of the next battle; nor were winners promoted in military rank. In the fourth main model, the opposing armies wore different headbands (hachimakitori-kata). To initiate battle they stood across from one another and sang a song, at the end of which the attack commenced. In the end a victor was declared and they began again (Hanzawa 1980: 18–20). In addition to the games children played on their own, schools put on children’s war games as well, often on a grand scale. Stewart Lone (2010: 36) found that, for instance, in 1895 teachers in the town of Ōgaki recruited for a mock battle sixteen hundred pupils from six local primary schools. Starting out at the local Shintō shrine, the participants were divided into two armies, the Red under the Japanese flag of the morning sun and the White under the Chinese banner of the yellow dragon. Teachers acted as central, divisional, and brigade commanders; boys were soldiers; and girls were Red Cross field hospital nurses. The ensuing hostilities saw one triumph after another for the Red Army, with casualties of only sixty-eight boys, who were instantly carried off to the waiting nurses. In the face of such youthful determination, the White Army retreated to Ōgaki Castle (standing in for Beijing), which was Field Games

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ultimately stormed from all directions and overwhelmed by the Red Army— down to the last casualty: a boy acting out the part of the fallen bugler. Following the surrender, they sang the national anthem and bowed to the west (the emperor then being in Hiroshima in western Japan). All the while, an audience of over three thousand from the town and surrounding areas had watched this dramatic and engaging war game. On the occasion of a smaller-scale war game conducted elsewhere, a teacher of a regional school wrote that, in order to make such war games seem more “real,” he had once tried to convince his nine-year-old students that the Russians had seized a port on the Japanese mainland and were advancing into the heartland. He instructed his boys to assemble before daybreak on the coming Sunday and march off with their bamboo rifles, ready to do whatever possible to reinforce the Japanese troops. He later heard that at least one child had left home telling his parents he did not expect to return (Lone 2010: 54–55). The nomenclature of different kinds of war games permeated books about child education in chapters on the significance of child play. Tomonaga Iwatarō’s book The Origin and Reality of Educational Games (Kyōikuteki yūgi no genri oyobi jissai), for instance, describes sixteen different “war games” (sensō yurui) for third graders. For marching games that involved singing, he recommended letting the children themselves figure out the desired order and synchronicity (Tomonaga 1901: 282). He considered the starting-a-war game, capture the flag, and the warship game suitable only for boys while assigning defensive positions to girls in war games that he recommended for boys and girls. For some games, he thought students’ individuality should be taken into account; for others, discipline struck him as essential (257–288). No matter what the game, however, Tomonaga urged the “mothers, nursemaids, older siblings, and teachers” he envisioned as his readers to take precautions so as to prevent injuries (3). Despite the move in the wake of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars toward incorporating such war games into grade school curricula, attitudes toward children’s war games off school grounds remained a point of contention. For decades, school and military officials debated the pros and cons of unsupervised war games: They noted the benefits for physical health, and the development of strength and stamina. They saw them positively as a sign of children’s virility, boundless energy, and playfulness. Yet they were also aware of the dangers—namely, the very real potential for physical harm and the occasionally unclear boundaries between a war game and socially disruptive behavior. Accordingly, newspapers of the day also expressed concern, regularly 36

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reporting on the injuries—even deaths—of children engaging in battle games along the rivers of urban Japan, and urging parents to prevent such dangerous and misguided behavior. Ultimately, no one could determine which instances of unsupervised war games were an expression of disobedience and which were a challenge to social order; the latter assessment of course fed into the latent anxiety about the wildness and uncontrollability of children. For example, the spring of 1904, about a month after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, the Yomiuri Shinbun (14 March 1904, 1) noted how “school children of Shinshū Elementary School played war [heitai gokko]. . . . [O] ne child who played a Russian soldier got killed. It was a serious affair for the whole country.” In an article on 28 May 1904—by which time it appeared that children’s war games simulated the ongoing war with Russia, prompting the police to break them up—the newspaper appealed to parents with a pointed warning: “Parents beware! War games [ikusa gokko]”: “This too is the influence of war. . . . [S]everal tens of other boys gathered, divided themselves in four parties, and played war, including a ‘medical squad’ and a field hospital. The police captured four of the boys. They were released upon a warning to their parents” (3). While the tone of this article is alarmist, particularly about the extent to which children played such dangerous games beyond adult supervision, the ongoing debate about children’s war games often highlighted the necessity of controlling and directing children’s inclinations to play (ongoing adult) war. Other contemporaries were convinced that war games constituted a pastime of choice for school children the world over. For instance, Georges Ferdinand Bigot (1860–1927), a French language teacher and gifted illustrator, cartoonist, and artist working in Japan from 1882 to 1899, noted in the Supplément Littéraire Illustré of the prominent Parisian newspaper Le Petit Parisien how “the zeal with which they play grows when, in any part of the globe, a real war unfolds its terrifying and grandiose spectacles” (see fig. 4). “Thus, in the schools of Japan,” he reported, under the watchful eyes of teachers, students organize into two enemy camps. One group represents the army of the emperor, while those students who play the role of Russian troops don fur hats that vaguely make them look like Siberian riflemen. A white flag decorated with a red star guides the defenders of the Empire of the Rising Sun, while their adversaries rally around the Tsar’s banner. Then, both sets of troops, armed with sticks whose tips are covered in a ball, charge toward each other, crossing their harmless weapons. The melee is soon generalized and numerous blows are given and taken, in the presence of young girls who witness this miniature war game. (4 September 1904, 28) Field Games

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fig. 4. Georges Ferdinand Bigot’s illustration La petite guerre dans les écoles Japonaises appeared in the Supplément Littéraire Illustré of the prominent Parisian newspaper Le Petit Parisien, 4 September 1904. Private collection.

fig. 5. Shot by an unnamed photographer in 1914, this press photograph, with the caption “À Tokyo, petits Japonais jouant à la guerre,” features a small group of Tokyo boys playing war. Printed with the kind permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

In contrast to both the anxious tone of the Yomiuri Shinbun and Bigot’s bombastic voice in 1904, the magazine Women and Children (Fujin to Kodomo), a periodical published by the Japanese Kindergarten Association, took a more contemplative stance in 1914 about the martial games children played beyond the confines of adult control. As its title suggests, Watanabe Fukuo’s “Children’s Games of War: There Are Seasons for Children’s Games” explains that for every play there is a season (see fig. 5). In spring, the time of the cherry blossoms, he notes, children played peaceful games. In the high temperatures of summer, children avoided vigorous, sweat-inducing play, favoring water games instead. But once the weather cooled off again, children resumed playing more active games. And so they naturally played war games (gun gokko) in autumn, especially as fall was the time of the grand army maneuvers—an adult game of sorts, he seemed to be implying. Yet the author acknowledged that, beyond noting their seasonality, one might take any number of positions on children’s war games; it so happened that his view was favorable in terms of the benefit of such play, Field Games

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not just for children at the individual level but also for its larger societal implications. Watanabe also commented on how, at the individual level, children had become increasingly selfish and egotistical. He felt war games taught them to suppress these sentiments and learn instead to embrace a group spirit; in that way, the experience of playing war games would serve them well when they grew up and needed to navigate the social world of adults (Watanabe 1914: 487). As for the societal level, the article explained that during “overcivilized times” children need to be taught that, in a state-against-state conflict, Japan would prevail only if the population was strong. The success of “self-defense” at the state level rested on the “martial education” (gun no kyōiku) of children (488). The nurturing of such a military spirit was to be conducted in schools and within families. Women specifically were to be charged with the “training of the will” (ishi no kunren) of the children in an effort to replace what Watanabe believed to be an obsessive focus on materialistic gain (489–490). Like Watanabe, many commentators expressed or at least implied a logical progression from children’s war play to war exercises and from drill to the willingness to support or even go to war. Articles such as Watanabe’s convinced publishers and administrators that war games would remedy the aforementioned complaints about children. Thereafter, war games featured in children’s books and magazines appeared to be put on by children almost entirely without adult encouragement, interference, or presence, a subject I discuss further in the next chapter. Watanabe’s anxieties about the corrupting effects of modern urban life on children were echoed around the world. Children’s war games were variably discussed as a countermeasure against the weakening of children’s bodies and minds brought about by modern urban life and, particularly in the wake of World War I, as proper preparation for, or a regrettable result of, the war around them. Indeed, during the time between World War I and World War II, the power, purpose, utility, and impact of children’s war games were at the core of a global conversation that was in part fueled by the internationalism of pedagogical concepts (Ambaras 2006; Jones 2010; Frühstück 2003), by international travel tours of delegations of paramilitary youth groups ranging from the Boy Scouts to the Hitler Youth (Bieber 2014), by the beginnings of the industrial production of war toys in a number of places around the world, and by the first studies of the impact of war on children in light of the wide acknowledgment of the heretofore unprecedented magnitude of the social impact of war. 40

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children’s games during the great war Concerns about the effects of modernity on children, particularly of industrialization and urbanization, had prompted the foundation of a variety of children’s and youth organizations around the world. Originally positioned along a broad political spectrum—ranging from antibourgeois and antiviolent anarchists to proponents of a return to nature and freedom to rather straightforwardly paramilitary organizations—all of them grappled with how to create a modern and nationally distinct character in children. Japan already had a long history of such organizations. Some of them originated in Edo- and Meiji-era Japanese children’s and youth organizations. Others took their clues from Western ones, such as the British and American Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts or, from 1937 onward, Nazi Germany’s Hitler Youth. All of them were eventually absorbed into the Greater Japan Youth Party (Dai Nippon Seinen-tō), founded in 1937 by the ultranationalist activist Colonel Hashimoto Kingorō. Though the militarization of many such youth groups transpired across the globe, war games conducted in Europe, whether played by children or adults, were considered a characteristically German pastime. In Germany of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tin soldiers, toy rifles, cannons, and military uniforms for children were not simply considered desirable: among German pedagogues, psychologists, and philosophers they were seen as edifying, providing important preparation for adult life (Levsen 2005: 2; von Hilgers 2012). The Great War provided much room for speculation, as well as some evidence regarding the benefits of children’s war games for the war effort and, conversely, the impact of war on children. Some German experts, voicing concern about the effect of the ongoing war on children’s minds, were wary of the games children played. Among them was Alfred Mann (1889–1937), the main author of an analysis of children’s essays, poems, and drawings published in 1915 under the title “Psychological Lives of Youth and War” (“Jugendliches Seelenleben und Krieg”) in the reputable journal Supplements to the Journal of Applied Psychology and Psychological Collective Research (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie und psychologische Sammelforschung). In this study he applied some key questions from his analysis of the psychological impact of war to the subject of elementary school children. Regarding children’s war games, he noted how, before World War I, German children had played “Dutch versus Englishmen” and, later, “Russians versus Japanese.” But, starting from a year into the Great War, children divided into Central Powers versus Allied Powers. He saw this Field Games

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change resulting from the fact that this war was “our war,” which “continuously captured the attention of the entire population” (Mann 1915: 60). Thereafter, he claimed—much like his Japanese colleagues had after the SinoJapanese and Russo-Japanese Wars—every child’s game turned into a war game, and castles became trenches. Girls’ dolls became injured soldiers. Gymnastic games became combat games. “The war spirit imposes itself even on the once harmless games played during recess and the snowball fights in winter” (61). Further, he described how eleven- and twelve-year-old boys and girls saw “no more beautiful game than playing soldier.” He found that “everywhere on large squares and meadows small and big[,] children played soldier,” and that one girl’s favorite pastime was “to play soldier with [her] older brothers” (61). Basing his insights on children’s essays, Mann interpreted their “enthusiasm for playing war” as a matter of imitation. Mann was shocked by the pairing of “dramatic realism” with the “boundless imagination” that he saw characterizing children’s war games. These children assiduously strove to look as much as possible like real soldiers carrying real equipment; they even used raspberry juice to represent bloodstains. While elementary school children resorted to making their own military paraphernalia, many middle school children played with toy helmets, daggers, and rifles, often given to them by their fathers. Mann also recognized the impact war had on children’s “moral character,” an impact that differed according to gender, age, and milieu. Boys, he discerned, tended toward “construction games” that involved the building of weapons, trenches, and other aspects of the battlefield. And while girls often played alongside boys, their main war-game domain was the field hospital. Other distinctions Mann noted included the fact that small children preferred individual games, while older children favored social games; elementary school children played outside, while middle school children played in their bedrooms (70–71). Remarkably, “Psychological Lives of Youth and War” was one of the first German studies that respectfully took children’s creative expressions seriously and on their own terms. Mann did not concern himself with the institutional framework within which children might have produced their essays, poems, and drawings; neither did he explicitly wonder about the power relations—between, for instance, students and their teachers—that might have prompted the children to describe and illustrate the war, and their ways of playing it, from some angles rather than others. What Mann did clearly convey was his bafflement and dismay at the extent to which the war influenced child play. 42

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He really should not have been surprised—especially given the generally positive view of war and war games among most of his colleagues in psychology and adjacent fields, as well as across the German population. Two years into World War I, Aloys Fischer, a professor of philosophy and pedagogy at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, claimed that all pedagogical efforts concerning German youth’s physical exercise had been reinforced by the war experience. In his foreword to a 1916 guidebook on children’s war games for teachers of ten- to sixteen-year-old pupils, Youth War Games: Instructions and Examples on the Basis of Pedagogy (Vom Kriegsspiel der Jugend: Anweisungen und Beispiele auf pädagogischer Grundlage; hereafter referred to as Youth War Games), he aimed to “arm” teachers with the tools and knowledge to oversee more effective war games (Kriegsspiele). Fischer was keen on staking out teachers’ roles against the pressure the military put on schools. Even though the military bureaucracy believed it should control the development of children for war, Fischer was certain it could not possibly do so without his ilk, “the pedagogically trained discipliners” (Huth 1916: vi–vii). Both Fischer and Huth knew that basic marching and drill exercises bored children, but that role-play inspired them. The fact that playing soldier was popular among children, particularly among the boys, allowed educators to link children’s interest in play to physical education. In addition, they felt the outdoor environment of war games was superior to the education provided within a gymnasium. Child education and development, and their connections to the importance of play, had long been on the minds of generations of pioneer European child psychologists and philosophers, from Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) to Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel (1782–1852). Fischer, however, evoked a conjecture by Karl Groos (1861–1946), that there was an innate “battle instinct” (Kampfinstinkt)—an evolutionary instrumentalist theory of play, a concept Groos had presented in his 1896 book The Play of Animals (Die Spiele der Tiere). Fischer saw this theory as legitimizing both the mobilization of children’s “instincts” for educational purposes and, in turn, the exploitation of their “naturally emerging war games” for the purposes of physical education. He had no doubt about the potential and efficacy of such an approach (Huth 1916: viii–ix). Much like his Japanese and other international contemporaries, Fischer acknowledged that children preferred to design and control their games themselves. And yet their eagerness to learn how actual men made war was such that they were willing to sacrifice the freedom of and control over their game in exchange for that guidance. In Fischer’s eyes, children were players to contend Field Games

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with; precisely because of their inclination toward play, children needed to be convinced, not coerced. And yet, without discipline, the war game would “degenerate into wild shouting or even fighting” (Huth 1916: 5–6). Meanwhile, on the other side of the front line, Italian child psychologists made similar observations about children playing war but drew different conclusions. For instance, physician and pioneer psychologist Agostino Gemelli (1878–1959), founder and first rector of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart), collected observations of children’s games, photographs, designs, phrases, and mottos throughout the war. While he makes observations very similar to those of Alfred Mann and his collaborators, Gemelli concluded that war did not alter “the substance and the behavior of children.” Instead, he maintains, that the boy who plays at war today plays at war exclusively because he preferred that game even before the war; and the child that preferred a different game before the war still prefers that game, because they respond to their own instincts. . . . [It’s] the same with the girls. They play nurse and Red Cross, but what they do, what they say, is in response to a maternal instinct. They play with “the wounded” like they used to play with the dolls. The war has not done anything but give them the Red Cross, which can be found anywhere. Therefore, the war has not changed the nature of children’s play. (Cited in Gibelli 2005: 140)

In contrast to Mann, then, Gemelli did not locate the source of children’s altered war games in their psyches. Neither did he consider the possibility of children drawing from the war as a source of inspiration for their games. Instead, Gemelli’s perspective was governed by his belief in children’s innate and gendered instincts: toward war (games) in boys, toward maternity (games) for girls. However, Gemelli did agree with his German counterparts in considering that the war occupied a large space in children’s imaginary worlds; as a result, war games maintained their significance as “preparatory exercises.” In Italy and elsewhere, the games’ preparatory dimensions, existing as they did in the context of the nation in arms, became more specific, assuming a special poignancy. As the war continued, the belief in the similarity between preparatory exercises and actual combat grew. For example, in 1917 the Italian children’s magazine Numero published an interesting sequence of images. The first depicts a child engaged in a maneuver with toy soldiers armed with muskets and bayonets. In the second, a well-equipped, well-armed young soldier takes aim at the enemy. The caption reads: “Just a few years ago he knew only 44

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how to put the toy soldiers in line[,] . . . but now he has also learned how . . . to lead a line of soldiers” (cited in Gibelli 2005: 141). In the United Kingdom, for instance, one of dozens of war game manuals published at the time claimed that “little wars” (children’s war games) were “ideal games which could be played by boys from the age of twelve to fifteen and even later as well as by girls of the better sort, and by a few rare and gifted women.” This particular manual, Little Wars, was written by socialist and pacifist-sympathizer Herbert George Wells—indeed, H. G. Wells—best known for his science fiction but also author of several works of history, politics, and social commentary, plus textbooks and war games. “The beginning of the game of Little War as we know it,” writes Wells (1913: 11), “became possible with the invention of the spring breech-loader gun. Th is priceless gift to boyhood . . ., a gun capable of hitting a toy soldier nine times out of ten at a distance of nine yards. . . . [I]t is an altogether elegant weapon.” Well’s Little Wars burst with excitement about the advancements of war game technology and embraced what distinguished such games from war games played by the British Army at the time. His little wars were superior in realism, in inspiring the imagination, and in providing amusement. Some of Wells’s contemporaries believed that children possessed a “belligerent imagination”—indeed, that young children were innately murderous, and that military toys simply allowed them to express this natural impulse (Bourke 2014: 170). But whether or not evoking that “natural belligerence” of infants and children suggested that “war play was benign or even desirable” (171), the phenomenon itself was ubiquitous. In particular, mass-produced toy rifles, a pricey commodity at the time, were heavily advertised both in boys’ magazines and in adult publications— where they reminded parents of the necessity of maintaining boys’ virility. Nowhere was this truer than in the United States, where American boys’ magazines were filled with advertisements for air rifles. American historian Lisa Jacobson has noted that many adults at the time worried that an effeminate, postfrontier urbanism was robbing boys of their virility. Promising to restore manly vigor to pampered middle-class boys, advertisements for Daisy Air Rifles claim that a boy with a rifle is destined to “become a rugged, strong, bright-eyed boy, full of life and courage, with well-developed muscles and nerves of steel.” One advertisement for King Air Rifles shows a boy practicing the piano to the beat of a metronome, while outside the neighborhood boys march in a soldiers’ drill, their King Air Rifles held high. “Do you happen to be a boy?” the ad asks. “A real boy, we mean, with a natural Field Games

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dislike for music lessons, rainy days and ‘solitary confinement’?” (Jacobson 2004: 111). In the wake of World War I, the Daisy Air Rifle quickly became an international commodity. Advertisements for it in China, for instance, claimed in 1920 that “China [had] hope,” as the country was about to “become a strong nation.” If they wished for their boys to become strong citizens, Chinese parents should purchase the air gun, according to the ads’ claims. A few years later—when the educational value of toys enjoyed the height of its popularity among middle-class educators and parents alike—the air gun was promoted as an “essential educational product,” able to “influence the moral character of children and foster the development of healthy citizens” (Boretti 2014: 115–116). In short, children’s games of war were all the rage during World War I. By the time Japan seized German possessions in the Pacific and East Asia and expanded its sphere of influence in China at the margins of World War I, the Murata rifle had long been in Japanese children’s hands. As a result, it would appear that Japanese children were ready to fall in step with the Imperial Army.

falling in step with the imperial army Despite Japan’s relatively small role in World War I on the side of the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and the United States, and against the German (1871–1918) and Austro-Hungarian (1867–1918) empires, by the close of the war Japan emerged as a great power in international politics. As a result of the Versailles Peace Conference, it gained a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations, and the Paris Peace Conference confirmed the transfer to Japan of Germany’s rights in Shandong, China. Similarly, Germany’s more northern Pacific islands came under the Japanese South Pacific Mandate. With the Japanese military’s increased predominance abroad, so too increased its sway back home, a stature that could also be seen in children’s cultural sphere in the decades that followed. For one thing, by the end of World War I, newspaper reports on children’s war games retained none of their previous tone of alarm. Take for example the Yomiuri Shinbun: the same paper that less than fi fteen years earlier had consistently warned of the dangers of children’s war games, announced, on 24 November 1918, the third Battle Game Tournament and its twelve participating elementary schools, an event launched with a ceremonial parade (5). 46

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Between 10 March and 20 July 1922, more than 11 million people visited a peace exhibition in Tokyo (Heiwa Kinen Tōkyō Hakurankai) that was held to commemorate the fifth anniversary of World War I. Only two years later, adult “war games” enjoyed increased approval. In 1924, when the Imperial Army planned its autumn maneuvers in Gifu, it received about fift y thousand applications from children’s and women’s groups who wanted to attend. In 1924, the army approved all fifty thousand requests, whereas in 1890 only several thousand individuals had been granted the honor. Previously such maneuvers’ spectacular character had been somewhat limited by the terrain, with the narrow roads and paddy fields of rural Japan hampering the large-scale movement of troops. In later years, the greater appeal—and the potential for cinema newsreels—prompted the staging of maneuvers even farther from populated areas while nonetheless reaching an even larger audience. On 27 February 1925, the Yomiuri Shinbun (5) noted that twenty thousand elementary school children—plus ultimately another ten thousand onlookers—would soon be engaging in a war game to honor the founding anniversary of the Imperial Army. The event would include a military music concert by the Toyama School, followed by the exercises of various branches of the army. Earlier that year, as deemed necessary by the Army Active Service Commissioned Officer School Ordinance (Rikugun geneki shōkō gakkō haizokurei), military training (gunji kyōren) of students in middle schools, high schools, and universities fell under the direct control of the Imperial Army.5 In 1931, a range of children’s and youth groups merged to form the Greater Japan Alliance of Youth Associations (Dai Nippon Rengō Seinendan). Commissioned army officers, using their own infantry drill manual, taught rules of command, lectured on military affairs and military history, and conducted both formal and informal marching and battle training (Akiyama 1991: 13–14). In autumn of that year the Imperial Army invaded Manchuria, an event that the Japanese press would thereafter refer to as the Manchurian Incident, and which was considered to have been engineered by the Imperial Army as a pretext for invading northeastern China and establishing the puppet state of Manchukuo. The subsequent establishment of Manchukuo increased Japan’s diplomatic isolation and eventually prompted Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933. As a result, with troops now located even farther from the homeland, active-duty soldiers felt an increasing alienation from society back home. Around this time, reports about and references to children’s war games in print media lost their last vestiges of ambivalence and ambiguity. For instance, when the magazine Women’s Club (Fujin Kurabu) Field Games

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ventured to advise mothers on how to “successfully raise extraordinary, beautiful children” in a supplementary guide to its September 1932 issue, it hinted at the usefulness of such games under the heading “Preparations for Entering Elementary School.” The text, written by Nishiyama Tetsuji, must have been intended to address, or perhaps create, maternal readers’ anxieties about their children’s potential inability to suddenly handle the demands of group life— especially children raised exclusively at home or without friends. While the article somewhat neutrally advised that “playing with children in the neighborhood” would go a long way toward “preparing the child for school,” the drawing that illustrated such neighborhood play showed heavily armed boys engaged in a street war game (189). Some parents no longer needed such encouragement, having already wholeheartedly embraced the concept by buying toy weaponry and other everyday items that referenced war and the military. For example, the 15 June 1932 issue of the photo magazine Tainichi Gurafu (vol. 4, no. 6), printed an entire page with baby pictures sent in by reader-photographers. Centrally placed is a photograph of a little boy in a tank-shaped stroller pushed by a girl of perhaps five years of age. Under the heading “Children’s Heaven,” the humorous caption reads: “Baby in a tank—he is going to Manchuria but the tank won’t move. So his sister pushes from behind” (see fig. 6). Likewise, in its October 1936 issue, Home Life (Hōmu Raifu) featured a photograph (fig. 7) of boy attendees of the Ōsaka Aishu Kindergarten playing war with wooden toy rifles (Tsuganesawa 2006: 135). Such representations of war games had by this time become utterly normalized, even for the youngest children and, perhaps particularly, for upper-class children—who spent less time in unsupervised play than did their less-protected peers. Similarly, drawings of war games featured prominently in a 1932 volume titled Album of Pictures for Boys’ and Girls’ Self-Study (Shōnen shōjo jishu gaten). One drawing (fig. 8), by a teacher named Honda Shōtarō, was of children “playing soldier” (ikusa gokko; Itakura, Yamamoto, and Gotō 1932: 31). It appeared next to two of his actual “war pictures” (sensō-e; 30). The text cheerfully praises the “brave soldiers” in the children’s game and suggests that child readers may “play soldier themselves as well as enthusiastically draw similar pictures of their own war games.” I must note that only a handful of pictures in this work feature war and the military, and only one represents a children’s game of war. My point here is that the pictures and accompanying text convey how utterly normalized children’s war games had become—so much so that children were shown battling one another even in a progressive 48

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fig. 6. For some, the idea of “children’s heaven” included playing soldier, as illustrated in the magazine Tainichi Gurafu, 1932. Private collection.

publication, one whose intention was the democratization of art. Indeed, the volume was created by a group of artists, educators, and activists of the School Art Association (Gakkō Bijutsu Kyōkai), whose key goal was to bring art (education) to the masses. While the drawings themselves were produced by the adult members of the association, the volume was put together with the Field Games

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fig. 7. Th is photograph by Satō Shigeo originally appeared in the October 1936 issue of the elegant magazine Home Life (Hōmu Raifu), published by the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbun Press. Printed with the kind permission of Kashiwa Shobō.

fig. 8. A children’s game of war (ikusa gokko), according to the 1932 publication Album of Pictures for Boys’ and Girls’ Self-Study (Shōnen shōjo jishu gaten). Private collection.

declared intention of encouraging children to make their own art at home— indeed, to be inspired by the pictures found within to make yet others from their own imagination (as noted in the volume’s foreword). By that time, visual and textual instructions on how to conduct such war games had long been appearing in children’s magazines and books (see figs. 9–10). Kōdansha and other large publishers produced hundreds of books and magazines for children and youth with military themes, some of which depicted toddlers playing with “soldiers’ toys” and only slightly older children engaging in battle. To bring these often wild and dangerous outdoor games home, publishers also advertised war games as special features or magazine supplements. (I describe in chapter 2 how the meanings of children’s outdoor war games reverberated for ever more children—particularly for middle-class children, who might have otherwise been forbidden such activities.) Simultaneously, indoor board and paper games increasingly featured war games, battles to be fought on tables and floors. Here, I emphasize that newspapers continued to consider children’s outdoor war games news—at least soft news. It did not take long for international media to pick up on the vibe: The cover of the 21 November 1938 issue of Life magazine, for instance, featured a “little tycoon” photographed by Paul Dorsey on a Tokyo street while Dorsey was shooting a series of photographs depicting “Japan at war.” The caption inside the magazine read, “That day Tokyo was full of processions of departing soldiers and friends and this was the best picture of the Japanese who stayed at home. In war or peace Japanese boys prefer to play soldiers. Naturally this one thinks it would be the finest thing in the world to be with the Japanese armies in China. To that end he has a gun” (13). The remainder of the description romanticizes Japan’s samurai past (“a tycoon is an old-time Japanese war lord”), belittles the conflict in Asia, and inadvertently, conveys how very distant that war felt to American media and, presumably, American readers—less than a year after the six-week Nanking Massacre that began in December 1937, and just three years before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Newspapers condoned—indeed, enthusiastically embraced—children’s outdoor war games, often particularly praising efforts to make the play “realistic.” And so on 12 June 1938, when the Yomiuri Shinbun reported that a child playing war with friends had slipped into a river and drowned, it did so matter-of-factly (7). Gone was an inclination to appeal to parents to protect their children from such dangers; gone was any reference to “a tragedy for the entire nation.” Field Games

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fig. 9. The image of the war-playing Japanese boy fascinated Western journalists and photographers far into the 1930s. Printed with the kind permission of Time, Inc.

Less than a year later, on 12 March 1939, in an article titled “Fierce War Play on Top of Growing, Young Grass” (“Moeru wakakusa no ue ni isamashii heitai gokko”), the Yomiuri Shinbun encouraged its youngest readers to step up their game, to “progress toward engaging” as if in a “real war” ( jissen-dōri). To that end, the paper described advanced play, reporting how at an unnamed location 52

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fig. 10. The 1941 book Japan’s Children (Nippon no kodomo) promoted children’s imitations of battles for the youngest readers in pictures stretched across several pages. Th e text on this spread puts the following dialogue into children’s mouths: “Forward, forward, everyone forward, break through the barbed wire, the tank also follows behind, vroom, vroom, look at the eagle exhibiting a beautiful dive too” (Takeda and Toda 1941: 6–7). Private collection.

thirty to forty children had fought each other following battle plans laid out by an army colonel straight from the Imperial Army General Headquarters. Incorporated into the story was the drawing of a “battle map” that specified obstacles, light and heavy machine guns, and assault routes. In the same issue, another article, “Bullets Are Balls: Building the Provisions of Death or Injury in Battle, Girls as Nurses,” featured a photograph of actual Imperial Army soldiers attacking in the field. The article explained in detail how to dig trenches, position troops, and commence an assault, noting that only by following the rules, including fulfilling the roles of those predetermined to die or get injured, would children playing war games have an interesting battle (5). Whatever the degree of adult control, adult proponents of outdoor war games such as these knew that, for the games to successfully engage children— to possibly instill in them the desire to become soldiers, or to at least convince them of the inevitability of war—the games needed to be playful, enjoyable, and as physical as possible. And so, many other such accounts highlighted the Field Games

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fact that well-crafted war games could provide both physical and strategic training. To that end, articles laid out many strategic details, noting the importance of the two sides and the joy of not knowing where the enemy might hide. They put particular emphasis on the fun of playing war in this way. Though Japanese newspapers reported most often about Japanese children’s war games, they occasionally featured stories from beyond the borders of the homeland, particularly in other parts of Asia under Japanese colonial rule. On 2 June 1940, for instance, the Yomiuri Shinbun reported on children’s war games played around the globe—though they suppressed the how and why of such war games and, indeed, never mentioned the ongoing adult war (4). They chose these other locales according to political considerations, either to signal good relations with, or to lay claim to, countries rich in natural resources that were of vital interest to Japan, or to describe warm relations with the (child) populations of Japan’s colonies. For example, in a 20 September 1942 article, less than six months after the Netherland Indies government surrendered to Japanese troops, the Yomiuri Shinbun enthusiastically claimed that, “despite their antiviolence traditions,” Javanese children “engaged in war play following commands uttered in Japanese.” Photographs featured boys clad only in shorts lying on their stomachs, holding rifles pointed at the invisible enemy in the distance. The text relayed how “the children of Java . . . have become friends with the [Japanese] soldiers . . . and are extremely mature. One never sees them argue with one another. The older ones wish nothing more than to become as strong as Japanese soldiers when they grow up and, like Japan’s soldiers, help defend Asia” (4). The account of this “Indonesian war game” is just one of many such reports of games played throughout the Japanese empire.6 On 11 April 1943, the Yomiuri Shinbun recounted in “Even (Korean) children engage in war play” (Kodomo made heitai gokko) that this unexpected turn of events occurred as an effect of the Law on Special Volunteer Soldiers from Korea, which had been introduced in 1938 to recruit Koreans into the Imperial Army. Close to forty years after Korea’s sovereignty had been forfeited to Japan, the article referenced a Korean military official who enthusiastically explained that war play had become very popular on the peninsula. This had previously been unusual; Korean children had theretofore been raised by parents apprehensive of martial affairs—having grown up themselves with the once-prevalent Confucian worldview, which abhorred military violence and looked down on the warrior class. In an effort to explain that apprehension, the article quoted the military official reciting an old proverb: “Good people do not become soldiers” (Ryōmin wa hei to narazu). Yet 54

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in Chinese original the words were: “Hao nan bu dang bing, hao tie bu da ding” (A good man does not become a soldier, just like good iron is not made into nails). Despite this long-standing dismissive view of the military, the newspaper went on to speculate that the new “desire to play war games” had “naturally developed in children who saw their older brothers leave for the front lines” (3). It is important to note that the Yomiuri Shinbun did not address the question of which front line this referred to, and under whose command. Likewise, that Japan had made Korea a protectorate in 1905, then fully annexed the country in 1910, remained unmentioned; nor was it stated that the children in question had lived their entire lives under Japanese colonial rule. Instead, the article simply hinted at Japan’s “politics of assimilation,” emphasizing the popularity of playing war as a symbol of Japanese and Korean unity. Though some photographs of field games organized and orchestrated by teachers and Imperial Army personnel raise doubts as to whether children actually enjoyed them, some instructors who choreographed children’s war games in the prescribed fashion were apparently successful at making them fun—or at least we might be led to believe as much. Higuchi Ichiyō’s character in the 1896 novella Child’s Play (Takekurabe) says as much (Ujiie 1989: 91), as does a boy in Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s 1924 short story “Youth” (“Shōnen”; Hanzawa 1980: 29–30). Nakane Mihōko, a ten-year-old girl in elementary school, wrote the following in her diary for 4 June 1945: Today we had fun evening drills. We left here this afternoon at 2 pm. We put on sedge hats and went off. It was very hot and seemed like summer. After some time, I could see Ishida-sensei strip down and put on a headband. We went there and rested for a while. Then we went to gather firewood. The thirdsection fifth graders already were there. We gathered firewood for some time and then returned. After a while we had a meal. The miso soup had dried tofu, strips of dried gourd, and two rice cakes in it. It was really, really delicious. After the meal, we practiced singing war songs. Then we played “Searching for the Jewel.” The “jewel” turned out to be Kobayashi’s apple. . . . [I]t wasn’t much fun for the rest of us. I searched as hard as I could, but in the end we were ordered to assemble. In our group it was Kobayashi alone. Then we were divided into attack and defense units and made war with each other. (Yamashita 2005: 285)

By the time the Imperial Army committed one of its most horrific war crimes, the Nanking Massacre of December 1937, no traces of concern about Japanese children’s war games remained, the nation having given itself over to the promotion of such play as a meaningful instrument of preparation and training for war and life. In thus normalizing and naturalizing the Field Games

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progression from playing war to making war, Japan’s leaders, educators, and administrators had established a definitive path from childhood to soldierdom. No matter what meanings children had previously attached to such combative, physical, outdoor games, once the games were almost totally under adult control they were to be played so as to develop the children’s bodies and minds in line with the militarist and imperialist project taking shape around them. Just as Imperial Army soldiers were to fight battles, children were to play war games. Despite the distance between one world and the other, children had become the precursors of soldiers; both were liminal characters. By all accounts, children’s war games would eventually result in the children taking part in war as adults. Well-trained and powerful, the soldiers would in turn bring about peace. Th rough their engagement in war (games), children and soldiers became infinite mirror images of one another. The war children played between the end of the nineteenth century and the immediate postwar period—in school yards, streets, fields, and along rivers— involved role-playing, imitating, and reenacting past or ongoing conflicts in whatever ways their imagination, environs, and means allowed. During this time, adult attitudes about such play dramatically shifted back and forth, varying between concerns about children’s safety and proper behavior on the one hand, and notions about war games’ beneficial effects—maturity and battlereadiness—on the other. Politicians, pedagogues, and parents also grappled with reconciling the concept of children being pure and innocent, in touch with their innermost feelings, with the stance that that precious innocence must also be shaped and controlled. War games and the various debates about them brought into one arena the debates many adults concerned themselves with: the proper way to raising modern children and provide them with a safe environment, freedom, and care; the desire to build the nation and empire, and thus the need of a potent army; and the discovery of play as a pedagogical and political tool for teaching children to embrace the nation, empire, and war. More than anything, war games served as a mechanism to establish and reproduce war as an inherently human endeavor—and to ensure that children, boys in particular, became ever-ready soldiers. When ten-year-old Nakane made the above entry in her diary, girls just like her living in Okinawa no longer played such games—they were caught in the midst of the Battle of Okinawa and the Allied invasion of Japan. Less than two months later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945), precipitating Japan’s unconditional surrender six days thereafter. 56

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fig. 11. Titled Kondō Isami and Kurama Tengu (Kondō Isami to Kurama Tengu, 1955), this is one of many photographs Domon Ken (1909–1990) shot of “chanbara,” or “samurai-style swordplay fighting,” and other improvised play of children in the aftermath of war. Previously a prominent photo journalist who helped Japan’s war effort, Domon today remains one of Japan’s most renowned photographers. Printed with the kind permission of the Domon Ken Kinenkan.

Only a few years later, in 1951, the Japan Teachers Union began to pursue a ban on war toys. In a declared effort to eventually provide children with possibilities for “good play” and “good playgrounds,” the Youth Division of the Police Agency conducted a first large-scale survey regarding children’s play practices and children’s attitudes toward those practices. Among other results, the survey revealed that less that 3 percent of preschool and elementary school-age children claimed to often play war. An equally small portion of the more than two hundred respondents named war games, playing with and shooting pistols, stone fights, brawls, and playing in the street among the “bad games” they admitted to playing (Keishichō 1952: 30–34). In the wake of the Japan Teachers Union’s attempts to get “war toys” banned, newspapers returned to their early-twentieth-century tone of grave concern regarding such games (Saitō 1985: 132). On 28 October 1952, for example, the Yomiuri Shinbun printed a reader’s letter expressing indignation and worry at the sight of children playing war in the streets (see fig. 11). “Recently, on the way home, I ran into a few children who engaged in war Field Games

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play. Seven, eight children were at it. The biggest and strongest-looking was their commander and they were imitating soldiers down to the marching style. . . . It’s the responsibility of parents and teachers to raise children and have them play peaceful, bright kinds of games” (3). One can understand this reader’s concern. And yet the children he described had played all their lives in the shadow of militarism, first while Japan was at war and, later, during the occupation by the Allied Forces, which effectively lasted until the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed on 28 April 1952. In addition, many had been brought up by parents for whom military play was a deeply ingrained component of nationalism and pride. This reader’s concern, and the newspaper’s printing of it, thus encapsulates the contested angles of the debate—as well as how children were trapped at its center, pawns of a much larger game.

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chapter 2

Paper Battles

following the rules in (text)books, paper games, pictorial maps, and screens War games, played by children under the control and guidance of Japanese school and military authorities, were aggressively encouraged in the name of the twin goals of reversing the effects of modernization and urbanization on children and of preparing them for the demands of nation and empire building. Yet that encouragement echoed in children’s print and visual culture, as well as the ways in which the creative class and commerce contributed to the reshaping of what it meant to be a child. In the 1890s, the burgeoning Meiji-era reforms prompted adults to read less to other members of their household and more on their own. Subsequently, figures such as Iwaya Sazanami, the Meiji pioneer of Japanese children’s literature, and other intellectuals, artists, authors, and educators promoted the notion that children had a right to their own reading and, indeed, their own children’s culture. In this atmosphere a distinct children’s literature and children’s magazine market developed (Katō 2000: 92), part of a larger marketplace shift that recognized children as a unique consumer category. This era saw the rise of a number of businesses, toy stores and shops selling cheap sweets among them, primarily or even exclusively catering to children. Department stores funded research investigating children’s everyday lives; using the results, they developed and exhibited a range of children’s products for both display and purchase (Katō 2000; Jinno 2011). If childhood thus far had been primarily a category defined and crafted by the architects of the state, the schools, and the military, at this time the concept of childhood emerged as both a scientific and an economic category. Jinno Yuki 59

(2011: 4–6), a historian of design, saw child research as tending to be informed and driven by the perceived tension between the pressures of modern rationality and the assumption of children’s irrationality, or prerationality. As society increasingly focused on the idea that maternal love was essential to the development of the child, children’s products, promoted by advertising aimed at children and their parents, proved to be a massively lucrative market distinct from that catering to adults. At the dawn of the twentieth century, department stores from Shiseido to Mitsukoshi strove to capitalize on and promote the trend with innovative literature, toys, clothes, and other products. These stores shrewdly tied educational concerns to the sale of their wares, increasingly incorporating children as active agents in this coproduction of modern childhood (Jinno 2011: 66). Children’s magazines in particular were fi lled with advertisements promoting, among many other children’s products, body-strengthening caramels, delicious chocolates straight out of children’s dreams, and even Lion children’s toothpaste, presumably capable of preventing just about any cavity from being generated by all that sugar (Jinno 2011: 192–196). Against the backdrop of the ever-growing commercialization of childhood, the early 1920s saw the blossoming of the aforementioned debate about a “child-centered society,” which pitted the necessity of nurturing and protecting vulnerable and innocent children against the will to socialize young children into militarized adults ready to offer their country the ultimate sacrifice. Perhaps it was inevitable that notions of marketplace modernization would intersect with notions of militarization; in any case, a decade into the twentieth century, books, magazines, board and paper games, manga, and early animation began frequently featuring children’s playful engagement with war and the military.1 By extending and domesticating the signals of now-ubiquitous adult-sponsored war games in the field, the act of engaging narrative or visual depictions of war as child’s play worked to obscure the gaping protecting-versus-militarizing contradiction within that debate. Those who felt children deserved to be tenderly nurtured included a rather diverse group, ranging from representatives of the late-nineteenth-century Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, the first group to attempt to bestow individual rights on children; to progressive educators, who in the 1920s proposed that children were inherently innocent and should be protected from danger and violence; to social welfare proponents, who as late as 1939 pushed for the “urgent establishment” of a Child Welfare Bureau within the Home Department in order to “better protect children from the effects of a 60

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long-term war” (Matsushima 1939). This last angle enjoyed mainstream attention—even in pedagogical literature carrying the stamp of approval of the Ministry of Education, which promoted the concepts that “healthy children [were] the race’s greatest strength” and that “proper institutions for the protection of children [needed] to be established” in order to ease the hardships families faced owing to poverty, child labor, and the lack of education (Konishi 1937: 120). More directly addressing child’s play, Hori Shichizō, the principal of an elementary school affiliated with the prestigious Tokyo Girls High School (Tokyo Joshi Kōtō Shihan Gakkō), wrote, as late as 1937—when Japan was pursuing an ever-expanding imperialist war effort—that education should not dampen but further “children’s free development,” and that games played an important role in such development. Hori urged other teachers and parents to gently pursue the transition from the incitement of children’s curiosity to guidance toward particular kinds of knowledge—in other words, educators needed to patiently await children’s adjustment to and readiness for the ideal moment of instruction, at which point their lessons needed to be age-appropriate. So as to ease that transition, parents and teachers should look to the objects and games children already knew when forming their educational styles. Hori also advised that when, for example, picture books were shown to children, no explanations should be offered: the adults were to wait until children asked about what they saw (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1937b: n.p.). As has been previously noted, such progressive views, as well as the preference for a “child-centered education,” were fashionable in urban upper- and middle-class circles during the 1920s—so much so that they never disappeared entirely, despite the winds of change. In the wake of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, increasing appeals about both the collective good and the war effort as a national concern marginalized the debate about the purpose of child play. Opposing the above view was a steadily growing camp of unapologetically hawkish educators, authors, and illustrators who fell willingly in line with the colonialist and imperialist state and its agencies in their inexorable path toward an omnipresent military worldview. They, along with print media and children’s game producers, furthered the reconceptualization of children as soldiers-to-be and of war as a normal, indefinite state. And they, too, viewed play as a particularly effective educational method—albeit one designed not to further the “free development” of children but to playfully introduce them to, and familiarize them with, all things military: essentially, to normalize and naturalize war in their Pa pe r B at t l e s

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receptive minds. These hawkish figures emphasized that the playing of war must above all appeal to the youngest children—including preliterate children. To that end, the producers of children’s culture took increasingly explicit pains to ensure that a strong association was made between the advancing Japanese soldiers in Asia—and their use of military maps—and children at home who simulated soldiers’ progress on their picture maps and paper games. Effectively building on that association, war games popped up in children’s books and magazines in a variety of formats. Some paper games instructed child readers to walk in soldiers’ boots, so to speak; others appeared as cartoons. Among many others, the 1939 Children’s Book: Toys (Nihon Gangu Kenkyūkai 1939b, 6, 7) featured marching boys shouldering sickles in place of bayonets or rifles. Others represented boys or sometimes boys and girls (and dogs) playing war. In one picture series, eight boys run toward each other holding sticks like soldiers attacking with bayonets. One of the boys carries a toy rifle. The final picture in Kōdansha Picture Book: Praise of Valiant Soldiers at the China Incident (Kōdansha no ehon: Shina jihen buyūdan) of 1 December 1937 shows children visiting a shrine adorned with Imperial Navy flags, bowing and praying for the health of the sailors. Often these military-cum-pedagogic materials took the shape of picture maps and picture sugoroku, luck-of-the-dice games akin to the board game Snakes and Ladders. Such games provided settings that resembled those of field games—without either the likelihood of physical injury or the necessity of restraint. At the same time, sugoroku and picture maps translated adult soldiers’ imperialist pursuit into the playful seizure of territory on paper. In inviting children to conquer territory, such games and maps drew on history and geography lessons and explained the background and the place-names of war. In other words, children’s field excursions on paper were not merely a vehicle and expression of children’s growing map-mindedness and geographical sophistication; they also lent themselves to playful simulations of military reconnaissance, war making, and other reenactments of soldiers’ front-line experiences. Essentially, they provided the framework for imagining and playfully enacting the seizure of the very territory children had been learning about regarding their male family members—brothers, fathers, uncles—engaged as members of the Imperial Army. And yet, though such family-mythic battles might be often simulated by the younger set, such play never reached the verisimilitude of violent confrontations with the enemy. 62

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After all, teachers were supposed to teach their students that “the core of Japan’s education [was] loyalty and filial piety,” as one typical teachers’ guide for girls’ education noted. Moreover, any education—geography, history, cartography, or physical education—that was separated from that principle was to be considered “without value,” “purposeless,” and “even damaging,” at least according to author and prominent pedagogue Konishi Shigenao (1937: 7), the ninth president of Kyoto Imperial University, who emphasized the importance of education in geography, history, and cartography. Teachers came to understand, noted Kären Wigen (2005: 25), that “physically looking down on their everyday world allowed students to comprehend that world in a more abstract way, thrusting them into the panoramic perspective of a map reader.” Th is in turn helped them “apprehend map knowledge in a more immediate, experiential way. Accordingly, field excursions to nearby hills . . . [became] a common feature of elementary-school instruction in Japan” (25). Among the guidelines for teaching geography—dating back to 1902—had been the emphases on love for the nation (aikokushin) and love of one’s native place or province; later geography curriculum guidelines of May 1937 made these goals ever more explicit. Ultimately, in teaching the art of map reading, geography instruction effectively nurtured the appreciation of Japanese activities overseas—indeed, the “spirit of overseas expansion” (kaigai hatten; Fujii and Moriya 1939: 1; Kyōkasho Kenkyū Sentā 1984: 214). The omnipresence of maps in children’s publications and games certainly was both vehicle and product of the increase in the “map-mindedness” (Wigen 2010) of Japan’s population at the time. And Thongchai Winichakul ([1996] 1998: 69) has pointed out that maps representing the territory of the nation generate for children concepts such as integrity and sovereignty and the concept of practices such as border control, conflict, invasion, and war. To this I add that children’s war games on paper enabled children to imaginatively exercise the same practices—and that this playful engagement may have cemented for children the importance of geographical knowledge for nation building and war making much more than just studying a map could do. In essence, children’s paper games embodied a fusion of two sensibilities: the pedagogical stance that geography was an important component of formal education (regardless of wartime context), and the military stance that geographic knowledge was important to troops. This peculiar connection between geography education and war making helped to ensure maps a special place in the children’s books, magazines, and paper board games of the twentieth century. Pa pe r B at t l e s

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in the footsteps of imperial army soldiers at home Such games combined both historical and martial themes with the aim of inciting patriotism in young players. As mentioned above, picture sugoroku were particularly conducive to playfully simulating overseas expansion—in part on account of their sheer accessibility. As a simple luck-driven dice game, picture sugoroku was suited to players ranging from preliterate children to adults. And many versions of the game were packaged as multicolored paper game supplements in children’s magazines. But as they were also available individually, for about a tenth of the cost of a children’s magazine, they were also accessible to families of lesser means. Sugoroku is similar to the ancient Indian game Snakes and Ladders (known in the United States as Chutes and Ladders, as packaged by Milton Bradley in 1943). The playing field is made up of squares or illustrated frames. Players throw dice and move their play piece the corresponding number of steps along the path on the illustrated paper or board; instructions at each step indicate whether the player is to advance or turn back. To win, a player must be the first to reach the goal field, which is typically at the center of the game. The illustrated fields themselves come in an endless number of different themes, such as family life, sports, good manners, and, of course, war games. In the spirit of creating “knowledge sugoroku,“ designed to expose children to Japanese history, some game themes mixed past military heroes and present war events. The emphasis of the picture stories illustrated in later versions of sugoroku, produced after the Sino-Japanese and the RussoJapanese wars, shifted from past military successes to present wars or aspirations for the future, depicting ordinary fathers and brothers as soldiers and including maps modeled on Japan’s colonial empire map (Mederle 2007: 36). While sometimes the game featured an actual map of the empire on the reverse side, it should be noted that often the maps were “modeled on” actual maps of Japan: given the tight control of information about the military and news about the war, the Japanese army and navy ministries reserved the right to approve what information was made widely available—even within the context of a children’s game. But regardless of the accuracy of their depictions—as well as whether they represented Japan’s empire; areas surrounding contemporary front lines; or generic renderings of mountains, valleys, and villages—the maps were a core component of publications featuring war 64

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games, in part because maps affirmed the Japanese empire in the guise of play (Fujii and Moriya 1939, table of contents). A number of elements of the game normalized and naturalized war, especially within the context and comfort of family life. Owing to the topographic format of sugoroku, child players could mimic on the board their own war games played in the field, even to the extent of replicating the geography of their particular environs. That the game could include many players of any age facilitated a communal experience, deepening children’s social bonds. That the game could be played indoors certainly enabled different kinds of enactment of military play, rain or shine. Sugoroku was also entertaining, instructive, and ideologically blatant. Whether embodying soldiers advancing far from home or just mimicking playing as themselves, battling on their home field, the players of sugoroku followed (however simple) outlined maps, imagined themselves traversing rivers and valleys, and envisioned themselves conquering territory, anticipating all the maneuvers of soldiers at war—but playfully (Kyōkasho kenkyū sentā 1984: 213). A particularly popular paper version of sugoroku was the Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku (Kōgun Banzai Sugoroku; see fig. 12). As it was packaged as a supplement to the new year’s issue of Girls’ Club (Shōjo Kurabu), it was available to all Girls’ Club subscribers; but it could also be cheaply purchased separately for three sen (an issue of the magazine could be bought for twentyfive sen). One of many magazines published by Kōdansha, Girls’ Club’s run quickly increased from sixty-seven thousand copies per issue in 1923 to close to half a million in 1937. The magazine primarily published literature and poetry and embraced the ideal of the “good wife and wise mother.” Its core readership ranged from advanced elementary school students to high school students. According to the rules of the game, the players of the Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku would first, before beginning to play, “thank the soldiers at the front lines from the bottoms of their hearts” and then “pray for continued luck in the fortunes of war.” The game’s explicit purpose was to positively, playfully connect the girls’ devotion at the home front to conditions on the battlefields. Not surprisingly, the Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku carried the stamp of approval (kōsetsu) of the army and navy ministries’ information divisions (Rikugunshō Jōhōbu and Kaigunshō Gunji Fukyūbu); both divisions were in charge of producing propaganda and suppressing and regulating certain information in conjunction with the Information Bureau within the Home Department (Naikaku Jōhō-kyoku) founded in 1940 (Shōjo Kurabu, vol. 18, no. 1). Pa pe r B at t l e s

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fig. 12. The Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku (Kōgun Banzai Sugoroku), first published in 1923 and again in 1939 and 1940, was distributed to those who subscribed to Girls’ Club (Shōjo Kurabu, 1923–1962). Private collection.

The brightly colored Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku, which measures thirty inches by twenty-one inches, was illustrated by Nakamura Seika, an important figure among producers of children’s culture. The first twentythree steps of the game are picture fields featuring girls’ proper home-front behavior; these frame the entire sugoroku. Starting with step number twentyfour, the players enter the center field, a front-line coastal landscape that can be traversed from numbers twenty-four through forty-four via a number of different paths, depending on the direction in which players choose to proceed. In this portion of the game the steps are simple number buttons adorning a thick red line that snakes around and across the field. The first twenty-three picture fields primarily feature girls, who are joined by only two small boys and a sprinkling of adults. All are involved in activities fashioned as the various contributions that children at the home front were prompted to make in preparation for and support of the long war, including cheering the troops, carrying out bucket brigades, and making and mailing care packages—as well as dutiful activities such as exercising, studying, and praying; and homemaker activities such as sewing and harvesting. The picture fields convey a cheerful, even festive atmosphere, with lots of rosy-cheeked, smiling girls featured in happy encounters with soldiers and other adults or equally happily engaged in good, everyday home-front activities. We can see that, viewed more closely, each picture field is intended to promote virtues all Japanese girls were expected to embody—but simply presented in relation to the war effort. Text in each picture field notes both how to properly engage in each activity depicted and how such good behavior supports the war effort. For instance, the text in square number two declares that girls’ work ethic should match soldiers’ willingness to sacrifice their lives in battle; square number three indicates that the proper way to pray is to pray for “continued luck in the fortunes of war.” Some fields illustrate the importance of physical fitness, good posture, and the ability to follow orders. The love and respect to be offered war animals is conveyed through one sweet girl’s appeal (square number six) to players to be kind to such “voiceless soldiers”—in this case, messenger pigeons. Patriotism is demonstrated in the respectful hoisting of the Hinomaru flag (square number seven), and girls are prompted to show their kindheartedness by stuffing care packages and writing comforting letters to soldiers (square number eight). Field number fourteen conveys that one way girls could demonstrate their loyalty was through frugality; in square number ten, two girls—one eating, the other examining 68

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a stocking—make the appeal to “eat everything no matter whether we like it. Let’s be careful with and make the best of the things [we have].” The picture in step number fifteen encourages the collection of any items in a condition acceptable for the military to get some use out of, including worn shoes, ripped paper, and metal objects. Square number eighteen illustrates children expressing gratitude to war heroes by offering their train seats to injured warriors, urging: “Let’s protect the soldier who has protected the country.” Other images promote the willingness to extend a hand to a bereaved family, keeping an eye out for spy activity (square number twenty-one), expressing one’s gratitude to nurses, and waving Hinomaru flags for soldiers departing for the front lines from train stations. Some picture fields link proper behavior with advancement in the game—as well as penalties for selfish behavior. And so the square depicting laziness—a mother waking a girl still in bed—prompts the player to go back four fields. In another, an unseemly interest in luxury—frivolously parading the beauty of one’s kimono rather than simply tending to its cleanliness—would send the player back ten picture fields. As for recommended behavior: a square encouraging children to study with “the same spirit it would take to pick up a gun” allows players to move forward one station, while landing on the field promoting the purchase of war bonds is rewarded with an advance of four frames. When players reach step number twenty-four, they leave the picture frames of the home front and enter the front line, a coastal terrain modeled on Manchuria, replete with farms and paddies, bays and inlets, hills and valleys. The game field, which makes up more than two-thirds of the board, is dotted with small groups of farmers and children—as well as armed Imperial Army soldiers shown ostensibly defending the local population or attacking the (mostly) invisible enemy. Situated along the play line are clusters of Imperial Army supply trucks, planes, mortars, and other equipment and weaponry. Ships sail the ocean; military planes fly above. Part of the game path runs along the South Manchurian Railway, the southernmost section of which had been under Japanese control since the Russo-Japanese War. Along the railway Japanese soldiers protect farmers and their pigs and cattle. In other areas small groups of children and the occasional adult wave Japanese flags. Tending livestock and plowing the fields, Chinese farmers all go about their work—alongside trucks and tanks and under the watchful eyes of Japanese soldiers of the Imperial Army. No visual or textual hints are provided to explain just why these soldiers are at war in China. Pa pe r B at t l e s

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In this stretch of the game, players proceed along a path of numbered buttons, in effect joining the Imperial Army soldiers in their advance across the Japanese-occupied terrain—cheered en route by clusters of ostensibly male adults and seemingly genderless children. Indeed, with the possible exception of an adult shooting pigs above one portion of the railway (one of the two paths that both include numbers twenty-six and twenty-seven), no girls or women are distinctly depicted as such in the landscape at all; the small figures populating the countryside, though generic, nonetheless appear to all be male. The actual advance and battle, then, is claimed as the masculine realm. (It should be noted, however, that most children who played games of war in the field did not bother to uphold the rigid gender order indicated here [Piel 2017]). Players might envision themselves stepping into the boots of their fathers, brothers, or uncles: perhaps joining the armed Imperial Army soldiers on patrol; manning trucks, ships, and airplanes; or attacking the territory via land, air, and sea. Curiously, all the assaults, though portraying gunfire, show no enemy being fired upon; indeed, the only representation of the enemy is a comical band of sword-wielding warriors tucked above the railway (numbers twenty-seven and twenty-eight). These figures are notably in blue—as are many of the locals—whereas the regal Japanese soldiers all wear khaki; notable, too, is how the locals appear to be completely separated from the action on the board. After traversing the terrain via various alternate paths numbered twentyfour through forty-four, players reach the goal field in the upper center of the sugoroku. Situated there are two amiable soldiers chatting and joking with four young children: three boys and one girl. One soldier, who has just opened a care package, sits with one arm around a boy who is holding what might be a package of caramels; Japanese flag in hand, a girl peers over this soldier’s shoulder. The other soldier stands holding a small boy; another small boy, also wielding a flag, reaches up as if wanting to be held too. Players might imagine these to be Japanese children who stuffed the care packages—and who perhaps even brought them to the soldiers. Alternatively, a child player might imagine these children to be Chinese, the happy recipients of Imperial Army soldiers’ warmhearted, playful, and presumably sharing spirit. I return to various evocations of this latter sentiment in chapters 3 and 4. Here, note simply the intimacy the drawing conveys between soldiers and children. The atmosphere is cheerful, cleansed of any suggestion of the soldiers’ activities and the war that serves as a backdrop to the game. The rules of the game remind the players that “the winner is who first reaches the Long Live the 70

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Imperial Army Sugoroku goal field.” In the background, standing in front of a mostly hidden Shinto shrine, a large group of Imperial Army soldiers wave Japanese flags and cheer; while they might be just congratulating the players, they could just as easily be celebrating another Japanese victory elsewhere. As with many such paper war games, this sugoroku was probably played by adults too, and it was likely used for more than just play. Printed on the back of the playing field is an actual map of China and Manchuria under Japanese rule, in addition to a smaller map of most of Europe and a small piece of Northern Africa. Inclusion of these maps suggests that Kōdansha, the game’s producer—and perhaps, too, the army and navy ministries’ divisions that approved the use of these maps—anticipated the game would be played by adults as well, especially in the capacity of assisting or, indeed, instructing, preliterate children. Hence, the messages these publications contained, and the virtues players were encouraged to embody, were likely channeled through individuals with varying levels of maturity and understanding. While the younger children who played the sugoroku might have enjoyed mimicking the advance of Imperial Army soldiers without necessarily understanding the finer points of the context, older players, by reading and commenting on the actual map of the Japanese empire, would be able to bring the war (and the empire) home in a more meaningful way. Similar sugoroku were legion. Shōgakkan, a publisher specializing in grade school textbooks and children’s books and magazines, first supplemented its Second Grade Elementary School reader (Shōgaku Ninen-sei, vol. 15, no. 10) in 1926 with the War Game Sugoroku, which was reissued in January 1940 in the new year’s issue. Its edges were covered with advertisements for Shōgakkan’s other children’s publications for a range of age groups, including the magazines Kindergarten (Yōchien) and Children’s Knowledge (Yōnen Chishiki), which were read by children as well as parents and teachers. Each of the pictorial fields of the War Game Sugoroku features a group of children enacting various aspects of war making. While most of the boys are dressed in black school uniforms and uniform caps or military helmets, most of the girls are clad in regular clothes and wear colorful skirts and sweaters. Even in this small distinction in their dress, we see the gender divide ruling the business of children’s war play, at least according to these games: the boys are regimented, destined for a realm of obedience in which they submit their individuality to the nation; the girls merely provide support and succor. (Several girls also wear the ribbons of Kokubō Yōjokai, the National Defense Girls’ Association, whose name was modeled on Kokubō Fujinkai, the National Pa pe r B at t l e s

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Defense Women’s Association, but they are fewer than the boys wearing helmets.) The first field features an all-boy army landing on a shore and running directly toward the player—essentially face-front, looking right at the viewer— flags, rifles, and sabers in hand. Two sets of two boys each are on their stomachs, adjusting what might be mortars or telescopes. The text reads: “Landing on enemy shores: Advance, advance, the enemy is right over there.” From this starting point the players move along a total of twelve fields. In “Thousand-stitch belts” (picture field number two) an all-girls group in regular clothes stitch soldiers’ charms; in “Cavalry attack” (field number three) an all-boys army peers into the foggy distance, presumably “shooting” through bamboo canes propped on bicycles; next, three adorable looking “Military-use dogs” accompany three boys gathered in a clearing, one of whom points into the distance. “Attack” presents an all-boys army running toward the player across a harvested rice paddy field in pursuit of “The enemy’s total destruction”; in the all-male “Infantry work” we see “boy soldiers” building a bridge over a creek; after which equal prominence goes to the “Work of nurses,” an all-girl group who, “while the enemy bullets are flying, courageously attend” to a group of injured boy soldiers. Next, the “Tank unit” advances, leading to the next field, which features a group of children in gas masks fighting a fire—a setback that prompts the player to move seven steps backward. Rounding out the play, a single boy on a bamboo-stick horse is described in “Cavalry attack” as “quite fast” in his lone task to “annihilate the enemy”; next, the “Enemy camp line” is “brought under control”; after that, the winner reaches the goal, “A visit to the Meiji Shrine,” featuring a large group of boys and girls with an Imperial Army soldier and families. Here the player is prompted to “pray for Japan’s increasing prosperity.” Note that, just like in the Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku described above, the enemy remains invisible throughout, since this sugoroku was provided in a magazine for second graders. So while pictures’ accompanying the text indicate flying bullets and the “total annihilation of the enemy,” no dead bodies are depicted. And while the faces and bodies of the children in some of the fields are indistinguishable from one another—and could be male or female—the figures in the fields depicting combat are clearly male. Home-front and domestic roles—nursing and bandaging, flag waving and cheering—are reserved for the girls, just as they were in many other wartime publications for child readers. As we can see, sugoroku and other board and paper games brought into homes a simulation of war games played in the fields. In all such play the 72

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geographical-imperialist dimension deeply permeated children’s play, whether as depictions of landscapes in individual pictorial fields, as surroundings of the game path itself, or as actual maps printed on the reverse of sugoroku boards.

picturing territorial control Nowhere were the connections and overlaps of war play, war knowledge, and geographical imagination more ubiquitous than in another artifact of children’s culture: pictorial maps (echizu). The Kōdansha Picture Book for Good Children: Anniversary Issue on the Great Victory during the China Incident (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1938d: n.p.) contained several double-page pictorial maps.2 One, by a teacher named Ōtsuki Sadao, depicted the “occupied area in North China.” Ōtsuki’s pictorial map outlines a landscape covered with Japanese flags and soldiers. On another spread every peak, riverbank, and building is adorned with a Japanese flag, nearly one hundred in total. Prominently placed Imperial Army soldiers, their rifles and bayonets pointed at invisible enemies, stand guard, break out in cheers to celebrate local victories, and watch the locals going about their business. The Kōdansha Picture Book: The Greater East Asian War (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1942: 52–53), intended for elementary-school-age children, features a pictorial map of Australia simply identified as “country in the South.” The map, drawn and illustrated by Nakano Masaharu, includes depictions of workers in their native landscape. Some of the products of that work are shown too: the map features various raw materials like oil, wood, and gold, as well as agricultural products like coffee, rice, and sugar, each with its own icon. Of greater immediate interest to the young readers must have been the map’s many illustrations of animals—rather like present-day atlases for the same age group. The book itself includes several articles about the animals, culture, and children of Southeast Asia (Nanyō), into which the Imperial Army was advancing at the time. But despite the fact that embattled areas are pictured and the war is named in the book’s subtitle (“Greater East Asia War”), and in contrast to Ōtsuki’s pictorial map in the previous example, no Japanese soldiers are shown; indeed, there are no unambiguous manifestations of the war of any kind. Children likely looked at these pictorial maps as some of them did at a map published by the Land Survey Department—leisurely, with curiosity and enjoyment. Pa pe r B at t l e s

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In these and numerous other manifestations of wartime children’s culture intended for Japan’s youngest, depictions of Imperial Army soldiers were intended to do something improbable, indeed, impossible: to simultaneously reveal and conceal the fact that the Imperial Army had conquered the pictured landscape it now controlled. For the youngest consumers of picture books and early reading materials, all battling, suffering, killing, dying, and even triumphing was backstory, completed before the story at hand began: in all such materials the Imperial Army soldiers depicted had already appeased the newly colonized peoples—having secured the territory as much on their behalf as on Japan’s—and remained ready to defend it. In short, for Japan’s youngest, the processes of postwar empire and nation building had always already begun. Paper games and pictorial maps suggested to them that nation and empire building involved Imperial Army soldiers sharing their goodies with native children, walking around with native children on their shoulders, carrying food and water, walking pigs on leashes for fun, and engaging in other everyday sorts of playful activities in territories only recently brought under their control. I more closely examine variations on such idyllic scenes in chapter 3; here I focus on the use of such picture maps as aids enabling children to experience the territory under Japanese control. Simply put, though maps appeared everywhere, nowhere were they as ubiquitous as in children’s publications. The so-called Newest Map of Greater Japan (Saishin dai Nihon chizu) was attached to the April 1933 issue of Kingu (King), one of the most important popular magazines at the time. On an advertising poster for a tofu maker and patent medicine vendor from 1933, a girl in fashionable clothes and two boys in full military uniforms are shown standing—one boy with his hands in the air as if gesturing victory, the other saluting—in front of a Hinomaru flag segment, at the top of which there is a map of Japan and its empire. One of the boys also holds a flag; another accessory, common of depictions of children at play in that era, is a little dog included in the scene (see fig. 13). Another pictorial map of the “occupied territory in the Shanghai area,” by a teacher named Ōtsuki Sadao, is fi lled with Japanese flags and Japanese soldiers standing guard amid cheering children, depicted in the Kōdansha Picture Book for Good Children: Anniversary Issue on the Great Victory during the China Incident (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1938d: n.p.), while an illustration by another teacher, Terauchi Manjirō, in the same book also highlights the prominence that picture maps enjoyed during war. In this illustration a family sits around a table bent over a map on which they follow 74

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fig. 13. Maps and pictorial maps were so ubiquitous that they even appeared on advertising posters—as in this example from circa 1933. Private collection.

the oldest son’s (and the Imperial Army’s) warpath. The arrival of a letter, presumably from that son, had prompted the entire family—grandparents, parents, two boys, and a girl, as well as a maid—to applaud him in his absence. The father and the middle brother read the letter out loud while the girl waves a flag and the youngest boy, wearing a helmet, cheers with a toy saber raised over his head. The cover of the 1939 new year’s issue (vol. 3, no. 1) of the elementary school periodical Science for Elementary School Students (Shōgakusei no kagaku) visually and textually ties together children, maps, and the war in yet another way (see fig. 14). As if ready for a hiking adventure, a uniformed, saluting boy stands atop a globe alongside a girl in civilian clothes holding a Japanese flag. On the globe, Japan’s empire is prominently marked in red. Military planes fly over children’s heads. Authored by Ikeda Saburō, the issue is titled Science for Elementary School Students: The Great Advance of the Children’s Corps (Kodomo butai daishingun). The booklet is not about war making per se, but the military and militarism lurk everywhere throughout—in the children’s “manga visits” to the Japanese weapon’s industry and a Toyota factory, and in their wanderings past a fearful vision of poison gas production in Nazi Germany, a seventy-men-strong brass band, and the site of a rice-processing plant. Pa pe r B at t l e s

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fig. 14. Within the pages of the booklet Science for Elementary School Students (Shōgakusei no kagaku, 1939), two children visit the world of industry. Private collection.

The representations of children embodying military life appeared in even greater variety. War games maintained the military’s prevalence in children’s minds: while schools continued to orchestrate such games, the magazines, newspapers, and books available to children all strove to reinforce the prominence of war games in children’s minds—down to even the youngest, yet-tobecome readers. Their weapon of choice? The toy. For instance, in Kōdansha Picture Book: Children’s Knowledge (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1937b: n.p.), one drawing featured a toy cat, a ball of wool, and—among other objects—“soldiers’ toys” (heitaisan no omocha). These “soldiers’ toys” included a cap and a helmet, each adorned with a star, plus a trumpet, a rifle, a sword, and a saddle. Another illustration in the book, this one by Kawashima Haruyo, depicts two small children in an upper-class home playing with a military plane, a race car adorned with the Hinomaru flag, a tank, and a truck with a rabbit on it. One of the boys is a toddler; the other is even younger. The text accompanying this image puts into words the sounds children would make when playing with such toys. A supplement to a 1938 issue of Children’s Club (Kawame Teiji 1938, table of contents flap) provided instructions for a “war game” (sensō gokko) written by Kawame Teiji and illustrated by Satō Hachirō: “This is the hill behind the school on the school grounds. We are Japanese soldiers, [playing] “assemble,” “attention,” and “lift up the guns.” We advance into the forest, overcome the grass bank, and cross the little river. We conquer the enemy’s bamboo grove, laugh, and sit down” (96–97). The accompanying illustration features a group of boys sitting in the grass on a school playground, exhausted and sweating from playfully battling with one another. One boy holds a small Hinomaru flag in his hand. Another group of boys with sticks for rifles reads the “comfort letter” brought to them by an unidentified man, perhaps their teacher. The comfort letter reads: “Congratulations on yet another major victory. Tonight at your homes, do your homework.” As was typical for children’s magazines, the work of war was tied to children’s “work”—in this case, homework—but playing war did not exclude the possibility of a playful tone. However, the issue also contained information on the operation of weaponry, as in the article “The Mechanics of Machine Guns,” which discussed machine guns that could be found on a tank, truck, or ship. Since Children’s Club was primarily read by or read to elementary school children, its publisher—like all producers of magazines and books for that age group—maintained a light tone throughout. Even though preschool children typically played together both indoors and out, children’s magazines and books firmly established the gender order Pa pe r B at t l e s

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of war games: boys enacted the men’s world of war, while girls assumed the marginal women’s positions as home-front support. When girls appeared at all in representations of war games, they were typically depicted at the margins, often admiringly looking at the boys or, as army nurses, taking care of their “injuries.” Publishers, writers, and illustrators found many appealing ways to feature war games even for the smallest, preliterate children, and they frequently blended child play with military purpose (see figs. 15–17). Haga Masao drew a series of images for a story titled “Military Grandpa” (Guntai jīsan), in which an old man in military uniform comes to the village to sell natto, a traditional food item made of fermented soybeans. The children run toward him and buy all his natto. Then they play hide-and-seek. When Military Grandpa finds them all hidden in barrels, they stick out their heads and cheer “Banzai!” to his feigned surprise. When the children ask him for a story, he tells them about life on the battlefield, noting how important it is that they each contribute to the war effort. When he wonders whether they would be willing to help him the next day, the children happily agree. To his announcement that his “unit is dispatching to sell natto” the children line up and march through the village, calling out, “Natto, natto!” When Military Grandpa shouts, “Attack!,” each child approaches a passerby to sell natto. In the end, Military Grandpa hands over to the military a large bomb-shaped straw object holding their cash contribution to the war effort. To this the children cry, “Banzai!” and receive the military’s thanks (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1938b: panels 1–26). Another angle used to reach Japan’s youngest future warriors was to employ playful “critter soldiers,” which were often child-animal hybrids. For instance, a multi-image cartoon printed in a 1940 publication, Kōdansha Picture Book for Good Children: Manga and a Collection of Children’s Tales from the Home Front (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1940c), depicted a number of different animals engaged in war play, including mice, rabbits, monkeys, owls, elephants, and giraffes. Perhaps to enhance the charm of the game for the publication’s preliterate audience, a child-animal soldier is shown sticking a flag in the ground—only to have a child-soldier-duck take it out again. But even in the toddlers’ playland, no teaching opportunity is wasted: a teacher, featured sitting on a tree stump, announces to a group of children lined up in front of him how proud he is that they “had all become a single unified heart” (onaji kokoro ni natte)—able to work together (64). 78

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figs. 15–17. Haga Masao’s “Military Grandpa” (Guntai jīsan) cartoon was one of numerous images that depicted children playing soldiers. It appeared in Kōdansha Picture Book for Good Children: Manga and Moving Tales about a Nation at War (Kodomo ga yoku naru Kōdansha no ehon: Manga to gunkoku bidan [Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1938b]).

figs. 15–17. (Comtinued)

figs. 15–17. (Comtinued)

The picture book is filled with illustrated short stories and essays linking children to soldiers at the front. Within its pages, children stuff comfort bags with letters and drawings, and they paint pictures that bring tears to the eyes of the soldiers who receive them. An illustration of children getting their hair shorn off is matched with a nearly identical scene of soldiers in barber chairs. Time and again in relentless repetition, children and the military, war and play, are blended in every imaginable way, the children’s and soldiers’ lives continuously likened to one another’s. That the proximity of children and soldiers is so regularly and inextricably linked within the most ordinary everyday activities inadvertently highlights, for the contemporary adult critic at least, what was absent from this pairing: children’s culture for toddlers did not name the soldier’s business of war making—nobody was killed, and nobody died (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1940c: 65). Despite the globally circulating ideas about children’s innate belligerence and fighting spirit, the creators of war games and stories for children knew that portraying death and gore would have ruined the fun of this play for the young. In another cartoon, six baby mice are led by a grown mouse in an Imperial Army uniform. Each holds a flag in its right paw (see fig. 18). The text, published in Children’s Club (Yōnen Kurabu), reads, “The mice march shouldering Hinomaru flags. The flag is Japan’s national flag. The mice are chū chū mice. The commander goes, ‘Chū chū gata gata essassu’ [onomatopoetic expressions for gunfire]. The friends go, ‘Zoro zoro.’ The mice play the New Year’s Advancing Army Game” (Yōnen Kurabu 11, no. 1 [1936]: 34). Several such critter soldiers achieved cult status, especially those featured in magazines like Girls’ Club (Shōjo Kurabu), Women’s Club (Fujin Kurabu), and the above-mentioned Children’s Club (Yōnen Kurabu). Their popularity encouraged some newspapers and practically all magazines published by Kōdansha to feature cartoons whose critter characters were at war, inspiring as well a great many picture books (Takamizawa 1991: 135–136). The Children’s Club cartoon “Chibiwan Tokku-kun hei,” for instance, tells the story of a dog in a military uniform. In one episode Chibiwan stands watch under a tree with a bayonet in his hand. In the middle of the night, he admires the pretty moon. Suddenly, there is a noise in the bushes and a human soldier appears. Enemy planes fly above. Then Chibiwan hears the sounds of marching soldiers. The dog soldier tells the human soldier to go back to the camp, but the human vows to stay to help him fight the approaching enemy. It turns out, however, that the marching soldiers are friendly troops from a different regiment, whom our soldier characters accompany to their camp. Though 82

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fig. 18. In children’s books and magazines, critters sometimes took the place of children playing war, as in this advancing army of mice from Children’s Club (Yōnen Kurabu).

Chibiwan imagines he will be allowed to retire from his post now that backup has arrived, he is ordered to stay. And good thing too: he soon catches a thief on his watch, for which he is praised and deployed in a parachute unit—an assignment that thrills him (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1939: 41–48). No other cartoon character, however, was more loved by the children of its day than Norakuro. He came into being when Katō Kenichi, the editor of Boys’ Club, sought a new cartoon for the magazine to revive its sales. Katō approached cartoonist Tagawa Suihō, who had been in the military as a younger man, and proposed the idea of military life through the eyes of a dog soldier (Takamizawa 1991: 131). Though Tagawa had hated his own time in the military, he called upon his impoverished childhood for inspiration and envisioned the character as one who would overcome his humble beginnings to become a brave, happy dog soldier against all odds. Indeed, Tagawa deliberately styled Norakuro as a character to bring hope and encouragement to all the poor and hapless children of his day (Tebbetts 2006: 19, 27)—even down to his name, a composite of “stray dog,” “black,” and “good luck.” Pa pe r B at t l e s

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The cartoon Norakuro debuted with the 1931 new year’s edition of the magazine; an instant hit, it garnered a surprising level of devotion from its fans. Initially, soldier Norakuro wore one star on his uniform, like the single stars new Imperial Army recruits wore on their caps and shoulders. When in the following year he sported two stars, child subscribers congratulated him on his promotion, sending postcards to both the editor’s office and Tagawa’s home. In the story, when Norakuro gets his first leave, he heads out of the barracks with some comrades, who part ways as they head home to visit their families. But as Norakuro does not have a family, he has nowhere to go, and he just stands in the frame looking doleful. So captivating was the illustration that at least one boy reader wrote to the magazine to invite Norakuro to spend his next leave at his home (Takamizawa 1991: 132–135). The first two years of Norakuro cartoons were republished in 1932 in a full-color book titled Norakuro Jōtōhei. Packaged in a bag, it was sold as a luxury-edition children’s manga book for one yen, a substantial price at a time when the monthly household income of the middle class averaged between seventy and eighty yen. It immediately sold 134,000 copies. Having thus reached well beyond the youth magazine market, Norakuro became a household name known and loved by many (Takamizawa 1991: 136). The publisher capitalized on this popularity with stickers and cards, which Kōdansha workers were to give to every child they met. On the backs of these freebies was printed: “Everybody, please see Boys’ Club’s interesting Norakuro!!” Then in 1937 King Records released a Norakuro song, printing postcards with the following lyrics: “Big eyes on a black body, full of cheerfulness and energy, Boys Club’s ‘Norakuro’ always makes everybody laugh” (137–138). Over the next few years, Japanese children sent several tens of thousands of these postcards through the mail. Norakuro’s popularity lasted throughout the decade. In Tagawa’s 1938 comic book version of Suicide Corps Commander Norakuro (Norakuro kesshi taichō), Norakuro was a second lieutenant of the (Japanese) Fierce Dog Regiment at war with the (Chinese) Pig Regiment (see fig. 19). With the exception of plentiful talk of the “delicious Chinese food” that Norakuro kept missing out on, references to China were insulting; for example, all Chinese locations were derogatorily named “pig,” such as Big Pig Mountain, Poor Pig Bridge, and Sweet Pig Village. So, though Norakuro was in essence a humorous children’s cartoon that playfully interwove the life of a lowly dog soldier with war, it nonetheless perpetuated contemporary adult notions of racial superiority, colonization, and war as a just enterprise. 84

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fig. 19. A page from Tagawa Suihō’s 1938 cartoon volume, Norakuro kesshi taichō, features Norakuro leading his soldiers against the (Chinese) Pig Regiment (p. 25). Private collection.

And yet it is important to note that, in contrast to the undertones of omnipotence and superiority found in Japanese adult and youth publications alike, Norakuro’s heroism is continuously undermined by his clumsiness, laziness, and incompetence. His achievements usually result from lucky coincidence rather than skill and talent. For example, in Suicide Corps Commander Norakuro he is reprimanded for planning to eat Chinese food in the middle of the war with China. For his subsequent punishment Norakuro is assigned what he fears might turn into a suicide mission: he is to infi ltrate the enemy camp to learn their strategic plans for the upcoming battle. With a Pig Regiment disguise and a lot of luck, he gleans the information he needs and heads back to his regiment, only to be almost shot by friendly fire on account of the disguise. The story ends with Norakuro throwing away his pig-soldier garb and understanding that now there would be “full-scale war at last” (Tagawa [1938] 1969: 75). In creating Norakuro, Tagawa gave children what he thought they loved: dogs and war games. In its earlier years, Norakuro was marked by abstract expressionism and nonsensical comedy, but as the pressure to align with the militarist ideology of the late 1930s began to affect Tagawa, his work slowly progressed toward political neutrality. Eventually, militaristic overtones took hold of the manga, and after the war Tagawa admitted that in spite of himself he had ended up “in the vanguard of military aggression” (Dionisio 2007: 93).

Norakuro had started out as a critter soldier; a child-cum-soldier that was dear to children’s hearts, namely Peach Boy, or Momotarō, came about in a different manner. Peach Boy’s tale, that of a child who emerged from a plant, was previously known only through long-standing oral tradition, his story told during peach season, particularly to women who were giving birth. The Momotarō tale first saw print sometime between 1716 and 1735—as a children’s story and a picture book published to much acclaim in the cheap, pocket-sized akabon format. During the intense Meiji era (1868–1912), when the government’s key goals were to “enrich the country and strengthen the military” ( fukoku kyōhei), Peach Boy morphed into a militaristic banner carrier as new tales of his adventures were published. In this new iteration the “youth who came from a peach,” together with his companions—a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant—overcomes the devils on Devils’ Island, returning home laden with wonderful treasures (Heringu [Herring] 1988: 190; Antoni 1991). Momotarō’s popularity was such that it was read in Japanese language 86

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classes and sung in music classes (Heringu 1988: 192). Indeed, incorporated into every elementary language textbook until Japan’s defeat in 1945, Momotarō became a fi xture across elementary school subjects, the style of his depiction shifting with the politics of the day—beginning with the SinoJapanese War (152). Despite this ubiquity, it was only in the late 1930s and early 1940s that Momotarō was assigned national significance, its status elevated “to the point where a parody of it would not have been accepted” (Carter 2009: 61). As Japan’s leading children’s story character, Momotarō was the child-crittersoldier incarnate, the fulfillment of the war-game promise. The hero of the first Japanese feature-length animated film, Momotarō: Divine Troops of the Ocean (Momotarō: Umi no Shinhei), Momotarō proceeds, within the running time of the film, from just playing war to actually making war. Film specialist Donald Richie (2005: 253) notes that, when the film was released on 12 April 1945, a press release announced: “Momotarō makes a leap onto the stage of the Greater East-Asia War!” . . . The evil demons speak English” and Momotarō finds a plaque which reads, ‘On a night when the moonlight is bright, there will come from an Eastern land of the Son of Heaven a divine soldier on a white horse [the emperor] who is destined to liberate the people.’ ” Produced by the navy ministry and Shochiku Studios, the film features Peach Boy as “the pure Japanese hero, his grandparents the spirits of ancestors, his companions the ‘liberated’ Asian nations[,] and the monsters, residing on a remote island, the Allied Forces” (Lukas and Marmysz 2009: 132–133; Dower 1986: 253). It starts with four critters—a bear cub, a monkey, a pheasant, and a puppy—singing the Japanese alphabet song “aiueo” as they happily walk through an idyllic landscape. Soon they happen upon four sailors just returned from the war. As one of them is the monkey’s older brother, joyful scenes ensue, during which the older brother tells the little critters stories of his war experiences. After a series of sequences highlights the peaceful, timeless, and loving community, a time lapse catapults the little monkeycum-Peach Boy and his critter friends into adulthood—and the war. The final shot is of Peach Boy, steeled by courage and experience, having come into his own, emerging from battle as a young man. Undoubtedly, what is now referred to as the “Momotarō paradigm” illustrated the wartime antagonism of the “pure Japanese hero” and the “demonic Other,” thus feeding into the Japanese claim to be a “leadership race,” as John Dower (1986: 214) puts it. (It also reinforced the doctrine of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the grand propaganda scheme that promoted, Pa pe r B at t l e s

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under Japanese leadership, the “liberation of Asian countries from Western imperialist powers” and economic coprosperity for member nations.) As a result, Momotarō might indeed function as an archetypical expression of a Japanese attitude toward the foreign, as Klaus Antoni (1991: 167) suggests. Various degrees of militaristic and colonialist undertones do provide a constant hum to one critter-soldier’s story of overcoming immaturity, achieving manhood, and representing nationhood and empire (Carter 2009). Most important for the story I am telling, however, is the core emphasis of the animated fi lm on the potential of war lending itself to play—and of warplaying naturally morphing into war making; of the ease and endearing charm with which little critters turn into critter soldiers; and of war transforming children into adults. Hence, in playing a child’s game of war, Momotarō epitomizes the now ubiquitous character archetype: rather than merely prescribing and reenacting war games, he actually goes to war—from which he emerges, victorious, as a grown man.

“how sad that japan lost the war”—game over? The end of the Asia-Pacific War resulted in a major break with Japanese militarism. With it, the notion of the militarized and militaristic man as the epitome of modern masculinity was so severely compromised that it was formally put to rest (Frühstück and Walthall 2008). From that point on, children, like their adult compatriots, were expected to embrace defeat and pacifism. But retooling the rhetoric of the war years within the chiming notes of pacifism did not come easily. Sociologist Itō Kimio has noted how in the 1950s even children occasionally said things like: “How sad that Japan lost the war” and, when looking at a map, “Before we lost the war, Japan’s borders reached to here.” A child at the time himself, Itō recalls hearing lines like: “In Japan, the highest person was the emperor” (Itō 2004: 155). At the same time, adults shared stories about the horrors of war. The fact that some conveyed enthusiasm and passion in their reminiscences (156) left some children longing for the excitement of a time when Japan was a powerful war machine— indeed, a powerful empire. There was pride in those adult voices; that pride prompted children to hold similar conversations among themselves. For other children—among them the boy who would later become famed story88

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teller and anime-feature filmmaker Miyazaki Hayao—these stories undoubtedly challenged their blossoming commitment to pacifism (Miyazaki 2014; Penney 2013). Such was the ambivalent individual response to the “rallying cry” of peace. As for the establishment response: almost as soon as defeat was declared, and ever more forcefully in the decades thereafter, Japanese children’s books and other print media—along with educational institutions—preached the virtues of pacifism. Of the specific cultural phenomena discussed here, only Momotarō remained a viable entity. At first it was simply omitted from textbooks (Kuwabara 1996: 15); later, a postwar reincarnation told the story of a Momotarō who had overcome both the immaturity of childhood and the challenges of battle to embrace life as a responsible, peace-loving adult (Heringu [Herring] 1988: 164, 195). More broadly, some areas of children’s print culture sharply diminished (or ceased altogether), including anything that smacked of militarism or socialism—essentially, anything that might offend the occupation forces. Those efforts were approached from a range of stances. One was a clear-cut, singular message: a command to self-consciously depart from the “coarseness” and “feudalism” of the war years and instead focus on constructing the “good child” (Itō 2004: 157). New children’s magazines, including Children’s Forum (Kodomo no Hiroba), Fairy Tales (Dōwa), Little Citizens’ World (Shōkokumin Sekai), Galaxy (Ginga), and Children’s Village (Kodomo no Mura) fell into this camp. What constituted that “good child” was not so different from Kōdansha’s wartime “good child” book series for children; the virtues to be nurtured were similar; the difference lay in now encouraging children to grow up to be pacifist, democratic citizens capable of building a pacifist, democratic nation. Notably, the 1950s “war stories” for children rarely featured Japan’s most recent military past. After all, Japan had been defeated, so patriotic thoughts of the war would be ambivalent at best. The one war story that could not be turned into a children’s game, not in Japan at least, was that of the atom bombs. Though the experience of the atom bombs, together with the defeat itself, made embracing war stories and war games complicated, that complication eased in the decades that followed. Some children’s publications continued producing war stories of one kind or another, but conveying a more ambivalent and ambiguous message. Such material found a ready audience in boys who, having loved play and game versions of the military realm during the war, were not eager to leave it behind. These boys were rewarded with Pa pe r B at t l e s

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several new kinds of war stories. For one, postwar books and magazines reintroduced fictional characters, not primarily from the Imperial Army, but from the premodern samurai world. By thus displacing the concept of combat from the recent historical context, such publications worked to remove any association boy readers might have made between the characters in the stories they read and the male family members who killed, fought, and possibly died in the recent war. As soon as historical samurai drama ( jidaigeki) could be aired on television, a samurai-drama boom ensued, watched by millions of children and adults (Standish 2005; Itō 2004: 160–161). Another strategy by which to bellow the war cry in a different guise was to resituate “war stories” within the American Wild West. Starting in 1950, children, boys in particular, were fascinated by new television series such as The Lone Ranger (1949–1957), Gunsmoke (1955–1975), and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin (1954–1959), to name but a few.3 Moreover, children’s magazines shifted away from the common, sparsely illustrated format to the manga format, then called e-monogatari. Such e-monogatari brimmed with espionage, martial arts, sword fights, adventures, and battles. The most important new angle may have been an interesting twist on the new samurai approach discussed above. Numerous comic books filtered wargame narratives through a futuristic lens—one marked by then-current or even utopian technologies—essentially inserting robot characters into an Asia-Pacific War environment. In sharp contrast to the sweet and mild humor of a great deal of wartime children’s cartoons, several new comics mercilessly mocked at least some Imperial Army soldiers, to the extent of featuring them as mentally deranged. One of these was Robot, Private Third Class (Robotto Santōhei).4 Its creator, the cartoon artist Maetani Koremitsu (1970), mimicked Charlie Chaplin’s antiwar sensibilities as a means of devising a series that, though an expression of Maetani’s rage against the AsiaPacific War, was still enjoyable to viewers. Originally published in Boys’ Club in 1955, the popular series has been republished many times since, starting with a twelve-volume set in 1958. Interestingly, Maetani had been a propaganda artist for Tōhō (Eastern Way Company), which operated essentially under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the military (Kushner 2007: 73), until he was drafted in 1939. The popularity of these variously themed tales was such that 1960 saw the publication of a twenty-volume collection titled War Records for Boys (Shōnen Senki; Nakar 2003). This collection included a reincarnated Norakuro. In 1958, the cartoon Norakuro’s Autobiography began running in the October 90

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issue of the magazine Maru, kicking off a Norakuro revival boom; in 1967, the publication of The Norakuro Complete Manga Works triggered a second Norakuro boom. Its popularity prevailed for decades, so much so that it was republished unchanged in 1969, its considerable fan base now adults who had been children during the war. Norakuro’s creator, Tagawa Suihō, noted the reprint’s value as an object of nostalgia—without in any way acknowledging its militaristic and racist content (Tagawa [1938] 1969, n.p.). On 9 July 1970, the Yomiuri Shinbun launched the Norakuro television series—which aired on Fuji TV on Mondays at 7 pm—declaring that its character nurtured “the bonds of friendship while playing war” (23). Though the newspaper did raise the issue that televising Norakuro would entail the risk of bringing back the militarism that motivated its inception, it readily assured readers that such tendencies would be avoided in the television version, and that the military would appear only as the human relations backdrop for friendship, trust, and other commonsensical values. At the height of the struggle against the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, the year 1960 saw the publication of the monthly magazine Illustrated War History (Gahō Senki).5 The first edition, of fift y thousand copies, was designed for an audience of elementary school boys. In 1966 another publication, Shōnen Magajin—one of three dominant boys’ weekly magazines—increased its weekly printing to 1 million copies, triggering the “war story boom” with special feature articles on military matters. According to boy readers of that era, these special articles were awaited with great anticipation and read with enthusiasm, forming a community of child readers that, at least one media history scholar found, were enthusiastic about war (Takahashi 2004: 186). Zero Fighter Hayato (Zero-sen Hayato, 1964) was the first Japanese animated fi lm series following the Asia-Pacific War to use footage from the conflict at sea—from Hawaii to Malaya—as a backdrop; in doing so, it marked the full return of World War II, in both Asia and Europe, as an appropriate setting for the realm of entertainment. First created by Tsuji Naoki as a manga story, Zero Fighter Hayato was launched in 1963 in the boys’ magazine Boys’ King (Shōnen Kingu) and later turned into a forty-oneepisode television series that began airing on Fuji TV on 21 January 1964. Rather than focusing on maps and on the war efforts employed on the ground—a common strategy of its predecessors—this show instead emphasized technology, pilots’ skills, and air battles in open skies. As the series was heavily marketed and enormously popular, its star soon appeared in Pa pe r B at t l e s

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association with a wide range of commercial products, from the Thermos to Indian instant curry (Zero-sen Hayato: Kishū senhō no maki 1964, vol. 1, no. 2). The story begins in 1942, when a group of thirty-five experienced soldiers are summoned from the front line to form the Bomb Squad (bakufū-tai), the first unit to use the newly developed Zero fi ghter plane. (The name is short for the famous Mitsubishi A6M fighter plane, which had been manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and used by the Imperial Navy from 1940 to 1945.) Centered on a young pilot named Hayato Azuma, Zero-sen Hayato chronicles his squadron’s adventures over the South Seas against an unidentified enemy. The leading characters, Hayato and Isshiki Kyōgo, are friendly aviation rivals who fly countless daredevil missions. In the process, we learn that Hayato’s father, an experienced fighter pilot himself, had died when shot down during a fight with a certain King Satan. Hayato vows to in turn shoot down King Satan, a goal he eventually achieves. Ultimately, Hayato’s courage and intuition save his squadron and the base, and the story ends with a shot of a crystal-clear sky over the Pacific. Even though Zero-sen Hayato in effect references lost battles of the AsiaPacific War—after all, 1942 was the year of the Battle of Midway, from which the Japanese Imperial Navy never recovered—it does so in purely technical terms. For example, occasionally during the series the strength of the squadron is lauded, as when Hayato or other military men rattle off lines such as: “Five aircraft carriers, four battleships, three heavy battleships, and two hundred fighter jets. To that number my squadron added one hundred planes” (Zero-sen Hayato 1964: 11). By restricting its plot development to the particulars of attacks and counterattacks, Zero-sen Hayato celebrates individual pilots’ skills and courage without directly addressing the ideological motivations and political direction of the war; moreover, it does not question either the legitimacy of the war or the implications of Hayato’s squadron’s pursuit of mass death and destruction. Instead the series embraces the joys of employing hard-won technical skills, the thrill of speed, and the power of military machines. In contrast to most wartime children’s publications, the glorification unfolds without naming nation or empire. Popular cultural renderings of aerial combat were particularly suitable to such perspectives—technology and individuality were portrayed as more important and lent the stories an aloofness that distanced the publication from associations with the Asia-Pacifi c War without questioning its justness. The great majority of these stories 92

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privileged aerial combat and did not question the affirmative perspective on the Asia-Pacific War, which was then still dominant in mainstream society (Nakar 2003; Penney 2009). But perspectives uncompromisingly critical of militaristic children’s culture were occasionally printed as well. A representative of the Japanese Association for the Protection of Children (Nihon kodomo o mamoru kai), for instance, wrote the following in an article about weekly children’s magazines: “During the last two, three years, children’s magazines have increasingly printed war- and military-related content. There is a boom of such things that is led by weekly magazines, stories that make the Imperial Army, the new weapons of the Self-Defense Forces, and related items appear cool” (Itō 2004: 167). A representative of a municipal research institute for education even mused, regarding Yanagita Kunio’s recollection of his childhood at the time of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, that adults were all done with war, whereas children did “not share such realism. They are attracted to war on television and in manga.” This, of course, was the first postwar generation to which several magazines offered war themes. One reader, an elementary school boy, wrote the following in an essay titled “I and War” (“Boku to sensō”): “I like war. I mean, I hate actual war but I like fi lms and books about it. War at sea, which I hate most, the Battle of Midway, or of Sabo Island . . . because those are battles that marked the moment when the Imperial Army began to lose. I hate those wars where the Japanese military was defeated. I do not mind those in which the U.S. military was defeated.” Less than a year after the Association of Consumer Groups began a campaign in 1967 to ban “dangerous toys,” Boys’ Sunday (Shōnen Sandē), another new boys’ magazine, furthered the shift in how adults viewed militarist boys’ culture. Its 24 March 1968 issue introduced a series of peculiar prizes. The first prize was a uniform, sword, and some other paraphernalia modeled on those of the Imperial Navy. The second prize was a similar collection, including, for instance, a flag and a toy helmet and pistol, this time based on the U.S. Army. The third prize was the same, modeled on the German Army— continuing to a total of nine such prizes, all “collections” promoted as being closely modeled on the originals. The issue generated such a strong negative public response that the magazine was discontinued later that year. Itō (2004: 168–170) has noted that this incident marked the beginning of the end of war stories in popular manga magazines. Indeed, the scandal was indicative of a larger paradigm shift. By the end of the 1960s, with the Pa pe r B at t l e s

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campaign to ban “dangerous toys” in full swing, a new generation of former manga readers protested the Vietnam War, resented the conservative Japanese establishment, and no longer accepted affirmative stories of World War II. War stories for children became further dissociated from World War II when official pacifism became socially mainstreamed in the 1970s (Oguma 2009: 172). The attempt to purge affirmative perspectives of the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy’s roles in the Asia-Pacific War from children’s and youth’s popular culture was largely successful—Kobayashi Yoshinori’s manga On War (Sensōron, 1998) and Itō Shunya’s fi lm Pride: The Fateful Moment (Puraido: Unmei no toki, 1998) being two of a few notable exceptions. Subsequently, the human protagonists of past grand-scale violent conflicts gave way to ever-more potent monsters and cyborgs. For instance, since the 1956 Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, Godzilla has variously symbolized nuclear weapons, modern Japan’s amnesia regarding its imperialist past, natural disasters, and most recently, in Godzilla Resurgence (Shin Godzilla 2016), Japan’s never-ending postwar period (see Frühstück 2007: 117; Tsutsui 2004). Since 1974, in a series of animated and live-action fi lms titled Space Battleship Yamato (Uchū senkan Yamato), the remains of famed Imperial Navy battleship Yamato is evoked as an outer shell of the space battleship. By and large, however, wars and war games have become almost entirely dissociated from past and current wars and are preferably fought in the distant future and in outer space; war games that children and adults play today are more often played as electronic games than in the field (Hatsumi 2012).

virtual victories in japanese video game contexts At the 1981 Tokyo International Toy Trade Fair, five companies featured a number of new games that caused a stir among critics. Some commentators registered their unease about the entry of a strange new technology and game scenario: war. Oblivious of the existence (and critiques) of war games since the 1870s, they noted that war was a serious matter and thus inappropriate for child’s play. Had Japan not, they seemed to imply, worked hard for decades to rebuild itself as a pacifist nation? And did these new games not corrupt that very effort? Other critics were not bothered by the character of these games per se, or by the age of their prospective players; they did, however, deem the backdrop of actual Asia-Pacific War battles distasteful. (The games in ques94

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tion were based on Asia-Pacific War campaigns, including the Southern Advance that Japan had pursued into the British, French, and Dutch colonies of Southeast Asia beginning in 1940; and the Battle of Okinawa, which marked the Allied invasion of Japan from early April to mid-June 1945.) And the Asahi Shinbun (1981) pointed out what the paper took to be the beginning of yet another trend: not only had an adult concern entered the world of child’s play but also the reverse was true—toys had entered the adult world. In 1983, two years after the fair, Nintendo introduced a video game machine called “family computer” ( famikon) that heightened the popularity of “home video games.” Over the course of the next decade, while attracting players across a wide age range, video games became the most-wanted toys for boys (Sakamoto 2000: 61–62).6 Another decade or so later, the Japanese Computer Entertainment Suppliers’ Association (CESA 2015)—which distinguishes between five different game categories, each with distinctive content and user profiles—found that, of all the family games, mobile-phone-based games were by far the most popular, followed by personal computer games that include online games. (Note that, owing to the characteristics of the Japanese language, Japanese mobile phones from their inception required a word-processing engine.) In the years since, mobile phones have become multimedia devices used to create, exchange, and retrieve visual, textual, and audible information—all technologies that lend themselves well to video-game-playing (Kusahara 2006: 184). As of 2014, more than 90 percent of the Japanese population between the ages of three and fifty-nine have played video games; of the same demographic, 73 percent play (or used to play) regularly. About 90 percent of Japanese elementary school children possess video game machines for their own exclusive use—with video game use on the rise, particularly among girls. Furthermore, 77.8 percent of all Japanese older than thirteen own a mobile phone; about 30 percent play games on it (CESA 2014: 6). As for content, Japan’s market is also heavily differentiated from other parts of the video-game-playing world (Grau de Pablos 2014). The Japanese Computer Entertainment Suppliers’ Association cited above (2015) found that family games—some of which are mobile-phone-based—are by far the most popular. Japanese children in particular prefer role-playing games, sports games, racing games, and other casual games; they tend to stay away from war games (taisen kakutō) and shooting games. Instead of blood and gore, the once-globally-successful Japanese role-playing games—which outside East Asia have been relegated to the category of historical curiosities— remain hugely successful in the Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese Pa pe r B at t l e s

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markets. Furthermore, Japanese gamers with an interest in such games— mostly those between the ages of twenty and thirty-five—tend to be older than their counterparts in other countries (CESA 2015: 95–101).7 That said, it is important to note that, in many cases, video games are truly global productions with respect to both their software and hardware. Many are played around the world after being localized, a process that typically begins with the translation of the text but is often more extensive and may involve changing art assets, creating new packaging and manuals, recording new audio, transforming hardware, and cutting out whole portions of the game owing to differing cultural sensitivities—as well as replacing such content. War game imports, just like other games, are frequently edited for the Japanese market with a range of criteria in mind. For example, in the Japanese version of a game called Fallout 3, a weapon whose original name was “Fat Man”—the name given to the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945—was renamed “Nuka Launcher.” In the first-person shooter game Homefront, all references to Kim Jong Il and North Korea were removed. “High-impact violence” was also eliminated from the Japanese versions of numerous other firstperson shooter games, including Resident Evil 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Bulletstorm, Gears of War 3, Dead Island, and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Much like censorship of other media, criteria for the modifications of games for different locales are often based on unstable political sensibilities and porous notions of what constitutes “too extreme” or “too realistic” violence, sometimes involving a war scenario that hits too close to home. A prime example is Six Days in Fallujah, a game that never made it to the market for such reasons. It was developed by Atomic Games—a company partly owned by In-Q-Tel and which receives its base funding from the CIA—and was slated to be published in 2009 by Konami Digital Publishers, a leading Japanese global developer, publisher, and manufacturer of electronic entertainment properties. As its scenario, the game uses the Second Battle of Fallujah, fought by American, Iraqi, and British armed forces from 7 November to 23 December 2004, in which about two thousand people died, the vast majority of whom were civilians. In the game, the player directs the “shooting” from the shoulder perspective of a U.S. Marine. The missions, which take place within a time frame of six days, were distilled from information provided by veterans of the actual battle. Apparently, the game also utilized otherwise classified military photographs and satellite shots. In addition to this game, Atomic Games has also worked on a version intended for training soldiers—the company has sub96

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stantial experience in producing similar simulation software for, in its words, “leading military and secret service establishments.” Konami had advertised the game as combining “authentic weaponry, missions, and combat set against the gripping story of the U.S. Marines on the ground.” According to the Asahi Shinbun and a range of mainstream and tech media outlets, Konami later withdrew plans to publish the game, apparently under the weight of protests from U.S. peace activists, veterans, and family members of military personnel who died in the Iraq War (Associated Press 2009; Ortutay 2009). From this response one might conclude that, even if it’s “just a game,” games that use as their setting the pain of others, preferably when suffered well in the past, are more marketable to the mainstream. The specificities of Six Days in Fallujah aside, critics of such games have not narrowly contemplated the sensibilities regarding a particular war game’s specific scenario; nor have they more broadly considered such games’ impact on players’ minds and behavior. Instead, critics have raised a number of concerns about particular video games’ unique characteristics. Ian Bogost (2007: ix), game designer and holder of a joint professorship in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and in Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, suggests that video games constitute a “new domain for persuasion.” The “procedural rhetoric” in video games constitutes the “art of persuasion through rulebased representations and interactions rather than the spoken word, writing, images, or moving pictures.” Video games, thus, are not just played by their players—they are performed, by both children and adults. A range of critics have identified specific tools of such persuasion and procedural rhetoric, and have made suggestions on what they might mean for players. For example, in virtual war games the “how” of the killing overpowers the “why” of the killing (Stahl 2010; Subrahmanian and Dickerson 2009). Elizabeth Losh (2014) has pointed out that games do not question the justness of the war played. Another concern: transferring the destructive components of a battle to the virtual world of video games strips it of the concept of absolute destruction; while killing in actual battle is permanent, the format of virtuality dissolves the very consequence of such battles—down to the point that players can stop and remove themselves from the battle at any time (Kaczmarek 2010: 30, 46–47). And while video games depict death, “death in a video game is in many ways the exact opposite of actual death: temporary, repeatable, in most senses meaningless, since a character is reborn immediately after he ‘dies,’ and in any case doesn’t exist” (Winslow-Yost 2015: 29). Pa pe r B at t l e s

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There are probably no more powerful believers in the persuasion of video war games than the U.S. weapons industry and the military establishment, which have become tightly interconnected in a “military-industrial-mediaentertainment network” (Derian 2009). In the United States today, weapons industry representatives seem to think that children who play war—especially with weapons, whether imitation or virtual—are more likely to become staunch, weapon-owning advocates of the constitution’s Second Amendment (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”). The weapons industry also appreciates the persuasive power of video games for building support for the military and war—to the extent of encouraging individuals’ aspirations to join the armed forces. Accordingly, the U.S. Army, too, has invested heavily in developing and distributing free games, such as America’s Army, whose target audience is nine- to twelve-year-olds (Halter 2006: xxi; Mcintire 2013). This is in stark contrast to Japan, where only a very didactic video game has become available on the Ministry of Defense website. Amid such efforts, legal experts, particularly in the United States, ponder new legislation to control video game violence (Barton 2014), while scores of scientists in a range of disciplines heatedly debate the various impacts on children’s minds and behavior in a culture so deeply imbued with violent video games and the promotion of guns (Science 2005). For example, based on metaanalyses—fresh analyses of a large number of previous studies’ data—of both short-term experimental studies and cross-sectional correlational studies, leaders in the field report that exposure to violent video games can produce significant effects, including higher levels of aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, and physiological arousal, as well as lower levels of prosocial behavior. They also urge us to acknowledge that, over the past half century, mass media, including video games, have become important socializers of children. In addition, observational learning theory has evolved into social-cognitive information-processing models that explain how what a child observes in any venue has both short-term and long-term influences on the child’s behaviors and cognitions (Weber, Ritterfeld, and Mathiak 2006). Yet the results of meta-analyses are unlikely to change either the critics’ views or the public’s perception that the issue is undecided, for a few reasons: some studies have yielded null effects, many people are concerned that the implications of the research threaten freedom of expression, and the identities or selfinterests of many are closely tied to violent video games (Huesmann 2010). In 98

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2005, and again in 2015, the American Psychological Association declared that “violent video game play is linked to increased aggression in players,” an announcement that was promptly followed by an open letter signed by about two hundred scientists and professors objecting to the declaration as “misleading and alarmist” (Winslow-Yost 2015: 30). Meanwhile, aside from the initial consternation about video war games discussed at the outset of this section, none of these findings and debates have caused much concern in Japan (Sakamoto 2000: 67).8 And why should they have? Early on, when video games first raised concerns, the 1980s were still a time of “economic miracle,” when everything seemed possible for a lot of young Japanese. The world of children appeared largely in order—if anything, too much so. The 1980s were also the time of Japan’s rise as a globally leading entertainment producer, signified not least by the growing masses of children all over the world playing Japanese games, seeing Japanese animated films, and wholeheartedly embracing Japanese popular culture, whether cute, cool, or both (McGray 2002; Condry 2013; Yano 2013; Wolf 2015; Allison 2006; Iwabuchi 2002). Besides, within Japanese popular culture—as well as beyond, in the years following—it was not war games that occupied an important position but ambiguously and ambivalently gendered, often cute and adorable, cyborgish fantasy figures, complete with superpowers and squeaky voices. The less-than-fervent Japanese interest in studying the relationship between video game play and children’s behavior and cognition might result from two additional conditions. Japanese scholars confidently point to one: the scarcity of violent crime in Japan (Sakamoto 2000: 66). Indeed, Japan’s violent-crime rate is among the lowest in the world. Where there is no violent crime, so the logic goes, one need not seek its cause. The other may well have been the low profile of the Japanese military, as well as the almost complete reluctance—by the political class, educational institutions, and the entertainment industry— to glorify it. More on that below. Instead, in Japan—and in East Asia more generally—concerns about frequent video game playing, as well as studies about the games’ possible impact on children’s behavior and well-being, were prompted by the often-reported increase in a broader range of children’s social problems. In other words, while neurologists, pedagogues, social critics, media specialists, and representatives of the huge gaming entertainment industry in the United States and elsewhere have resurrected older arguments about the interconnections between children, play, and war, experts in Japan, Korea, China, and other parts of East Asia have become much more broadly concerned about the assumed socially destructive potential of electronic games in Pa pe r B at t l e s

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general—as well as their impact on children’s cognitive and behavioral sensibilities (Seidl 2007: 20). For example, some South Korean and Chinese parents enroll their children in special boot camps to help them overcome their “cyberspace addiction” (French 2002; Fackler 2007; Sang-Hun 2010). Accordingly, Chinese and other East Asian psychologists have begun to study the connections between adolescents’ “Internet addiction” and depression (Cao and Su 2006). In short, in Japan and increasingly in other parts of East Asia, video games have come under scrutiny in relation to all kinds of aberrant child behavior—behaviors that do not primarily concern violence, aggression, or militaristic ambitions.9 The other condition that shapes the debate is the disconnection of the military from the entertainment industry. Until the early 1990s, for most of Japan’s children and adults alike, war and the military were largely out of sight and, in many cases, out of mind as well. After all, Article 9 of the constitution—which has outlawed war as a means of settling international disputes—had been firmly in place since 1947 and had every indication of remaining so. For decades the Japanese population had reluctantly tolerated the Self-Defense Forces, unenthusiastically acknowledging them as a noncombat entity endowed with no legal framework for deploying abroad. Then, against the backdrop of the relative economic decline of Japan since 1989, a new challenge appeared in the arena of international politics: around the world, the Persian Gulf War (1990–1991) reframed the security conversation. In addition, the introduction of CNN’s live news broadcasts from the front lines resulted in the war being referred to as a “video game war.” Indeed, at a press conference in February 1991, General Norman Schwarzkopf, then commander of all coalition forces, felt compelled to remind Americans that socalled Operation Desert Storm “was not a video game” (Stahl 2010: 91). In saying this he was speaking to the first video game generation. In keeping with its constitutionally codified pacifism, Japan refused to send combat troops to the Persian Gulf War; instead, it contributed $12 billion to the effort. The resulting international, and particularly American, criticism of this stance triggered a series of debates within Japan. At stake were the future viability of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), the probability of changing Article 9 of the constitution, and Japan’s potential stature as a world player—in both economic as well as military terms (Frühstück 2007: 9). Subsequent legislation permitted the SDF to participate in peacekeeping efforts, beginning in 1992, as well as in international disaster relief, beginning in 1998. General Schwarzkopf’s words for America’s youth notwithstanding, in the eyes of Japan’s youth war 100

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had indeed been nothing but games: mere entertainment, simulation, or, in the case of SDF troops, training with no expectation of real-life enactment. In fact, in first-life scenarios (what some people call “real life”), war had been an object of abjection never to be engaged in again. In the next chapter I examine how the Self-Defense Forces work to convince potential recruits and their communities that military service is really (like) a video game—clear, clean, precise, and continuous. Here it must suffice to note that most Japanese were convinced that the only Japanese youngsters who had been successfully recruited into the SDF were those who lacked the education and skills to secure nonmilitary employment—a scenario that applied especially to those who lacked the economic means to attend a good university. Indeed, the SDF recruited without the help of a “victory culture” (Engelhardt [1995] 2007), which could in a house-of-mirrors style infinitely reinforce the messages of proud armed forces engaging in just and necessary wars. In fact, the widely held public opinion of service members was that the vast majority were youngsters with a desire to use a few years in the SDF to acquire special skills or, perhaps, to straighten out their lives—a perception corroborated by most recruits and service members. The truth was that, for almost seven decades, SDF members have joined the armed forces without expecting combat to be part of their duties. Were the reality to become one of war rather than just “fun and games,” the Japan Times claimed in 2015, the SDF would likely see a mass exodus from their ranks (Brasor 2015; see also Frühstück 2007). In any case, an insufficient number of recruits proved willing to make a lifetime career out of the military. For one thing, the Self-Defense Forces were shrouded in almost complete silence in the public sphere: independent social scientists would not touch them, and nationwide mainstream media kept coverage of the SDF to an absolute minimum. These conventions governing military-media relations were primarily the result of the long shadow of wartime total military control of the media—and had been honed over decades against the backdrop of the postwar Self-Defense Forces’ ambiguous legal and political status. •

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In these first two chapters, I have described how children have played war from the late nineteenth century to today. I have described a number of perspectives on how children have practiced, normalized, and naturalized the alleged, and occasionally discursively refractured, connections between war Pa pe r B at t l e s

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and war play—be it in the field, on paper, or on play stations, computers, and mobile phones. It has been more than a hundred years since Japanese newspapers first remarked upon the frequent and, to them, disturbing occurrence of children’s spontaneous and self-organized war games in Japanese alleys and along riverbeds. In the generation after that initial 1870s coverage, reporters, journalists, and artists announced, drew, photographed, and described children’s mass games, which were performed under the command of Imperial Army members as children’s replays at home of the ongoing Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars abroad. Then, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, mainstream publishers increasingly propagated a range of such play opportunities—in children’s books, magazines, and games—in order to encourage children to mimic the advance of Imperial Army soldiers across an expanding empire in Asia. A contextualized examination of such war games reveals that the child’s desire to play war games has often been carefully and forcefully created in an increasingly intimate collaboration between the military and school administrations, two pillars of the nation- and empire-building efforts that began in the late nineteenth century, grew increasingly intimate during the first half of the twentieth century and then abruptly ended with Japan’s defeat in 1945. At stake was the creation of a modern childhood, as well as that concept’s intrinsic connection to the will and ability to make war through the continuous reconfiguring of war as child’s play. The conflicting claims of the day were that, on the one hand, children were to be raised freely, and on the other, children shared an innate and universal pleasure in war games. If indeed children freely engaged in war games, so the underlying logic went, the very nature of war was reconfirmed—as was perhaps its continuous and universal justness as well. A range of institutions and adult contemporaries, however, never quite certain that such assumptions were sufficient, worked to engage, mobilize, and, paradoxically, pacify children via their playful engagement in battles. In such roles, children have simulated war-making as much as they have been stimulated to do so. That children’s war games were intimately embedded within aggressive state propaganda and mass mobilization efforts relied on the ever closer alignment of the creative class—and the educational establishment—with the state’s militaristic and imperialist pursuits. Children have relished, educators have molded, and authorities have simultaneously feared and exploited for ideological reasons the capacity of war 102

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games to instill in children’s minds the sense that they are “playing with the world”—to conceive of their play as a “play with power,” as a matter of taking and exercising control. In some instances, the emphasis has been on the games’ goal of controlling a physical, paper, or virtual battlefield. In others, the question of how to control the child took center stage: children were envisioned as both vulnerable and wild—as in need of protection as of control. The proponents of war games (which were disguised as play) aimed to accomplish the militarization of children and, by extension, society at large, in a number of ways. Playing war allowed children to learn the order of “continuous war” that Carl von Clausewitz ([1832–1834] 1989) believed to be the defining element of human history, irrefutably in us. Children’s war games mobilized, conditioned, and pacified children. They encouraged children to collapse war games and war and, at the same time, dissociate militarism from the will to serve. While such games never completely disappeared, Japanese media today see little reason to worry about children engaging in the bloodless battle games they play, fighting in cyberspace for virtual victories in scenarios situated in the future, not the past; fought by cyborgs, not by identifiable human enemies; in environments typically detached from current political conditions and scenarios. Along with their other substantial distinctions, electronic war games do not primarily thrive on their interconnections to nationalism and militarism. In contrast to the era of nation building and imperialism, today the nation-state is no longer explicitly evoked. And yet the story of “continuous war” prevails, entrenched as it is in the close relations—across national boundaries—between the entertainment industry and the military-industrial complex in the production of present-day war games for both the training of service members and the entertainment of children. Children’s war games once served as an arena for establishing and reproducing two concepts: war as an inherently human endeavor; and children, particularly boys, as being always already (and thus inherently) soldiers, willing and able to defend their country in battle. Playing war, adult commentators have imagined, would inevitably lead to the will and ability to make war. Parallel mechanisms that deployed children not as figures of future war but as figures embodying innocence and peace were plentiful. But whether children are seen as emblems of war or peace, both conceptions of the child on the metaphorical battlefield have reinforced the notion, and the specter, of war as an inherently human activity—with no end in sight. Pa pe r B at t l e s

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pa r t i i

Picturing War

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chapter 3

The Moral Authority of Innocence

proliferating images In the previous chapters I examined visual and verbal rhetoric around war games that promoted or questioned the figure of the child as always already a soldier. Beginning with Japan’s victorious wars against China in 1895 and Russia in 1905, a competing figure of the child made a powerful appearance on woodblock prints, a range of illustrations, and photographs: that of the child as the embodiment of innocence and peace. John Dower (2008) noted images of children on a small number of woodblock prints designed as propagandistic “war reportage” intended for an adult audience, “each depicting that which its artist envisaged as beautiful and heroic in modern war.” On most of these dramatic militaristic tableaux, disciplined soldiers look down from on high. Officers strike dramatic poses, swords held aloft. Troops advance, military flags flutter, foes retreat. In one instance a certain Captain Higuchi is depicted “clutching a Chinese child found abandoned in the battlefield” (see fig. 20). In looking at the print with present-day sensibilities, we might assume this image depicts the rescue of a toddler by a military man—and yet the child’s face is turned away from the viewer, and so we cannot know its feelings. On the soldier’s arm it serves only as an accessory to enhance the soldier’s ferocity in battle and his mastery of combat (Dower 2008). While this print was just one product of the era’s emerging propaganda machine, the Sino-Japanese and the Russo-Japanese Wars set off a proliferation of photographs of war and soldiers for public and private consumption. The Photographic Unit of the Imperial Army produced five thousand photographs of the Russo-Japanese War alone—sequences of troops 107

fig. 20. Captain Higuchi (1895) by Mizuno Toshikata in a scene from the Sino-Japanese War. Printed with the kind permission of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

firing their weapons, expansive views of vast numbers of troops advancing, detached images of the latest machinery and military equipment, and the occasional shot of the emperor reviewing the troops from a safe distance— often while mounted on a white stallion. At home, desiring their portrait, uniformed men frequented photo studios in unprecedented numbers. The Imperial Army Communications Department made sure that both kinds of photographs—those of large troop formations of anonymous masses of men, and individual men in military uniform either alone or surrounded by family in civilian clothes—circulated among the population. Many made it onto postcards and into the Illustrated Magazine of Military Affairs (Gunji Gahō, vol. 2 [1904]), the Photographic Magazine of the Country at War (Sengoku Shashin Gahō, vol. 5 [1904]), and other illustrated magazines and journals. War photographs, as well as other visual renderings and enactments of war, did not effectively enter the home until after the Manchurian Incident in 1931, when the news media “took the lead in promoting the war,” and the “publishing and entertainment industries volunteered in cooperating with army propagandists, helping to mobilize the nation behind the military occupation of Northeast China” (Young 1998: 56). The Great Album of the Imperial Japanese Army (Teikoku Rikugun Dai-shashin-shū), for instance, was distributed as a supplement to the 1 November 1933 issue of the magazine Boys’ Club (Shōnen Kurabu). Included as well in this issue was a new kind of war photograph, one that focused on the human element of war and emphasized its emotional aspects rather than simply the sheer force and mass of the military machine. Photography facilitated the familiarization and normalization of war via another conduit as well: family photo albums, in which household members posed within stylized war settings. Some parents submitted to magazine photo competitions portraits of their children dressed in military garb and wielding toy weapons. One such photograph, ascribed to Yamagami Entarō and titled The Commander of Our House, first appeared in the October 1939 issue of the elegant magazine Home Life (Hōmu Raifu) published by the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbun Press (see fig. 21). Another, by Kobayashi Sadayo, first appeared in the November 1939 issue of the same magazine (fig. 22). Photographic iconography has long been used as a tool in attributing and evoking particular sentiments in both the social and the political realms. The drawings and narratives depicting children as, and with, soldiers effectively did the same. Portraits of children holding toy rifles or bayonets— T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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fig. 21. Yamagami Entarō’s The Commander of Our House, published in Home Life (Hōmu Raifu, October 1939). Source: Tsuganesawa 2006: 152. Printed with the kind permission of Kashiwa Shobō.

fig. 22. Kobayashi Sadayo’s photograph in the November 1939 issue of Home Life (Hōmu Raifu). Source: Tsuganesawa 2006: 137. Printed with the kind permission of Kashiwa Shobō.

stern-faced, at attention, or concentrating on “rifle practice”—insinuate an almost inherent affinity between soldiers and children. Photographs of children dressed and posed as soldiers—or, indeed, posing with soldiers—were designed, I argue, not only to imply a natural, perhaps inevitable, transformation from one to the other, but also to suggest assimilation and interchangeability between the two. Such photographs of children in uniform, shot by family members or professional photojournalists, occasionally made it onto magazine covers as well. The cover image on the 2 March 1938 photo magazine Asahi Graph (Asahi Gurafu, vol. 30, no. 9), for instance, shows a boy in a samurai warrior costume flanked by two other boys in modern military uniforms (see fig. 23). The boys are named “the midget heroes of the National Foundation Festival,” celebrated on the eleventh of February since 1873. The large-print title asks, “Plane or antiaircraft gun?” The contrast between cover image and photographs placed throughout the magazine is striking. It is left to the reader to establish a connection between the photographs of Japanese children dressed up as “soldiers” on the occasion of a festival “at home” in mainland Japan and the monotone series of photographs featuring unidentifiable Japanese (adult) soldiers at war within the barren landscapes of China. Ironically, the concept of the child as the embodiment of innocence and peace became particularly prominent after 1931—when Japan invaded northeast China, established Manchukuo, and stepped up the rhetoric of nation and empire building. This prominence increased again after 1939, when the Japanese regime held large parts of China firmly in its grip. Many publishers, pedagogues, and policy makers conceptualized children, on the one hand, as uncivilized—even frightening—when engaging in unruly behavior, including self-organized war games; they increasingly viewed children as in need of education and discipline, especially through military-style exercises and war games strictly choreographed by military men and teachers. At the same time, however, they also perceived children as being in touch with their feelings, inherently innocent, vulnerable, natural, and malleable. In the eyes of many representatives of education, politics, and the publishing world, children’s very status as such creatures predestined them to simultaneously lend moral authority to war and embody future peace. The proliferation of images of children with soldiers was as much symptom as vehicle in this operation.

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fig. 23. The Midget Heroes of the National Foundation Festival on the cover of the 2 March 1938 issue of the photo magazine Asahi Graph (Asahi Gurafu). Private collection.

the “emotional capital” of children Children, I argue, came to embody what I call “emotional capital,” and were readily utilized within an emotionally charged field. “Emotional capital” is akin to Pierre Bourdieu’s “economic capital” vis-à-vis “social” and “cultural capital.” Bourdieu proposed that capital can take on three guises: “economic capital” is immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalized in the form of property rights; “cultural capital” is convertible, under certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of educational qualifications; and “social capital” is made up of social obligations, which is convertible, under certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of a title of nobility. “Emotional capital” comprises the emotions attributed to children and the emotions that adults are expected to have in response to children and representations of the child, including pictures of children and objects associated with children and childhood sensibilities. In other words, “emotional capital” signifies two things: the assumption that children are politically innocent, morally pure, and endowed with authentic feelings; and the expectation that adults will respond to the sight of children with a specific, predictable set of emotions. Emotional capital has been primarily employed through the unapologetic insinuation of sentiments like sympathy, empathy, friendship, familiarity, and gratitude. In this way, children’s vulnerability, innocence, and malleability—all considered innate characteristics—were enlisted in Japan in order to offer a sense of redemption to soldiers and to offer a form of appeasement to children and the home-front population—indeed, in order to generate a host of emotional and, ultimately, political responses in a variety of readers, viewers, and listeners. To understand just how the figure of the child conveyed messages about the rightness, goodness, and inevitability of not only the wars discussed here but also of war itself, we must examine what kinds of emotions were stirred, cultivated, and borrowed from the intimate sphere so that they could be imposed on and tied to the nation and empire or, at least, to the children of that nation and empire. By the 1930s, configurations rarely seen before were developed into narrative and visual conventions across different old and new media formats, appearing more and more often in children’s visual and textual culture. At the same time, the focus of these compositions of children with soldiers moved away from the soldiers’ heroism so prevalent in woodblock prints, like the one described above, in favor of depicting children’s sweetness and inno114

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cence—both of which were substantially manipulated. Collectively, such configurations evoke intimacies and similarities between the “nature” of children and the “nature” of war. At least implicitly assuming that emotions are socioculturally constructed, historians of the Asia-Pacific War have suggested that modern ideologues propagating these enlisted concepts proudly drew from a warrior tradition, one that prescribed the suppression of all but a select few emotions, including loyalty and gratitude to one’s master, which were to be nurtured (Scherer 2001: 106). Yet what we see in the materials produced for children is something more ambiguous and ambivalent. In an aggressively expanding Japanese empire, authors, artists, and policy makers recognized the value of emotions, their proper conditioning, and their suppression and incitement—in children and, via the use of children, in adults as well. Often, the mechanisms of suppression and incitement of emotions were closely intertwined: sentiments were carefully honed—steered where appropriate, and suppressed where necessary. In this chapter I redraw the analytical frame for evaluating the culture of children and war and examine that culture through an emotional taxonomy, one that has operated across an array of omnipresent, forever-changing, multivalent configurations of children with soldiers that convey familiarity with and the inevitability of war. This taxonomy becomes apparent across a broad range of pictorial and textual formations—not of children as soldiers but of children with soldiers. These formations exude proximity, similarity, and interchangeability. The presence of children in these pictures appears to have been intended to ritually redeem the soldier. Soldiers are introduced to children as mediators of war. Such child/soldier formations might have neutralized, in the eyes of soldiers’ families and other possibly critical audiences at home, the violence that Japanese soldiers inflicted on enemy communities— especially on the children of those communities. These distinct incorporations of children in representations of war, the pairing and blending of children with soldiers, the rhetorical and pictorial claims of a special bond between one and the other: all have continuously insisted on and reproduced the war’s morality, justness, and inevitability. After all, only after war can there be peace. Yet the very qualities of children—their innocence, purity, and good-heartedness—could bring peace to the now and to fruition. The figure of the child as the embodiment of innocence and peace has been readily reproduced and communicated through an emotional register in a broad range of ways. T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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From the early 1930s onward, pictorial and textual depictions in stories, cartoons, and advertisements suggested that the Imperial Army soldiers were capable of extending their friendly feelings beyond the children at home— into the colonies and behind the front lines. The sociopolitical agenda of such depictions was both to evoke excitement about war as adventure and to stir the promise of an early adulthood through the experience of war—while also tying notions of glory and heroism to warm and fuzzy sentiments of belonging to family, community, and nation. Ideologues, educators, and propagators of mass media in Japan came to understand the same lesson that Adolf Hitler had drawn in Mein Kampf ([1925] 2010: 19), which eventually the Nazi leadership and other fascist-militarist regimes around the world adopted during the 1930s and 1940s. In 1924, Hitler declared that the “tactical objective of the fight was the winning over of the child, and it was to the child that the first rallying cry was addressed.” He was certain that “those who [knew] something of the juvenile spirit [would] understand how youth will always lend a glad ear to such a rallying cry.” The iconographic and narrative figures that had begun taking shape in the newly multimedia world of the early twentieth century became mainstreamed during the 1930s and 1940s—and they share similarities with those of the twenty-first century, despite the fact that they operate in dramatically different sociocultural and political contexts. By the time Hitler’s image appeared on the cover of the Kōdansha Picture Book: Hitler (Kōdansha no ehon: Hittorā), published on 1 August 1941 (see fig. 24), with Hitler characterized as a “child lover” (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1941a: 49), Japan’s youth organizations—the Dai Nippon Rengō Seinendan and the Dai Nippon Rengō Joshi Seinendan—had already been refashioned on the Hitler Youth model. The Kōdansha picture book had likely been inspired by frequent exchanges and mutual visits by journalists, politicians, and representatives of mass organizations of athletes and youth—as well as by the fact that a delegation of Hitler Youth had traveled to Japan in 1938 (Bieber 2014: 18–19). Some of the products designed for just this “hearts and minds” agenda weren’t manufactured only for children’s eyes—they were also designed to make people of all ages see war through children’s eyes. In these, the soldier is less often a fierce warrior and hero; instead, he is the children’s playmate, substitute mother, their savior—at the very least he is a kind of big brother or an ageless child himself. Conversely, like the contemporaneous representations of children’s war games that represented children in clearly gendered roles, visual representations of soldiers with children often featured girls and 116

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fig. 24. The cover of Kōdansha Picture Book: Hitler (Kōdansha no ehon: Hittorā), published on 1 August 1941. Printed with the kind permission of the Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University.

boys in equal numbers and, thus, both undermined gender determinations and desexualized child encounters with soldiers. However, when items depicted soldiers singling out specific children encountered at the front lines, those children were always boys. Alternatively, the roles of children and soldiers were also switched to produce a complementary emotional effect. In these the soldier was featured as vulnerable and in need of care, indicating an essential similarity and interchangeability of soldiers with children, alternately one reflected in the other, one serving as a reminder of the past or the future of the respective other. An analysis of these kinds of articulations and visualizations lays bare the enormous effort that went into the visual and textual blending of children with soldiers, a mechanism indicative of the modern ideology of the inevitability and naturalness of war. I argue that this repetitive pairing and blending of children with soldiers constitute a set of technologies that works to establish, continuously reproduce, and naturalize the link between the maturing child and the pursuit of war. The visual and textual configurations of children with soldiers operate to sustain the affective conditions of militarism. They also function as the very prosthetic devices for the continuous reanimation, modulation, and embodiment of the inevitability of war and the continuous character of modern militarism.

the ethics of gratitude Attesting to the high level of emotional capital attributed to children, drawings and descriptions of children writing comfort letters and packing comfort bags, for men they did not know and would never meet, were ubiquitous; according to at least one accompanying text, these tasks were done “with devotion.” One of many illustrations in Japan’s Children (Nippon no kodomo) features a mother of four overseeing her son writing a comfort letter while another packs a comfort bag (fig. 25). The soldier-recipient-to-be will receive a note of gratitude written by one of the boys’ sisters. A smaller sister has a strained expression, as if not quite ready to do what the text would put into her thoughts: “Let me give this doll to the soldier” (Yamate and Haneishi 1941: 3–4). While children of all ages were expected to have and express the right kinds of emotions, they held a privileged position owing to the assumptions regarding theirs: because children’s emotions come from deep within, they 118

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fig. 25. The children’s book Japan’s Children (Nippon no kodomo) describes the writing of comfort letters and the stuffing of comfort bags to be completed “with devotion” by children and their mothers at home. Private collection.

were considered authentic and true (see fig. 26). It was from children’s hearts that emotions flowed most purely and truly. Moreover, writers of comfort letters of all ages were not just expected to have such emotions—they were also to express them properly. As people in the old days said, “A letter is the mirror of one’s heart.” One has to write it “with sincerity and devotion” (magokoro). Deep emotion. Gratitude. Sincerity. Devotion. The mirror of one’s heart (Sakurai 1940: 1). A certain Sakurai Hitoshi (1940) addressed this very impossibility—of emotions being at once internal and natural and yet also adhering to universal aesthetic standards of expression—at length. He reminded the readers of his slim guidebook (with the unwieldy title How to Write a Comfort Letter to Soldiers Who Have Departed from the Home Front: Comfort and Encouragement Letters for New Arrivals and Soldiers Already in the Barracks) how different it was to write to “someone who is fighting and might be dying for his country” than to write “a letter to just about anybody.” Even if that man were otherwise an ordinary father or brother, on the battlefield he was to carry out distinct duties as one of the emperor’s soldiers. Hence, as someone T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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fig. 26. A cartoon in Kōdansha Picture Book: Cartoons and Moving Stories of the Hinomaru Flag (Kōdansha no ehon: Manga to Hinomaru bidan) titled “Little Brother’s Comfort Bag” (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1939: 14). Little brother wonders what his sick brother loves most and, to the amusement of his brother and their mother, surprises him by bringing the dog in a comfort bag to his room. Private collection.

who “fulfills one’s duty by protecting the home front, one must write the letter with a heart full of deep emotion and gratitude” (1, emphasis added, both here and below). Sakurai’s guidelines highlight an essential paradox of his appeal to emotions. They were supposed to come from deep within, to be true and sincere. Yet in order to appear true and sincere, they had to be honed, carefully molded, and properly expressed. Though Sakurai acknowledged that many writers of comfort letters did their best to write a good, beautiful letter, he emphasized that there was more to aim for. A letter that “has been composed at one’s desk that just strings together all kinds of flowery words cannot be called a true comfort letter.” And while Sakurai discouraged copying the letters printed as examples in his guide booklet, he hoped they would inspire writers, who might incorporate some elements of his models into their own letters (Sakurai 1940: 1). But he also emphasized that in order to write a really beautiful comfort letter one has to first prepare. Soldiers on the battlefields were far from home. They were starved of “true human emotions” (5–7). The author urged readers to envision the kinds of emotions a soldier might feel when injured and lying in a hospital bed, suffering from his wounds, and burdened with the guilt of not being able to fight with his comrades. The intended readers of the guide booklet included children, women, and the men back home considered unfit for battle. These readers were envisioned as the complements to the adult male soldiers, who were almost exclusively evoked as combatants at the front lines. The relationship between letter writer and receiver was envisioned as one of exchange. The soldiers’ duty was to defend the Japanese front line to the death; women, children, and lessabled men were to protect the home front. Accordingly, children and women at the home front were expected to feel and express sincere gratitude toward the male soldiers fighting for them; in turn, soldiers had to be encouraged with comfort letters, comfort bags, and other gestures of support (Sakurai 1940: 29). Sakurai’s guidebook highlighted the importance of the sentimental education and emotional habituation that lay at the heart of a broad range of publications, particularly those for children and women. Sakurai’s language of emotions, his “mirror of the heart” conceptualization, is seductive, perhaps because of the simplicity of his view. Yet this guidebook constitutes a contradiction of that very conceptualization. For if emotions could be “true” and were “lying deep within,” just waiting to be discovered and put to use, why dictate which emotions to have and how to express them? This question T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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especially applies to the fact that “true emotions” were being requested of children who had not even met their correspondents. Seemingly uncannily modern, Sakurai comes down halfway between what researchers of emotion today think of as two different views of emotion: one “cognitive,” the other “social constructivist.” He does not doubt that the physical and mental capacity to have emotions is universal, and that the ways by which those emotions are elicited, felt, and expressed depend on cultural norms and individual proclivities—assumptions in line with the cognitive view. Though he might have disagreed with social constructivists, who are convinced that all feelings that are “experienced” are the result of training, learning, practice, and performance, he knew he could not be sure (Reddy 2001; Ebersole 2000). Hence, his delineating “how to write a comfort letter to soldiers who have departed from the home front.” In addition to the ubiquitous depictions of children writing comfort letters and packing comfort bags, textual and visual representations of children with soldiers became more varied in the wake of the 1931 Manchurian Incident. Such images were regularly featured across an array of publication venues, ranging from adult print media and military postcards to textbooks, commercial children’s books, magazines, and newspapers. For instance, the cover of the picture book Children’s Book: On Soldiers (Kindābukku: Heitai-san), which carries the official recommendation of the minister of education, features an Imperial Army soldier with a girl on his arm saluting a boy who salutes him back (see fig. 27; Nihon Gangu Kenkyūkai 1931). As the drawings and the scarce text inside the book reveal, the Imperial Army soldier should be envisioned as an older brother who is being drafted. The two small children follow him for a bit, watching him change from regular clothes into a uniform, sitting by (or, perhaps, imagining) him while he eats with other soldiers in the mess hall, and engaging in a range of exercises and other activities. The mixing of the spheres of soldiers and children—in Japan, in the colonies, and behind the front lines—provided young readers in Japan with a form of early entry into the (mostly men’s) adult world. At the same time, it normalized child/soldier encounters, distracting from the violence that such encounters also entailed: Japan’s imperialist war in Asia. Yet this blending of children with soldiers did not just reinforce the rhetoric of how war makes (mature, strong, fierce) men of children; it also suggested that a reverse process was at work as well—namely, that under certain circumstances, war could make (weak, vulnerable, helpless) children of men. In a typical drawing from Japan’s Children (Nippon no kodomo; Takeda and 122

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fig. 27. The cover of the picture book Children’s Book: On Soldiers (Kindābukku: Heitaisan, 1931). Private collection.

Toda 1941: 7–8), a mother and her children visit injured soldiers, bringing them drawings and flowers. The children appear a bit intimidated. At least temporarily disabled by their injuries, the soldiers look pleased with the children’s act of kindness, their visit, and their gifts (see fig. 28). Aided by children’s magazines and books evoking an array of sentiments, Japanese children were able to envision soldiers in their lives in barracks and at the front lines—even sometimes interacting with other Asian children. For example, Kōdansha Picture Book: Japan’s Army—Home-Front Children’s Stories about Soldiers and Children (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1940b) conveyed to its young readers an aestheticized image of the Imperial Army, inviting them to imagine themselves—image by image, page by page—taking part in everyday life in the army. Seventy-six pages long, Japan’s Army constituted a substantial introduction to the military. Illustrated by Itō Kikuzō, it featured on its cover a young-looking and smiling Imperial Army soldier on a horse with a sword at his side. While at the price of fifty sen it was affordable only for children of the middle and upper classes, it was very likely available in libraries and other public places, as well as passed among family members and friends. T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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fig. 28. In a drawing from Japan’s Children (Nippon no kodomo), a publication for beginning readers, a mother and four children visit injured soldiers in a hospital, bringing them drawings and flowers. Private collection.

In line with contemporary ideology, this Kōdansha volume conveys how the Japanese military was the emperor’s military, a fact from which the name “Imperial Army,” or kōgun, derived. In line with Japan’s foundation myths, the book explains that Japan had been founded twenty-six hundred years earlier, under Emperor Jimmu, whereas the Imperial Army had been formed at the beginning of the Meiji period, its soldiers drawn from the entire population. The Imperial Army’s role consisted of the “protecting the Japanese nation” and “world peace.” The book further notes that the Imperial Army had been victorious in wars against China and Russia, claiming it was the “strongest military in the world.” Battle scenes are depicted with the enemy entirely out of sight, while Imperial Army soldiers are generally shown in everyday routines: they ride horses, look through a spyglass, eat soup, care for injured comrades, and engage in military-dog and messenger-pigeon training. Textual descriptions focus on equipment, battlefields, and a variety of planes (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1940b, 8–33). Finally, on page 41, service members are depicted abroad. There they engage in various activities, including chatting with and giving candy to 124

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enemy children with the aim—the text and image seem to suggest—of establishing and maintaining peace. It is easy to imagine that Kōdansha intended these sorts of depictions to feed heroic infantile fantasies, model the aspirations of young explorer-readers, and help them relate to “enemy” children—indeed, to empower even the smallest children back home. The pages of Japan’s Army might even have furthered children’s fantasies of switching roles with the honorable soldiers. When soldiers were injured and in need of care, for instance, their vulnerability was similar to that of children, a notion evoked in depictions of children visiting soldiers in field hospitals, the boys and girls singing and dancing for the convalescents. That switching of roles of the otherwise all-powerful and courageous soldier with the otherwise oh-so-vulnerable child reappeared in many children’s publications. In one image of the previously discussed Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku, for instance, an elementary-school-age girl confidently gestures a soldier on crutches toward an empty seat on a train. In such depicted moments, this sort of configuration might have suggested that the soldier could become a child, weak and reliant on the care of others, possibly even reliant on children. In these depictions the violent role of the soldier is constantly minimized— certainly in order to make him appear more approachable to children, but possibly also to neutralize in Japanese children’s eyes the violence that Japanese soldiers inflicted on enemy children. The publisher may also have hoped to appease the wider home-front audience, citizens who were perhaps worried about their young men abroad—or possibly critical of their conduct, or of the war itself. The emphasis on softhearted emotionality was particularly pronounced among print media primarily targeting a child readership. The following introductory appeal in Kōdansha Picture Book for Good Children: Moving Tales about the China Incident (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1937c), for instance, was explicitly directed at mothers: “It doesn’t even have to be said today that, first of all, a children’s picture book has to be entertaining and interesting to a child; one should not forget that it should also properly build the heart of the child at the same time. This picture book also aims to teach children how to make comfort bags for soldiers, visit injured soldiers in the hospital, visit a shrine, [and] prepare for military defense and for similar war-related skills in a playful way” (see fig. 29). Similarly, the editors of a 1940 book series published by the Japan Research Association for Toys (Nihon Gangu Kenkyūkai) equally emphasize the importance of training children’s sentiments: T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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fig. 29. One field of the Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku (Kōgun Banzai Sugoroku, 1940) suggests that “gratitude toward injured soldiers” was called for. Private collection.

Obviously, Japan’s biggest task at the moment is to establish a new Greater East Asian order. However, this is going to be a long-term project whose importance needs to be properly conveyed to today’s children. The day on which this new order is achieved must be the day on which the people of Asia encounter each other with friendly sentiments. In order to reach this goal, a lot of tools are necessary. While the battles rage in China, it is more important than ever to nurture solidarity and understanding between the peoples of Japan and China, Japan’s closest neighbor. Th is understanding that is rooted in the heart needs to be nurtured from childhood on. It is important that children develop an understanding and friendship to be held against the battles in China, gun against gun and sword against sword.1

The same formula of evoking sentiments to simultaneously entertain and excite, shape and discipline, characterized numerous children’s publications. Prominent publishers like Kōdansha claimed that picture books, more than other publications, had the capacity to “turn their young readers into wonderful grown-up people [rippa na jinbutsu] without them even knowing.” Picture books, some of which I introduce in this chapter, had that power precisely because they happily “[taught] parents and laughing children with a laughing face, a laughing face, a laughing face” (Takeda and Toda 1941: back cover). These books imposed their lightheartedness particularly on 126

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small children, readers assumed to have yet-formable minds whose only understanding of war were those elements integrated in their stories and games. Yet even the gentleness and cheerfulness these young readers were encouraged to put to good use translated into two key sentiments: gratitude and friendly goodwill. Conveyed in a wide range of media—from children’s publications to songs, and radio programs—one sentiment that children were encouraged to feel toward Japanese Imperial Army soldiers was identified as the most essential: gratitude. This was the case whether the appreciation was to be bestowed by Japanese children or by children in Japan’s colonies—chiefly Taiwan (1895–1945), Korea (1910–1945), and Manchuria (1931–1945)—and behind the front lines in East and Southeast Asia, where Japan pursued an imperialist advance that came to a halt only in 1942, when Japan lost the Battle of Midway, near Hawaii. Japanese children were constantly urged to feel grateful toward Imperial Army soldiers, the “protectors of Japan.” Colonized and enemy children were frequently portrayed as grateful to the “protectors of Japan” as well, but they also were written about in terms of the intimate bonds of friendship they ostensibly quickly developed with those soldiers. Evoking such sentiments might have also reinforced an orderly, comforting, if unequal relationship— namely, that between the soldier-savior and the child-victim. At the same time, images and narratives of child/soldier encounters also conveyed sameness and—to some degree—interchangeability. After all, both were liminal figures; one (the child) might well become the other (the soldier). The other (the soldier), however, could only imagine (temporarily) slipping back into his once-innocent child persona—a conception children’s books and magazines frequently evoked. In short, the gratitude that (Japanese) children felt at the home front was conveyed as also being felt by the enemy children behind the front lines, a connection that was mediated, as it were, by the Imperial Army soldier, who was frequently portrayed as an object of affection by children on both sides. The concept of gratitude as a key emotion to be honed in children was practically embodied in Kōdansha Picture Book: Cartoons and Moving Stories of the Hinomaru Flag (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1939), which almost entirely featured text and art honoring military service and sacrifice. Case in point: a series of illustrations by Katō Masao collectively titled “Thank You, Soldier.” The first illustration shows two boys and two girls marching to school in their school uniforms. The accompanying text states, “It is thanks to the soldiers that we can go to school. Soldiers have fought for the nation, T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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for the nation. Thanks to the soldiers.” Another illustration, in which a family of four sits at the dinner table, suggests they had Imperial Army soldiers to thank for their meal—and for the opportunity for them to sit together as a family. The familial gratitude represented in pictures and pronouncements like these is even more directly insinuated in a front-line setting, where it is imposed on the families of the enemy. Children’s Club (Yōnen Kurabu, vol. 13, no. 12 [1938]: n.p.) suggests, “Thanks to the Japanese military the center of the city has become completely calm. The Chinese who had fled the city have cheerfully returned waving Japanese Hinomaru flags in their hands. On top of the gate a reliable Japanese soldier is on watch.” Such pictures and texts conveyed the war to Japan’s beginning readers as a matter of appeasement. Their role was twofold: to express gratitude toward soldiers, and to extend offers of friendship to enemy children. Essentially, children were handed a tall order: help us to appease the enemy—indeed, to establish peace—by befriending enemy children. Sometimes Chinese children were enlisted to encourage Japanese children to think of their military men in these terms. For instance, a two-page illustration with some text ostensibly from the mouths of the Chinese children in the drawing provided such sentiments to readers of an issue of Children’s Club (Yōnen Kurabu) titled Chinese Children (vol. 13, no. 1 [1938]: 50–51). With their backs to the readers as they look up at the smiling faces of Imperial Army soldiers, Chinese children sing of what good men Japanese soldiers are and of their gratitude for the candy the soldiers give them (see figs. 30 and 31). As the children bid the soldiers farewell and they march off, the text claims, even the dog perks up and the crow caws. In the images depicting children behind the front lines and in occupied territories, the children always seem to be on their own—or, in any case, without adult acquaintances in sight—when engaging Imperial Army soldiers in conversation, play, or laughter. Back in Japan, however, gratitude toward the soldiers was presented as a family affair. For example, one issue of the children’s magazine Children’s Club (Yōnen Kurabu, vol. 13, no. 12 [1938]: 6–7) depicted the (ideal) response of a family to an Imperial Army victory announced on the radio news: “After dinner the radio news begins. Father, mother, and children gather. Today, the announcer reports yet another victory of the Japanese army. ‘They won. They won. Banzai!’ The older brother claps his hands and cries, ‘Really well done.’ ‘We should never forget our debt to our soldiers,’ says the father. The neighbor’s family is also listening, and throughout Japan people are cheerful.” Th is was the caption written by 128

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fig. 30. One of the moving tales that children’s magazines told in pictures and texts was that of friendly-looking Imperial Army soldiers giving candy to happy Chinese children, as in Children’s Club: Chinese Children (Yōnen kurabu: Shina no kodomo, 1938). Private collection.

Kawakami Shirō accompanying a drawing by Saitō Yaso titled “Radio News,” in which seven family members—father and mother, a toddler, two sons and two daughters—celebrate their country’s latest victory. Texts and images often promoted gratitude in conjunction with togetherness and inclusivity, with calls for “everybody together,” or minna de, an expression that might include just the extended family or the village, the nation, or even the empire. At the very least, time and again, children’s books and magazines suggested that children across the empire already belonged to Japan’s empire and were ready to build peace in Asia—regardless of their condition or social status. Colonized children were repeatedly described as being uneducated, fi lthy, and starving, and as having to work from a very early age. In light of that motif, the narrative for Japanese children extended to their being grateful for having been born on the right side of the front lines—and as part of a generation younger than the then-current soldiers. T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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fig. 31. From Kōdansha Picture Book: Japan’s Army—Home-Front Children’s Stories about Soldiers and Children (Kōdansha no ehon: Nippon no rikugun—Jūgo dōwa heitaisan to kodomo; Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1940b: 41). Private collection.

Japanese children were also reminded of how fortunate they were to go to school, and that—until late in the war—the war, for most of them, took place elsewhere. Occasionally, comments about the gratitude they were to feel were lined with a sense of cultural superiority that envisioned the war as Japan’s to win. For instance, Akagawa Busuke, the author of My Battlefield Diary (Boku no senjō nikki), proclaimed that, compared to some of his comrades, who had had impoverished childhoods, Japanese children were lucky. By way of example he described one particular young man’s predicament. One day during a training session for small pistols, a man named Honda began to cry. And why? Honda did not understand the training instructions because he could not read. It turned out that he had not even been to elementary school, a rare occurrence among soldiers at that time. Honda had lost both of his parents early, so he was brought up by his grandfather, a fisherman. When Honda was little, he had fished with his grandfather every day, something he loved so much that he had refused to go to elementary school once he was old enough. When his grandfather became disabled, Honda maintained their livelihood by fishing on his own. Before he knew it, he was drafted. It was only when he needed to learn how to handle weapons—so that “he could go to war like a grown man”—that he realized what he had missed by not attending school. Following that incident, Akagawa tells us, one of the sergeants took Honda under his wing. Honda studied very hard. Eventually, he was able to write a letter to his grandfather, who had someone respond in his stead since he himself was illiterate. Honda was overjoyed to be able to read the grandfather’s letter (Akagawa 1941). While this anecdote is a happy one, it also impressed on Japanese child readers that nothing like this could possibly happen to any of them. After all, unlike Honda and so many of the Chinese children Akagawa had encountered, they were able to attend school—indeed, they were able to read Akagawa’s book. There was yet another moral to the story. The grandfather received another letter from the front, but this time it was from his grandson’s commander, reporting that, in the heat of battle, Honda had saved this commander’s life and had died “a beautiful war death.” To this the grandfather replied in the customary fashion expected of bereaved families: “The fact that my child died doesn’t sadden me one bit, because he had been born for the nation” (Akagawa 1941: 12, 22). In other words, the gratitude required of Japanese children for being able to attend school and learn to read and write instead of starving while working like the often-evoked Chinese children, and to T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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read and live instead of fighting and dying like Honda, was aligned with Honda’s grandfather’s gratitude that his only loved one could valiantly serve his country.

the virtues of friendship Calls for children to express their appropriately felt, perfectly crafted gratitude proposed that everybody had to work together to secure the Japanese nation—as if there were no dramatic distinctions between Imperial Army soldiers and colonized children, no contradictions between the interest of Japanese children and colonized children; as if there were no war at all. Authors and illustrators seemed to suggest it was important to envision a time where peace would emerge, and that the task of creating that peace was assigned to children. Children’s emotional capital could be tapped into; their assumed innocence endowed them with moral authority, one untainted by adult society, politics, and war. That authority could make peace possible. Given their social status and state of mind, presumably preethical and thus prepolitical and thus still pure, it was thought that Japanese children would easily become friends with children across the front lines, thereby planting the seeds of future peace. In short, children were given a triple message: they needed to be friends, they were the future, and they signified peace. In other words, though they had no political rights, children were given the moral authority for nation and empire building from the bottom up, one friendship with a colonized child at a time. And so they were not just meant to greet each Imperial Army soldier starry-eyed, grateful, and in awe— Japanese children also needed to reach out in friendship to the children under Japanese control. This peace-making decree was conveyed repeatedly in a variety of visual and textual iterations, where it took a singular form: whenever territories under Japanese control were depicted, Japanese children were portrayed playing with colonized children, Manchurian or Chinese children in particular. For example, the Kōdansha Picture Book: Manchuria Sightseeing (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1940a: cover) strongly conveyed the necessity of children becoming friends across the divide. The cover features a Chinese farmer pushing a cart with some goods in big bags and three children on it: a Japanese girl in a sailor-style school uniform, a Chinese girl in a long-sleeved red blouse and pink pants with a Japanese flag in her hand, and a boy in a blue school uniform 132

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holding the flag Manchuria flew under Japanese rule from 1934 to 1945. The children are smiling. They are already friends—and, at peace. The visuals conveying this call to friendship expressed their message distinctly; their textual counterparts, on the other hand, were both more subtle and more intricate. For example, the many soldier diaries and memoirs published during this time did not simply relate life experiences; they also, in subtle subtext, individualized and emotionalized the war so as to help children make sense of official ideology and the war. (Consider the fact that some young readers had these tales read to them; as a result, the adults reading could provide additional context to help them comprehend the significance of these stories.) But these tales provided their message more directly as well, serving as vehicles for public formal imperialist policy translated into children’s diplomatic assignments. Put more bluntly, children needed to familiarize themselves with the new boundaries of the empire, get along with one another, be grateful to soldiers, and acknowledge their role as the embodiment of the peace to come. One of many soldier-cum-memoirists, Yoneyama Aishi (1906–1973), explicitly makes this claim in Children on the Continent and Soldiers (Tairiku no kodomo to heitai, 1943: 1). Yoneyama had fought and lived in China for more than a decade. In the book, he describes Chinese children as “terribly poor.” Aggressively promoting the idea that Japanese children needed to grow up as “children of Asia” and “children of the world,” he emphasizes that they must know things about the continent and its populations’ morals and conventions. Like other soldiers who published memoirs and journals, he hoped that his book would “encourage good relations between Chinese children [under Japanese colonial rule] and Japanese children” (6). And, like other soldier-memoirists, he tells the story of Japanese imperialism through the prism of a Chinese youth: in this case, Chinkun, whose fateful encounter with the Imperial Army had left him deeply grateful to them. One day, the memoir goes, Chinese military recruiters came to Chinkun’s village with an intriguing pitch. First they explained that the Chinese military had been defeated in the Shanghai Incident of 1937, one of the bloodiest battles of the Asia-Pacific War, because their weaponry had been deficient and the troops insufficiently trained. But, they announced, since then the Chinese military had bought impressive airplanes and other weaponry from the West and, thus, would win the battles to come—and wouldn’t the young men of this village like to be a part of those victories? Chinkun’s father, a poor farmer, joined up. T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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One day, the village’s sole radio announced that Shanghai was now firmly in the control of the Chinese military, which had begun its march toward Tokyo. A few days later, when Chinkun suddenly heard an airplane, he expected it to be a Chinese military plane announcing China’s victory. But in fact it was the Imperial Army bombing the village. The villagers fled into the nearby forest (Yoneyama 1943: 26–27). Venturing further into the mountain forest, Chinkun encountered a robust Japanese soldier, who offered him food; realizing how hungry he was, he accepted. And so their friendship began. After a while Chinkun told his new friend that his father, too, had been a soldier, but that he had died in the war. Yoneyama writes, “Chinkun did not feel any hatred toward the Japanese.” In fact, “he felt light and content working for the Japanese soldiers in their camp” (30–32). Several other Chinese children and youth, too, populate Yoneyama’s memoir. He fondly recalls another child, Wauhauzen, who had developed friendly relations with an Imperial Army commanding officer, Imoto, a familiar face to local Chinese children. In Yoneyama’s account, the commander always “smiled under his black moustache” and seemed to be quite friendly with the children. He spoke Chinese very well and always chatted with the local children when riding through. His aide-de-camp, too, was a very gentle man. He sometimes gave the children Glico caramels, the first candy the Osaka-based confectionary company produced in 1935. Whenever they heard the noise of horses, the local children would line up along the path. After one of them announced the Japanese military, they would all lift their hats and politely greet them, as they were smilingly greeted in return. As for Wauhauzen’s story: his grandfather, who had owned a shop in Shanghai, spoke Japanese and catered to Japanese tastes. At the time of the first Shanghai Incident of 1932, the government demanded that the populace boycott Japanese-made goods; in addition, those who did business with the Japanese occupiers, as Wauhauzen’s grandfather did, were thereafter suddenly viewed as spies. One day the Chinese military accused Wauhauzen’s grandfather of spying, stole all of the family’s belongings, and killed the grandfather in front of his own son. By the time of the Imperial Army occupation, the family had returned to their home village, where they had lived in poverty ever since (Yoneyama 1943: 84–87). Yoneyama emphasizes the necessity for the Chinese to “reach out to Japan in order to achieve peace in Asia and the world.” He had wanted to get Wauhauzen educated in Japan and assumed that the fact that the boy got 134

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along so well with the Japanese could be put to good use for the friendship of the two countries. Eventually, Yoneyama offered to take him into his own house and provide him with a Japanese education, including middle school or even university if his parents agreed. He said he would raise Wauhauzen alongside his own three children (Yoneyama 1943: 92–93). But ultimately his charity was not necessary. The commanding officer Imoto, who was by then Wauhauzen’s longtime mentor and friend, offered Wauhauzen a kimono and a belt, saying, “Wear this and you become Japanese.” He also gave him a cap with a cherry blossom on it that signified soldiers’ deaths—heroes falling like cherry petals (Ohnuki-Tierney 2002: 283). Overjoyed at his fortune, Wauhauzen’s parents instructed him to always be appreciative of Imoto’s support and to “work hard for Japan” (Yoneyama 1943: 96–99). When the two of them landed in a Japanese harbor, Wauhauzen saw the Hinomaru flag and thought, “Ah, that’s the Japanese flag. It is my country’s flag. I will be working hard under this flag. For Japan. . . . From now on I am Japanese. Even if I have only a little strength, I want to employ it all for Japan, China, Asia, and the world” (100). Like numerous similar stories, Yoneyama’s account centered on a particularly smart and good-hearted child, usually a boy, who proves—against all odds—his loyalty to individual Japanese soldiers, the Japanese military, or the Japanese nation. While it was with manipulative intent that stories of “good Chinese boys” were circulated, the dream of studying in Japan had been a desirable pursuit for many Chinese children throughout the war years; some were able to realize as much even during the 1930s and 1940s (Kenjō 2013: 40). The experience of the war, however, had been a significant struggle for the majority of children touched by it in China (Jörgensen 1999). Stories like these had a ripple effect across children’s books, with many publications echoing the narrative logic of these memoirs. The “good Chinese boy” became a fi xture in narrations of soldiers’ experiences, the motif utilized in order to cultivate specific emotions among child readers at the home front. Instilling empathy and friendship in Japanese children also appeared to be a key intention behind an article in the Kōdansha Picture Book for Good Children: Anniversary Issue on the Great Victory during the China Incident (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1938d), titled “Chinese Children Envy Japanese Children” (“Nihon no kodomo-san ga urayamashii”), written by a teacher named Hase Kōsaku. A drawing by Kojima Hisao depicts three Japanese soldiers in friendly conversation with a Chinese boy. Apparently, pupils of Kawasaki Higher Elementary School had sent a comfort letter to T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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these particular soldiers at the front. With the response from the soldiers, they had also received a letter from a thirteen-year-old Chinese boy: Dear Japanese elementary school pupils, I find the Japanese soldiers friendly and I like them. We pray that the Japanese soldiers may win [this war]. I envy Japanese children. We cannot go to school and cannot study much. I pray that for the sake of peace Japan and China will soon become friends. When I grow up I will go to Japan too. Good-bye, all Japanese. To Japanese elementary school children, November 1. (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1938d: n.p.)

One of the soldiers who responded explained that this was a boy who came to play at the Japanese camp every day. His father had died in the war, and it was unclear where his mother was. He described him as an incredibly pitiful boy who came to help with this and that in exchange for food, and who had become well liked by the Japanese troops. They had taught him some Japanese characters, and what he had written in the letter was all he could write at that point. At once an educational treatise, a war memoir, and a travelogue, Yoneyama’s book, like newspaper reports, and like similar stories in other soldiers’ memoirs and children’s magazines, implicitly addressed anxiety regarding the hatred the Japanese occupation of China and other parts of Asia must have provoked among children there—as well as questions child readers at home must have had about their counterparts in occupied areas and war zones. In addition to the gratitude Japanese child readers were expected to feel for the comforts and safety of their lives in Japan, they were also supposed to sense from these stories several concepts: how well (individual) Chinese children got along with Japanese soldiers, that there were no resentments on either side, and that the Imperial Army in fact offered the children behind the front lines a bridge to a better life, a better education, or even Japanese citizenship. Children on either side, these accounts frequently repeated, embodied the hope for peace. As noted, publications for children worked to inspire gratitude in their readers, but soldier memoirs and diaries written for children often expanded the emotional spectrum employed, seeking as well to appeal to readers’ empathy and pity. This was probably not much of a stretch; Imperial Army soldiers and Japanese children at home might well have empathized with children in occupied territories and behind the front lines. Ultimately, the message was that, though one may sympathize, one should also realize the much more 136

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pitiful state these children would have been in were it not for the Japanese soldiers. In Japanese children’s eyes, these scenes must have enhanced the soldiers’ humanity, redeeming their violent acts so as to restore their image as caring father figures. Furthermore, such “war stories” evoked the soldier as a brother and, thus, a grown man who had once been a child himself. The repetitive appearance of these pictures and stories, then, seem to have been designed to incite caring emotions for individuals whose worlds were far away. They worked to transmute war into a naive, emotionalized aesthetic not of battle, killing, death, and chaos but of rescue, peace, and comforting order. The images and texts discussed here worked to conceal and manipulate the exact nature of the relationship between Japanese soldiers and enemy and colonized children—as well as the circumstances of their encounters. Indeed, their mass visibility made them so common as to be almost unobtrusive. In children’s books and magazines and beyond, every new, gratefully smiling child gazing up at a soldier essentially mocked any critical analysis of their encounter. When combat was referenced in publications intended for elementaryschool-age children, it was often done to propose that the Imperial Army fought in order to help the enemies understand Japan’s right way, to “make them our friends.” According to that logic, it was the Chinese government and military that stood in the way of peace in Asia, not the Japanese. For children, the official slogan of advance in China, which promoted the “violent punishment of China” (bōshi yōchō), was translated into an objective of improving the world, making it a brighter and more livable place. This objective necessitated the elimination of “bad people” and “violent elements”— both of which were to be found only on the other side of the front lines. A series of children’s books and magazines that told “impressive tales from the China Incident” (Shina jihen bidan) pursued this strategy (Hasegawa and Kido [1994] 1999: 201). Some of them, claiming to have been “written from a Chinese perspective,” featured children or young teenagers who sided with or became assistants of the Imperial Army. Directed at young Japanese readers, the books were presented as soldiers’ everyday experiences amid the Chinese population and were packaged as either memoirs or journals of individual soldiers. Within their pages, the Japanese soldier-authors always appear reflective, preoccupied with the children in colonized territories, quintessentially kind—quintessentially human (206). Like many other soldier memoirs for child readers, Akagawa Busuke’s My Battlefield Diary addressed its young readership in sentimental terms. In his T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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introduction, Akagawa wrote: “To you, boys and girls, this is my battlefield journal from central China [in which I describe for you] what the Chinese boys and girls I met there are really like, what their true hearts are.” Akagawa found them “lonesome” and living “unhappy lives,” which served as his pretext to write with conviction that, “for the new East Asia, Chinese and Japanese boys and girls must get to know each other by heart,” which he hoped his memoir could facilitate (Akagawa 1941: 1–3). That Akagawa (1906–1954), who had primarily published in children’s and youth magazines until then, would in 1941 be awarded the first Noma Literary Prize for My War Journal speaks to the publishing world’s conviction that—apropos Mein Kampf—it was the child who needed to be “won over.” Established by Kōdansha’s first company president, Noma Seiji, the Noma Prize was awarded a year later to Muneta Hiroshi (1909–1988), author of a similar war journal, Soldiers and Children (Heitai to kodomo, 1942). Muneta wrote his memoir-style description as a “gift to the Chinese children” he had encountered as an Imperial Army soldier during the war—even though it would be only Japanese children who ultimately read it. He had made a name for himself as a war novelist in journals like Literary Arts for the Masses (Taishū Bungei). Once drafted into the army, he had fought mostly in Java and Burma, where he survived the infamous Battle of Imphal, in which the Japanese lost Burma, constituting the worst land defeat in the history of the Imperial Army. Nothing in his trajectory, other than the fact that he was a war writer, had pointed to the possibility that he would write a book for children. His journal addressed the plight of children near the front, a theme that Muneta, like other soldier memoirists, implicitly contrasted with a narrative about how lucky Japanese children were by virtue of having been born in Japan. Yet in contrast to Akagawa, he indirectly acknowledges some measure of responsibility for the Chinese children’s unhappy state: “Their world had been turned upside down. Their schools were burned down. Their houses had disappeared. Some had to bury their fathers. Others were separated from their mothers. Japanese soldiers shared with them the little food they had or gave them the sweets from their comfort bags. Hence, wherever Japanese soldiers went, Chinese children gathered around them in the hope of getting food or sweets. . . . We got along with them really well, played with them, gave them sweets, and made them laugh” (26). Muneta acknowledges that developing such friendly relations would take a while. One might expect that this was because of the damage and violence the Imperial Army had perpetrated. In his account, however, it was mainly 138

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so because these children had been told that Japanese soldiers were devils. At first, Muneta writes, children usually hid when Imperial Army men called out to them. The children became friendlier only when they realized it was not the Japanese but in fact the Chinese soldiers who treated them badly. He explains that Chinese soldiers stole money and clothes from their own people; they burned Chinese people’s houses and bridges. Compare such behavior to that of the Japanese soldiers, who gave them food and fi xed their housing, Muneta states, and one could see why it was eventually the Japanese soldiers who were seen favorably (Muneta 1942: 27–28). Further rhetorically limiting the extent to which Imperial Army soldiers had perpetrated acts of mass violence against the Chinese, Muneta claims they fought “only the bad Chinese military” (“Shina no warui guntai dake de”), not other Chinese and, he seems to imply, no Chinese children at all. Yet occasionally publications for children suggested that Imperial Army soldiers’ kindness extended even to enemy soldiers. The Kōdansha Picture Book for Good Children: Anniversary Issue on the Great Victory during the China Incident (Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha 1938d), for instance, features a double-page illustration by a teacher named Toyota Chiaki depicting soldiers at the memorial of fallen combatants of the Chinese People’s Army. The accompanying text reads: “Kind-Hearted Japanese Soldiers.” The caption describes the drawing as follows: “Japanese soldiers have erected a tombstone for the Chinese soldiers that fell in the war in North China, as well as for the civilians who were killed by bombs. They arranged flowers and scents. The most praiseworthy characteristic of Japanese soldiers is that they are not only strong combatants but also have kind hearts.” Muneta recalls a particular fondness for one Chinese boy. His name was Meirokusei. He met Meirokusei when his unit was in a tiny Chinese village of thirty or forty huts that had been abandoned during the battle. Over the course of a few days the villagers slowly drifted back to rebuild their hamlet. “Then,” Muneta writes, “the children came. . . . The soldiers were overjoyed and shared their caramels from their comfort bags. By spring, soldiers and children were fast friends, and the children said how glad they were that the Japanese soldiers had come. . . . Soon they knew my name, and the one who learned everything the quickest was Meirokusei. He became friends with Tsuboi, the youngest soldier in my unit. He didn’t even leave to return home at night” (Muneta 1942: 35–47). One day, the unit received the order to march on, and tears were shed on both sides: “The children started to cry. . . . There was Meirokusei, who cried out, “Tsuboi, Tsuboi, Tsuboi!” Tsuboi T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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didn’t turn back and was marching next to me. He only waved his hand left and right without looking. Tears ran down his cheeks” (50–51). Soldiers and Children ends with the author directly addressing his young readership: “What do you think?” he asks. “Meirokusei was a fine boy, wasn’t he?” He suggests that if many youth like Meirokusei grew up in Japan and in China, Japan and China would become friends just like Tsuboi and Meirokusei. Despite the fact that Japan was still at war with China—and that the Chinese military were the bad ones, as Muneta proposed—there were many “good boys” like Meirokusei with whom one could easily become friends (Muneta 1943: 65–67). Akagawa, Muneta, and many others drew from their experience of battle in order to share the good deeds of the Imperial Army abroad; but one need not have wartime experience in order to promote those good deeds. For example, consider Kokubun Ichitarō’s Children of the Battlefield (Senchi no kodomo, 1949). Kokubun (1911–1985) was a progressive pedagogue and elementary school teacher of Japanese. Along with other progressives, he advocated teaching children to define the problems of their daily lives themselves—after which they could observe the facts in order to analyze the origins of those problems; in doing so, they could also find solutions. Enthusiastically bringing this forward-looking message to the children of Hong Kong, he emphasizes that, even though he is working for the military, his work consists of “putting smiles on children’s faces,” as well as ensuring that “His Majesty’s soldiers did not turn the East into a battlefield again” and that “these children did not become children of the battlefield twice over.” Addressing his child readers, he announces in his introduction to the book that at the beginning they would “mostly encounter miserable and lonely children but would meet more and more happy, laughing, and singing ones as they got deeper into the book.” He suggests that these laughing Chinese children would be proof of the progress of the Imperial Army’s project of “building peace in East Asia” (Kokubun 1949: 10–11). It is important to note, however, that no such notion of peace-building in Asia could be gleaned from either of the two additional introductions in the book, one contributed by Lieutenant Colonel Yoshida Eijirō, the director of the local Reserve Army News Department in which Kokubun was employed; the other by famed war novelist Hino Ashihei, who was enlisted by the government to tell the story of war. While both men acknowledge the value of Kokubun’s efforts as a teacher, they frame their praise in unmistakably militaristic terms of its benefit to the ongoing “holy war.” 140

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The contradictory framing aside, Children of the Battlefield is an impressive ethnography-style account of Kokubun’s observations of Chinese children, told in great detail, which ranges from what they ate and how they played to what they sold on the streets and how elementary school children were being trained and drafted as “child soldiers” (dōjigun). The book recounts events matter-of-factly at times and compassionately at others. It repeatedly speaks to the similarities of children around the world—and the bonds that would emerge once children knew those similarities. Kokubun understood himself as part of “China’s long-term [nation-building] process,” a rhetoric shared by other forward-looking colleagues in pedagogy and social welfare. For instance, in a push for medical oversight at Chinese schools in order to improve the physical strength of children, the author of the article “The Necessity to Urgently Establish a Children’s Bureau: Focusing on Solving the Child Problem during and after the War,” which had appeared a year earlier in the journal Social Welfare (Shakai Fukuri), suggests that the term postwar rather than wartime would be more appropriate for the area (Matsushima 1939: 17). The notion of friendship among children across borders and front lines persisted in children’s books and magazines as well. The children’s book Children’s Book: Being Friends with Neighbors (Nihon Gangu Kenkyūkai 1940b, vol. 10, no. 13), for instance, evokes the desirability and utility of “being friends with neighbors” (see fig. 32). Underlining the appeal’s message, a Japanese teenage boy on the book’s cover holds the hand of a girl, who in turn holds the hand of a boy; both small children most likely represent China. The older, Japanese, boy wears a school uniform in the colors of the Imperial Army and an upper arm band with Japan’s national flag. The younger children, who appear to be between five and seven years old, gaze happily at the Japanese youth’s face. In turn, the Japanese “boy soldier” has both the gentle smile and the bearing of a caring older brother. In this image, a bond between child and “boy soldier” is established and naturalized—the faces are roughly the same regardless of gender or age. The image suppresses the tension between war and vulnerability, between the perpetration of acts of violence and the horrors of victimization. Indeed, the value of placing children in this picture lies in their capacity to level the hierarchy between the teenage boy, who is already a step closer to being a soldier, and the young children. Child readers were reminded that becoming soldiers, as the teenage boy would soon do, lay in their future—and that the reverse was also true: like them, soldiers had once been children. The children in T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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fig. 32. One new year’s children’s book of 1940, Children’s Book: Being Friends with Neighbors (Kindābukku: Otonari nakayoshi; Nihon Gangu Kenkyūkai 1940b), directly evoked the core theme of many children’s publications at the time: the desirability and utility of “being friends with neighbors.” Private collection.

these images, thus, also constitute the soldiers’ visible ties to their own onceinnocent, infantile selves. For the benefit of Japanese child readers’ peace of mind, such gestures of narrative and visual alignment obscure and distract from the mass violence the war entailed, working to assure them that their brothers, fathers, and uncles were just as caring toward children abroad as they had been with them at home. While politico-sentimental lessons were explicitly directed to Japanese child readers, their books and magazines were often delivered and read to them by a range of adults, particularly mothers and teachers. As such, authors, illustrators, and publishers strove to capitalize on the opportunity that lay in packaging their messages. This author’s appeal to mothers and teachers inside the book both acknowledges that building the “new East Asian order” is a huge endeavor and thanks them for what he envisioned as their contribution—as well as that of the children in their care. Putting aside the battlefields in China, “where gun faces gun and sabre meets sabre,” he also uses his words to instigate feelings of “shared sentiment” toward the children of China and to indicate that the will “to get along” with them is of prime importance. That “shared sentiment” of children at home would be mirrored by Imperial Army soldiers in the battlefields. The sentiment of gratitude toward and friendship with the soldiers was commercialized beyond the iconography of children’s books and magazines and soldiers’-memoir-style narratives—further blurring the boundaries between soldier-combatants and Japanese children’s caretakers at home, as well as between Japanese children and colonized or enemy children. Advertisers frequently took advantage of the fact that the visual and narrative rhetoric of friendship between Imperial Army soldiers and enemy children so frequently appeared as transactions entailing sweets, tea, and food items and co-opted the sentiment to sell a slew of desirable products, especially sweets. In the hands of the producers of children’s commercial culture, the souvenir candy the soldiers brought to the children, and the tea some of those children made and brought to them in turn, became further proof that Imperial Army soldiers treated those enemy children like they would treat their own. For example, the packaging for Morinaga milk caramels, concocting a harmonious universe, tells war stories in which children’s and soldiers’ worlds naturally flow together through the exchange of a much-sought-after piece of candy. An issue of the magazine Children’s Club (Yōnen Kurabu, vol. 14, no. 13 [1939]: table of contents flap) featured caramels by Meiji Seika, a confectionary company founded in 1916. Variations of the ad appeared in a T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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number of issues of the same magazine. In one, a child in full samurai costume and sword pulls some caramels out of the package to distribute them to a monkey, a girl, and a dog, who patiently await their share. In the background is a larger image of the package, showing a boy giving a caramel to his dog alongside the name Meiji milk caramel. This design references a playful version of a glorious warrior past and appeals to the love that many boys harbored for samurai legends and magic stories; another ad for the same product inside the same issue brought child readers into the present and onto the battlefield. In this ad, an Imperial Army soldier gives a Meiji caramel to a Chinese child. In the background, a Japanese mother gives the same brand of caramels to her Japanese children. Both scenes are drawn in black and white (see fig. 33). The text reads: “The clock turns three. The Chinese child receives one Meiji caramel. Haven’t you also received Meiji caramels from your mother at about this time? Meiji caramels.” In this ad, then, not only do text and drawing liken the soldier at the front to the mother at the home front, but also the friendly encounter of the Japanese soldier with the Chinese child, and the sweets given and received, establish a connection between front and home front, and between Japanese and Chinese children. In children’s books and magazines like Children’s Club, the claims about the almost natural connections between and similarities of children and soldiers stretched into the colonies and to the front lines, where Imperial Army soldiers appeared keen on connecting and intermingling with local children. For one drawing in a children’s book, the accompanying text explains that the soldiers are about to read the comfort letters they have just received to the native children they play with. In fact, the soldiers often appeared in elementary-reader drawings playing with brown-skinned children under palm trees in the South Seas. In addition, similar scenes appeared on inexpensive postcards, which perhaps helped the soldiers to temporarily reconnect with their own past innocence. Sepp Linhart (2010: 141–142) has argued that redemption was the primary motive for circulating representations of encounters of children and soldiers. After battles, soldiers would turn to the children— perhaps even the children whose fathers they had just killed—“out of regret, relief that they had not destroyed everything, respect for life, or because they missed their own children.” While some soldiers actually have reported having these sentiments, something else must have been at stake to explain the appeal of this sort of arrangement in children’s publications. It so happens that the children’s books and magazines that printed such images and narra144

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fig. 33. A 1939 issue of the magazine Children’s Club (Yōnen Kurabu) featured advertisements for Meiji Seika caramels that draw intimate connections between children, mothers, and soldiers, explicitly suggesting that the soldier behind the front lines adopts the same role played by the mother at the home front.

tives were the publications that continued the longest during the severe wartime paper shortage (see fig. 34). In addition, veterans’ memoirs, other stories from the front lines written by former Imperial Army service members, and a variety of other publications continuously reproduced such sentiments. Hence, it is difficult to think of them simply as unmediated depictions of soldiers’ emotionality; they clearly had commercial and political value as well. As for what that value likely entailed: soldiers pictured on postcards and other publications might have evoked these sentiments of regret and longing in sensible viewers and readers—and in so doing invested the military and war with familiarity and individuality—while redeeming the soldiers in the process, likely appeasing children and adults back home. Th rough the friendly, brotherly touching of children, soldiers appeared to be connecting to their own childhood—indeed, possibly embracing their childlike innocence. By narrating, visualizing, and thus mobilizing the vulnerability of children, the illustrators and authors of the publications noted here— T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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fig. 34. Published in 1944, Kawasaki Taiji’s Village Nursery for 5–7-Year-Olds (Mura no hoikusho 5–7) provided children with this idyllic image from the South Seas depicting imperial soldiers playing with brown-skinned children. As letters from children in Japan have just arrived, the soldiers pictured in this illustration propose to read them to the children. Printed with the kind permission of the Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University.

children’s books and magazines, and soldier memoirs—reinvented soldiers as children’s protectors, saviors, and playmates, whether they encountered them behind the front lines, in occupied territories, or back home. Their unlikely or, at the very least, fleeting friendships with the young cleansed them of the violence they had both committed and suffered. The children in these images are happy: their smiles are friendly, confident, and grateful; they are properly clothed and well fed (whereas children suffering from hunger, trauma, or injury are, by contrast, as invisible as the dead children are). Colonized children were often shown interacting with soldiers, even playing and marching in a continuous process of slipping in and out of, imitating, and temporarily embodying the figure of the soldier. Yet as much as Imperial Army soldiers readily blended in with Japanese and colonized children, enemy soldiers remained at a remove from the vicinity, entirely invisible. 146

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fear and sadness Whereas children’s writings—journals, poems, essays—often reproduced the messages of the publications examined here, fear for a father’s, uncle’s or brother’s life and well-being was nonetheless at the center of children’s anxieties at the time. For instance, in 1937, an eleven-year-old girl named Omiya Setsuko wrote for class a poem titled “Older Brother Is Strong and Healthy, Isn’t He?” Mother who until now had diligently affi xed sliding doors suddenly looks at the newspaper. “What is it, Mother?” In the newspaper is a photograph of IJA soldiers who shout, “Long live His Majesty!” Mother’s eyes are full of tears. Mother remains silent while lighting a candle at the shrine. I too recall older brother on the battlefield and my heart screams. (Tomonaga, Tanaka, and Ienaga 1993: 339)

While children’s books on both sides of the front lines encouraged a range of sentiments, including gratitude, friendship, pity, and pride, learning how to control and suppress some sentiments, whether in front of a family member like Setsuko above or in public, was deemed to be equally important. Chief among them: sadness. During the Asia-Pacific War, even children were prohibited from crying in public, whether for departing soldiers or at the death of family members. Crying was framed as selfish, because it indicated one loved the deceased more than one loved the nation he had died for. Yet as Emiko OhnukiTierney (2002) and, more recently, Aaron Moore (2013) have shown, soldiers’ diaries frequently referred to their own or others’ agony, as well as the tears that they frequently shed out of sorrow, sadness, and fear of death. As one girl named Kuwashiro Chino so poignantly remembered, “One didn’t speak of one’s sadness, and suffered it alone” (Scherer 2001: 106). For forty days, Kuwashiro, who was thirteen or fourteen at the time, had served at the Chiran Airbase to prepare for the departure of kamikaze pilots, waving to them as they took off. The Imperial Army airbase at Chiran, Kagoshima, was the principal kamikaze base during the Battle of Okinawa. Of 1,036 army aviators who died in these attacks, 439 took off from Chiran. The vast majority of them were classed as “young boy pilots” (shōnen hikōhei). As she recalled much later, the thought that they would be dead in just a few T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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hours made her cry, regardless of whether she was allowed to do so or was supposed to be ashamed of her tears (104).2 One commander of kamikaze boy pilots recalled how often he had to remind them to suppress their fear and sadness. “When they had drunk alcohol, they often showed their true feelings and began to cry. . . . They remembered their parents and siblings. . . . [A]ctually they were not supposed to drink. After all, they were way too young for alcohol.” Even though Commander Nishikawa thought of these aviators as soldiers, they were de facto children, many just thirteen or fourteen (Scherer 2001: 27). Akabane Reiko, another “waving girl,” was in awe of the young pilots who would die the following day. “We were just little girls from the countryside and didn’t even know how to talk to them. We only thought about how to serve them well during their last days” (108). They did not speak about death with the pilots. They were not even allowed to tell their own families that they were serving at the airbase; according to Akabane’s recollection, their parents remained unaware. “We were so young and didn’t really understand how these people could smile. I never saw anybody cry. They were so odd. It was always the same. They smiled and waved. Or they encouraged us: when you grow up, work hard so that things get better for Japan. . . . I wondered whether they were humans like us” (109). After the pilots had taken off, girls like Kuwashiro and Akabane went to their rooms and ritually burned tobacco because there was no more incense. “I was only a child,” Akabane recalled, “and had only one thought in my head: Why does it have to be this way? Why does it have to be this sad? On the way back home sitting on a truck, shoulder on shoulder, we all cried. We always cried on the way home, almost without end” (112–113). Another girl named Konno Kiyoko, who grew up in the port district of Osaka, saw off soldiers on an almost daily basis. She even boarded the ships to help the women of the National Defense Women’s Association serve tea and chat with the departing soldiers. She recalled how very pleasant the soldiers were with her. Many asked her name and address so they could write to her from the front. As soon as she had given her name and address to one of them, others requested them too, and she “felt like a famous actress giving autographs” (Kanō 1995: 63). One day, that good feeling was suddenly wiped away when a B-29 bomb destroyed her school and caused a huge fire. She had worked with other girls in the local munitions factory that day. As the girls made their way back from the factory, along the road they saw many dead bodies, burned so badly one could not tell if they were male or female. The 148

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road was stained with blood. As Konno walked by, she kept whispering, “I am sorry. I am sorry.” This was when she realized for the first time “what war really was,” and to what kind of place the soldiers she had so happily chatted with had been sent to die (64). While girls like Konno were for the most part designated to support and cheer on soldiers—their slightly older male peers—at the home front, some members of the military did go so far as to envision girls as soldiers, even combatants. For instance, an anonymous writer in the March 1935 issue of Army Pictorial (Rikugun Gahō) found that it was time for the “sons of the empire” (kōkoku danji) to be joined by its daughters “ready and willing to defend the home front in order to overcome the nation’s crisis” (86). Thousands of young women were eager to cross the line between the home front and the front lines. Many did so by becoming the widely idealized “precious goddesses” (Kameyama [1984] 1997: 163), nurses in military hospitals. In the early 1940s, the slogan “men become soldiers, women military nurses” (otoko wa heitai, onna wa jūgun kangofu) became so commonplace it even appeared in women’s cosmetic ads. Then, in March 1945, the war began to come home in dramatically new ways. As the front line drew closer, Okinawa’s strategic value increased, which mobilized almost the entire population of the island. Miyagi Kikuko was among the students of the local girls’ high school who had been trained to provide medical care at the local army hospital (Miyagi [1995] 2002: 17–19). After the first air attacks on Okinawa in February and March 1945, she returned home to ask her parents for permission to be assigned to the battlefield (21). This is how Miyagi remembered the conversation with her parents: I had to ask for permission to go off to the army field hospital and work there at the front lines. My father was a teacher at a boys’ school and taught his students the ethics of working “for the nation.” Thus, I fully expected him to happily let me go, but he got angry and yelled, “We did not raise you so that you can die at the age of sixteen!” My mother also said, “You don’t need a high school diploma anymore. So just don’t go back to school. Stay here,” and she began to cry. I said, “But everybody will call us traitors!” In the end there was nothing we could do, and I walked the fi ft y-two kilometers back to school at Naha. (22–23)

Speaking of death of the young: while the “mass suicide” of children, women, and the elderly had long been promoted as preferable to their capture T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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by enemy forces, many found that going through with it proved to be a different matter. Sixteen-year-old Kinjo Shigeaki was one of seven hundred or eight hundred people who had gathered in Nishiyama, in the north of Tokashiki Island, Okinawa, where they were ordered by Japanese soldiers to commit suicide. He recalled that he knew it to be “a father’s role to kill his own family,” but Shigeaki’s father had already died. Seventy years after the fact, Shigeaki did not clearly remember how he and his brother killed their mother: “Maybe we tried to use rope at first, but in the end we hit her over the head with stones. I was crying as I did it and she was crying too. . . . I don’t remember exactly how we killed our little brother and sister but it wasn’t difficult because they were so small” (Bradley 2014).

pacification and its discontents It all came back to me and I thought: What shall I do? What will our soldiers do? We remember everything. . . . We arrived at a village and children came running—hungry and unhappy. And I, who had sworn that I hated them all, collected everything the lads had, everything left from their rations, every piece of sugar, and gave it to the German children. Of course, I had not forgotten, I remembered everything, but I couldn’t look into the eyes of hungry children with indifference. . . . I tell you, we fed the children, and even stroked their heads.

This was how Sofia Adamovna Kuntsevich, a Russian medical orderly— interviewed decades after the fact by Svetlana Alexiyevich—recalled her encounter with German children after the unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers on 8 May 1945 (cited in Alexiyevich [1985] 1988: 235). Similar experiences were recalled by liberating armed forces as well. In Germany, Maria Höhn (2010: 258) has suggested, “no historical exhibit or popular history book on the postwar years is complete without a picture of a smiling GI, preferably a black GI, handing candy to a German child. . . . The same airplanes that just a few years prior had obliterated the city had been turned into ‘raisin bombers’ that brought food to the starving city and dropped candy for Berlin’s children.” Shortly after France’s liberation, Mary Louise Roberts (2013: 38) has noted, American GIs “fell in love with the ‘wonderfully clean and beautiful little’ [French] children” who were among the first to open their hearts to the GIs whose pockets were bursting with candy and chewing gum.” According to 150

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Roberts, “With hearts aching for their own families, the Americans did everything they could to protect the children from harm[,] and if cigarettes were the smell of liberation, candy and chewing gum were its tastes” (Roberts 2013: 42). Note that, at least in hindsight, some French child recipients of such goodies had a somewhat more critically self-reflective perspective on GIs’ open hearts: “Like the white men who debark with their trinkets in the midst of an African tribe, the soldiers generously distributed chocolate, cigarettes, candy and chewing gum into the hands extended towards them” (a French man remembering his childhood after the U.S. landing in Normandy; cited in Roberts 2013: 120). While the Japanese colonization and occupation of large parts of Asia had the flavor of caramels—at least for a lucky few children throughout the empire— peace during the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–1952) tasted like American chocolate and chewing gum. Both treats were fondly remembered as “the taste of liberation” by children across Europe and Asia. Just as in wartime images of Japanese soldiers with children, children again appear prominently after the war. Occupation-era photography and soldiers’ reflections reconstituted the emotional capital of children. However, rather than being enlisted in the infantilization of war, photographs and other representations of children were now enlisted as the embodiment of peace: as icons of humanitarianism. Indeed, as the anthropologist Liisa Malkki (2010: 60) has observed, “children [have come to] occupy a key place in dominant imaginations of the human” and of “world community.” Her insightful programmatic observations about constructions of the human in post–World War II humanitarianism center on “special, observably standardized, representational uses of children” in registers with “affective and ritual efficacy,” including representations of children as embodiments of a basic human goodness and symbols of world harmony, as sufferers, as seers of truth, as ambassadors of peace, and as embodiments of the future. By the “infantilization of peace” Malkki means two interrelated things. First, in the post–World War II world, the word peace can no longer be uttered without it being paired with the visual, or otherwise representational, presence of a child. And second, by the same token, and precisely because of the mediating role of the child, “peace” is no longer taken seriously as an option but is relegated to the realm of the infantile or, indeed, the utopian. After 1945, many of those who had striven to militarize Japanese children’s worlds—the publishers, editors, writers, illustrators, advertisers, and others I have been discussing—made a perplexingly swift about-face and began to fervently promote the idea of turning youth into pacifists—indeed, back into T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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“true” children. This new effort to pacify children took many forms. Children who had been pushed to grow up, to shed their childhood and gender throughout the war, suddenly were protected and nurtured: allowed to be vulnerable and innocent, they were expected to be oblivious to the woes of postwar occupation. As one girl who had served in the Himeyuri Girls Corps, a unit of female students sent to the front in the Battle of Okinawa, put it: “Finally, I was able to rid myself of military clothes and be a girl again” (Miyagi [1995] 2002: 195–197). I have mentioned the appearance of cute little dogs with children and soldiers in visual materials, where the animals, playing a supporting role, enhanced the emotional capital of children. How interesting, then, to note the identical use of pets enlisted in pictures in the process of pacification. In the Kōdansha Picture Book for Good Children: All Kinds of Animal Paintings (Kodomo ga yoku naru Kōdansha no ehon: Dōbutsu gashū kedamonozukushi), Ueno Zoo director Koga Tadamichi (Oka and Koga 1950: 3) wrote, “Dogs are the animals that are most similar to humans.” Text alongside the painting of a grown dog and four puppies chasing one another notes that dogs never forget anything, have cute puppies, and are a lot of fun to play with. The equally adorable puppies that had accompanied children during their war games in the field only a couple of years earlier now seemed forgotten. Koga and other authors appeared oblivious of the puppies that had only recently enhanced the innocent look of kamikaze pilots in commemorative photographs taken just before their last, desperate suicidal missions. Like representations of children across a range of media postdefeat, representations of cuddly animals, too, had been enlisted to do the heavy lifting of emotionally transitioning to the occupation era, peace, and pacifism. In the preface to All Kinds of Animal Paintings, Koga wrote that working to redirect children’s long-honed love of the emperor and nation toward the love of animals would go a long way toward instilling pacifism in children (Oka and Koga 1950: 1). That true love of animals, he proposed, was directly connected to humanity. The best way to instill in children the love of animals was to teach them as much as possible about animals. Knowing animals was the beginning of loving them. Accordingly, Koga encouraged parents to introduce their children to bunnies, birds, and dogs so they could discover how lovable animals are. That, in his eyes, would be the way toward the truly pacifist nation-state that the new constitution required. Thus, both the emotional rhetoric of the war years and the emotional conventions of a modern militarist and imperialist Japan were forcefully retooled. Intertwined with pacifism, they were the new lead 152

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notion of postwar Japan. But while large parts of the population might have been ready to “embrace defeat,” as John Dower (2000) has suggested, this did not mean that years of militarist rhetoric designed to instill certain emotional conventions in children’s and adults’ minds disappeared overnight. Just as peace was not immediately achieved, pacifism, too, took time to take root. •

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The official surrender of Japan and the subsequent dismantling of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy changed soldiers’ appearances in manifestations of children’s culture and public discourse about children. Soldiers were still featured in photographs, print media, and children’s publications— they were just different soldiers. They appeared in arrangements strikingly similar to those of their wartime Japanese counterparts; the difference was that they wore uniforms of the Allied occupation in Japan. They gave chocolate and chewing gum to Japanese children, seemed to most locals to be cheerful and warmhearted, and appeared keen on becoming children’s best friends. Photographs of American and British soldiers with Japanese children were used in particular to help transform the dramatic demonization of Americans that had taken place in Japanese wartime propaganda. This was how Akabane Reiko first came to socialize with American GIs. “These people were almost like the kamikaze pilots,” she recalled. “They were almost as young and appeared even nicer because they expressed themselves more directly” (Scherer 2001: 113). She fondly remembered the chocolate they gave her, and how she had enjoyed playing cards with them at her house (113). But not all welcomed their occupiers. Miyazaki Hayao, who is today an acclaimed fi lmmaker, was eleven when the Allied occupation of Japan came to an end on 28 April 1952, following the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers. In his words, he was “the kind of kid who was too ashamed to ask the Americans for chewing gum or chocolate” (Miyazaki 2014). Miyagi Kikuko wrote in her memoir how traumatic she found the arrival of the U.S. military, even compared to the horrors she had experienced as a young teenager while serving as an assistant nurse in an Imperial Army field hospital in Okinawa. American GIs had found her together with a whole group of girls in a hole and had ordered them to come out. “They called out to us, ‘School girl, school girl!’ I fainted” (Miyagi [1995] 2002: 150–152). She described how the first U.S. soldier she got to know saved the life of another T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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girl, and how she could later still see on his face his fear that the girl might die. “We had been told that the enemy was nonhuman, so this human behavior came as a shock to me. Changing my mind about the Americans was not easy and did not happen overnight” (152–157). “Even when they offered me water and I felt like fainting because I was so thirsty, I did not accept it from them” (164). The anxieties of children like Miyagi, who had known only an imperialist Japan at war, were asked to consider “the Americans everybody’s friends,” not only by direct, publically posted appeals, but also in a range of publications. For example, the 1946 illustrated text for the first postwar English-language conversation course indirectly addressed the fear of and apprehension toward Japan’s former enemies turned occupying armed forces. The title, Come, Come, Everybody (Kamu, Kamu, Ebburibodi), was borrowed from the theme song of author Hirakawa Tadaichi’s English-conversation radio program. The simple everyday English phrases that were to be studied along with listening to the radio program accompanied illustrations of an encounter—and subsequent conversation—of a Japanese boy in school uniform with a friendly American soldier. The context of the encounter of the boy with the soldier—Japan’s occupation by Allied armed forces—is brought into the pictures only via the soldier’s uniform, his tall frame, and his stereotypical blond hair and blue eyes. To some degree, the illustrations mirrored the wartime iconography of colonized children’s encounters with Imperial Army soldiers, as well as the contemporary, occupation-era iconography of Japanese children’s encounters with Allied forces’ soldiers. But there is another angle to this as well. The roles these two characters perform throughout the textbook differ from those of their wartime predecessors in a number of ways. In this encounter, the boy is not a cheerful and grateful recipient of caramels, chocolate, or chewing gum like children his age during the war and the occupation period had been; instead the encounter is between a boy-guide and an adult soldier-tourist. The Japanese child and the American soldier meet in a park, a distinctly nonmilitary setting. The soldier is unarmed. Even though ostensibly the Japanese boy—and Japanese adult and child listeners to the radio program—seeks Englishlanguage instruction, the American soldier asks questions about Japan and its customs, which the boy provides. But though the playing field appears to have been leveled a bit in this publication, this did not presage a trend to come. Twenty years later, Nosaka Akiyuki published for an adult readership his iconic story “American Seaweed” (“Amerikan hijiki,” 1967), about a 154

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Japanese boy who pimps for an American soldier. Notably, though the deeply engrained ambivalence toward the American soldier so central in that story had not yet found its way into mainstream publications for children and adults in the immediate-postwar period (Molasky 1999: 157–176), it was not absent either.

encamping children Soon after the end of World War II, a new debate rekindled the notion of “children’s rights” with new force. Children were found to be deeply affected by the war, which left many vulnerable to “moral decline”—as readily noted by print media and experts working in a number of intellectual fields—as well as to an “uncontrolled sexuality,” as investigated by a new generation of sex experts following in the footsteps of the early twentieth-century sexologists (Asayama 1957: 57–84; Frühstück 2003). Kan Takashi (1950), a psychologist at Hosei University, was one of many who commented on what had by then become a widely claimed phenomenon. He wrote in the journal Child Psychology (Jidō Shinri) about the apparent “moral decline” of children in the aftermath of war, citing crime statistics, noting instances of sexual crimes by children against other children, and describing his own impressions of children’s violent and criminal behavior. Kan challenged the mainstream understanding that the moral decline had resulted entirely from postdefeat confusion in Japanese society. Instead, he attributed children’s inappropriate behavior to the economic situation of the day. Even working parents, he noted, were unable to sufficiently feed and protect their children. At the same time, he claimed that the authority of parents and teachers had crumbled in the course of the war. Children no longer aspired to become outstanding individuals or “like their fathers.” The war had broken the bonds between parents and children. As a result, children had become psychologically disconnected from their parents and, presumably, had slipped away from their moral authority. In short, in Kan’s eyes the miserable state of the postwar economy had done as much damage to children as had the war itself. Kan offered an alternative perspective on these unfortunate children: one might look at them as “independent and self-supporting children” ( jikatsuji) rather than in terms of the then-common negative phrase “juvenile vagrants” (29). At any rate, the fault for both developments—moral decline and uncontrollable sexuality—was attributable not to the children but to the parents, T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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wrote Ōgiya Shōzō (1953: 70), editor-in-chief of the weekly Asahi Shūkan and, as noted in his byline, the proud father of a female high schooler, a female middle schooler, and a boy in elementary school. In an article also published in Child Psychology, he cited that one benefit the Americans had brought to Japan was “gender equality,” by which he primarily meant coeducation beyond elementary schools. It would be old-style thinking, he felt, the kind that considers only “the male state” (dansei kokka) without any regard for the “aspirations of women,” to suggest the problem was actually the moral decline of children. Ōgiya’s and Kan’s concerns were shared by many even though opinions on the cause of children’s moral decline varied—as did thoughts on whether the cause could actually be discerned. In 1951 Japan ratified the “Children’s Charter” (Japanese Charter of Children’s Rights), which declared that children had the right to be respected both as human beings and as members of society, and that they were to be brought up in a “healthy environment.” Partly because of the charter, the following year saw the founding of the Japanese Association for the Protection of Children (Nihon kodomo o mamoru kai) to pursue “the creation and spreading of a healthy children’s culture” (kenzen na jidō bunka o sozo to fukyū). Under Osada Arata’s (1887– 1961) leadership, the Society formulated five goals: the realization of the Children’s Charter; the protection of children from war in the spirit of the Japanese constitution; the elimination of conditions and circumstances that impede children’s happiness; the raising of children so that they would have the strength to live strongly, “correctly,” and happily; and furthering the happiness of children by employing love, knowledge, and technology.3 When he became the first director of the Society, Osada Arata was already a prominent educator known for his research on the Swiss pedagogue and education reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. He had been in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell, an experience that made him a peace activist for the rest of his life. As the author of the book Children of the A-Bomb (Genbaku no ko, 1951), he had collected school essays—written by children of Hiroshima who in 1945 had been between five and fifteen years of age—that described how they experienced the cataclysmic event of the first atom bomb and its aftermath. Very much in light of these and other children’s ordeals, the Society’s guiding frameworks were pacifism and the overall mission of the Children’s Charter. The first objective of the Society’s activism was resistance against American military bases. Given the worsening of children’s living conditions around U.S. bases in Japan, especially those from which the 156

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U.S. Army’s Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division waged war in Korea (1950–1953), the Japanese Association for the Protection of Children joined forces with a range of civic and cultural organizations, overcame ideological differences with representatives of the labor and teachers unions, and began a broad social movement for children’s rights and peace. It is difficult to imagine what could have been more effective than enlisting children themselves to address the social impact (which was often anything but child-specific) of the ubiquitous presence of occupation soldiers populating some six hundred U.S. bases across Japan. Taking a cue from Osada’s Children of the A-Bomb, the Japanese Association for the Protection of Children, as its first course of action, put out a nationwide call—the first of its kind—for children of all ages to describe in short essays their everyday encounters and experiences with American troops. About seventy elementary and junior high schools responded, sending 1,325 essays by students from the first to the ninth grades. Two hundred of these pieces were published in 1953, under the title Base Children: How to Best Think about This Situation (Kichi no ko: Kono jijitsu o dō kangaetara yoi ka), becoming one of only a few records of children’s perspectives on Allied soldiers.4 The book’s three editors were well-known figures in their own right. The group included the sociologist and social critic Shimizu Ikutarō (1907–1988), whose calls for the improvement of people’s daily lives were tied in with an anti-U.S. ethnic nationalism. From 1949 to his retirement from the faculty of Gakushūin University—the traditional site of higher education for the members of the imperial household—Shimizu had written about how the “various ethnic nations of Asia” had begun to pursue paths of independence. Japan, by contrast, had found itself in a “new state of colonization” (Avenell 2010: 39). The editors’ call for children’s compositions about their personal experiences near American bases, thus, was driven by the belief that writing about everyday life would help children uncover “unique traits long embedded in Japanese society and its culture, language, and writing system,” and that such compositions could be utilized to mobilize against the American military presence in Japan (51). As for the other members of the team, the second editor was Ueda Shōzaburō (1894–1958), who had started out as an elementary school teacher in Kōchi only to become a champion of the Taishō-era free education movement—while also pursuing a political career as president of the Communist Party. The third was Miyahara Seiichi (1909–1978), a key figure in the leftist Japan Teachers Union and professor of pedagogy at Tokyo University. T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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Base Children constituted a collection of essays by elementary- and middle-school pupils identified by name, grade level, place of residence, and name of school. Some of their essays described friendships between Japanese and American children, the gratitude felt by starving Japanese children for American soldiers’ gifts of chewing gum and chocolate, and children’s curiosity about the ubiquitous presence of streetwalkers. More common were expressions of dismay over the difficulties of adjusting to Japan’s new status as a country under Allied military control—as well as the sense that, despite the fact that the war had ended, to some it seemed as if it had not. For instance, an eleven-year-old boy from Yokosuka felt puzzled and humiliated by the preferential treatment of American GIs at a public bath: In the evening, when I came home from playing my mom said, “You look fi lthy. Go to the bathhouse,” and gave me a soap and a towel. I thought I could still play a little in the bathhouse and happily went up the hill. The bathhouse was still full and so I waited. When an American and a woman went in I thought there must be free spots now, opened the door but found that it was still full. When I waited a little longer the two people came back out. I waited some more until both baths, that for men and that for women, became vacant. While I went in I thought about what had just happened. Another bather . . . said, “Why do they let an American soldier ahead?” And another one responded that the bathhouse probably got a lot of money for doing that. I stood there astonished and listened. (Shimizu, Ueda, Miyahara 1953: 273)

In this and other accounts of children’s experiences under the occupation, it became clear that children learned to appreciate that the rhetoric of the security treaty and of bilateral friendly relations did not suddenly materialize simply because an accord ordained it. Every day made it more apparent to them that Japan would not become an independent democracy overnight. Another essay, written by a third grader, describes the limitations to Japanese citizens’ freedom of movement—essentially, how his hometown had become an “American Yokohama.” He writes, When we walk around in the city, we meet an enormous number of soldiers. Most of them are Americans. Because of their presence many parts of Yokohama are now “off-limits” for the inhabitants, and what used to be a big city has become rather small. Yokohama does not only feel smaller, it has really become smaller. A bridge we always used is no longer accessible for us. Department stores that sell a lot of things cheaply are no longer accessible for us. Even the harbor is partly closed off. Everyday life has become

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comparatively complicated. Among the soldiers there are some who become violent against Japanese. My father has been the object of this violence twice. It is obvious that our environment has worsened. It has not only worsened because of the soldiers. It also manifests itself in the behavior of Japanese women. They are providing bad models. I have grown up in the midst of it and have become independent. . . . [T]his is no longer an occupied Japan. It is the new Japan. In Yokohama, however, there are still a lot of soldiers. (Shimizu, Ueda, and Miyahara 1953: 277–278)

Like many other contributions, this boy’s essay also expresses surprise and discomfort with the fact that children experienced their country not as independent but as if it were still at war: disorder and violence were barely kept under wraps. A first grader in another middle school describes this as follows: Tack, tack, tack. There is enormous noise. I and my neighbor “A” run on to the big street in order to see what is happening. Aren’t there soldiers in full gear, soldiers like we haven’t seen for the last seven years? “Oh,” I say. I remember the war seven years ago. “Is it war again?” I wonder, when I begin to understand that this is a Marine Corps exercise in the mountains. . . . [T]here are also military planes and tanks. About a week later, I went into town with my mother. When we were walking along Sanjo Street a bunch of men in underwater uniforms appeared. I thought, “Again men in these clothes.” I was surprised to hear my father say, “It looks like there are still a lot of soldiers and military police coming into our harbor.” If this happens another time and they use war ships again, we will probably not be able to go to school anymore. Deep in my heart I think about what great cultural role the harbor could play instead. (Shimizu, Ueda, and Miyahara 1953: 305–306)

A core recurring theme in these children’s essays was violence by occupation forces, whether intentionally committed or haphazardly caused. One boy writes that he would never forget what would have been a perfectly ordinary afternoon: I was studying. It was one-thirty. The baby slept above me. Suddenly there was a huge explosion. I did not know what had happened and wanted to get outside. I grabbed the baby and ran out of the house. I was shocked to see that a military truck had hit our store. A soldier who was blue in his face stood in front of it. Our eyes met. I called out for my mother as loud as I could but nobody answered. My mother had been in the store, and when a large crowd gathered some of them had helped her to get out. I had the baby but then I noticed that my little brother Kazumasa was nowhere to be found,

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until someone cried out that Kazumasa was under the truck. My mother wanted to throw herself under the truck, but the people shouted that he was still breathing and would be fine. Even my grandfather forgot his bad leg, stumbled over, wept and cried for Kazumasa. . . . [M]y four-year-old brother died. As every year, we will commemorate him again this year on March 26. (Shimizu, Ueda, and Miyahara 1953: 133–134)

From these and many other writings it became clear that, though young, these child authors demonstrated mature thinking. Reading between the lines one can see that at least some children received official pronouncements of optimism with skepticism, were more likely to question than embrace the promulgated democracy, perceived the ostensible partnership with the United States as essentially a continuation of the occupation, and rejected the propagated role of U.S. soldiers as protectors of Japan. Of course, it is possible that in writing such critical commentary, children channeled their elders’ conversations—in the process making public what had theretofore been discussed mostly in private. There is also possibly a more important caveat against collectively taking these letters as representative of most children’s perspectives: the editors did not reveal their criteria in the selection process—again, they published just one in six essays (200 out of 1,325). The resulting collection might well reflect simply the editors’ perceptions—at the expense of perhaps a greater breadth of children’s experience. That said, the published pieces nonetheless serve as ample reminder and evidence of the necessity—heightened by the impact of war and its aftermath—of being cognizant of the vulnerability of children. Globally, the issue of vulnerability was taken up in the 1946 Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Two years later, when the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 revealed some shortcomings of the Geneva Declaration, the point was made again— this time in the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which emphasized the necessity of protecting children and children’s welfare because children embodied the future (Freeman 1996: 3; Neary 2002: 199). From there, the second half of the twentieth century unfolded as a period of increasing legal protection of children and childhood and the regulation of their worlds. In short, in light of the war and the enormously damaging effect it had on children’s worlds, the democratization efforts thereafter envisioned children as ever more fragile and vulnerable, a view that coincided with the articulation and ever-evolving conceptions of human rights and children’s rights alike. 160

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barefoot and dying Some Japanese children whose childhoods had been colored by war—the atomic bombs, the declaration of defeat, and the lengthy occupation—grew up to capture their memories in novels, manga, and animated fi lms, in attempts to convey their and other children’s experiences through the eyes of child protagonists. These films, together with other literary and visual works of the 1980s’ wave of remembrance, powerfully reconfigured the child as victim, evoking sentiments that were precisely the opposite of those so relentlessly insinuated during wartime. Children were no longer the cheerful if vulnerable banner-carriers of war and empire building, and their experiences were now marked by loss, suffering, death, and the incomprehensibility of imperialist ideology. The films Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) and Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka), both hailed to this day as remarkable antiwar fi lms, convey and elicit such sentiments. They both reanimate the AsiaPacific War from the perspective of children to portray with heart-wrenching force just how children, who had previously flourished in the love and care of harmonious families in a time of peace, became powerless and lost everything. In Barefoot Gen, Grave of the Fireflies, and a series of fi lms modeled on them, children do not get rescued and gifted with chocolates, chewing gum, or other things. They all suffer. Some of these children die horrible deaths. In the very effort to depart from wartime and lingering postwar rhetoric, these next-generation creators believed that the value of children lay, not in their moral authority to underwrite war, but in the purity of their perspective in relaying—indeed, mourning—the suffering experienced by children in war. Specifically, the child victims of these creative works were not enemy and colonized children throughout the empire but Japanese children who suffered and died from the atom bombs and starvation. Barefoot Gen is a slightly fictionalized account of Nakazawa Keiji’s life in wartime Hiroshima before, during, and after the bombing. In addition to the devastation of Hiroshima and people’s suffering after the war, Nakazawa described, in shocking detail, various battlefield scenes that he had gleaned from historical records. Nakazawa had been an elementary school boy of six when he lost his father and two siblings in the bombing of Hiroshima. He later became a professional cartoonist, drawing sports and adventure stories for comic weeklies, until one of his editors urged him to share his own experience as a survivor of that fateful day. The result was an autobiography in cartoon form, one that described his experience in heartrending detail. The work T h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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so impressed his editors that they gave him free rein to create the epic cartoon novel that would become his life’s work. The iconic Barefoot Gen first appeared as a manga series in the weekly manga magazine Youth Jump (Shōnen Janpu), where it ran from 1973 until 1985. Later, it was translated into more than twenty languages and adapted into a television series, plays, feature movies, musicals, and an opera. In 1983, Mori Masaki adapted it as an animated film. Owing to its vivid descriptions of the frightful spectacle of war, the manga inspired an immense response. For many children it was reading Barefoot Gen that triggered an interest in learning more about the nuclear attacks against Japan. But even as Gen gained popularity as a unique means of educating young people about the horrors of nuclear war, it also provoked the ire of Japan’s right wing, because the story also condemned the militarist leadership that led Japan into war. In a speech he gave in 2007, five years before his death, Nakazawa said he could still feel “the weight when I picked up my younger brother’s skull. . . . My wish is that the readers of the book continue their efforts to create a world without war and nuclear weapons.”5 •

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I noted above that Mori Masaki adapted Barefoot Gen into an animated film, Hadashi no Gen, in 1983. Five years later, Isao Takahata released another such animated tale of Japanese children’s experience of the Asia-Pacific War: Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka). Released in 1988, just a year before the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that Japan ratified in 1994, it is based on Nosaka Akiyuki’s 1967 semiautobiographical novel of the same name.6 In an interview, Nosaka, who was the sole member of his family to survive the war, expressed the guilt he felt about the death of his sister, who undeniably died from hunger. When scrounging for food he had often fed himself first, his sister only later. His unbearable guilt thereafter prompted him to write about the experience in the hope of purging the demons tormenting him. While commercially not as successful as Barefoot Gen, Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies was also critically acclaimed as an antiwar film. Like Nakazawa, Nosaka had survived World War II atrocities, in his case the firebombing of his hometown, Kobe. Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of how a young teenage boy named Seita cares for his five-year-old sister, Setsuko, after the Allied bombing campaign of March 1945 kills their mother and destroys their home, neighborhood, and school. As their father is away 162

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serving in the Imperial Army, an aunt takes them in. She turns out to be cruel, so the children run away and eventually live in a hillside cave. Seita does everything he can to find food and keep the memory of their parents alive in Setsuko’s mind. Despite his efforts, she becomes weaker and weaker and eventually dies from malnutrition. A few weeks later, Seita follows her into death, at the very moment Japan accepts unconditional surrender. While both works are hailed as two of the greatest antiwar films, they also, perhaps unintentionally, reinforce a public narrative of Japan as victim of the war. This narrative has contributed to placing the exclusive burden of responsibility for the devastating imperialist war onto the Japanese empire’s military elite—while entirely exonerating both the emperor and the citizenry (Frühstück 2007), “to the point that it ignores or elides Japan’s aggression against China” (Napier 2005: 218). As Susan Napier puts it: “The two most famous anime dramas concerning the Asia-Pacific War share in the collectivity of the Japanese memory as well as individual autobiographical accounts of personal suffering” (217). They show the war and its effect through the eyes of children. And although there are scenes of horrifying violence and devastation, the films contain many powerful scenes of human-scale interaction— made particularly effective in that they are subdued and imbued with a childlike, innocent tone (218). In short, though these films succeed in expressing the horrific suffering of many via the eyes of a few, they nonetheless enlist the emotional capital of children to do so. Unlike the equally emotionally charged publications for children of the first half of the twentieth century, they are used not to establish the justness of war but to evoke an “unproblematic response of heartfelt sympathy on the part of the viewers by focusing on innocent children devastated by war’s destruction” (Napier 2005: 218–219). In doing so, they remind us that the employment of children and emotion—specifically, the sentimentalization of a particular notion of childhood—whether to justify or condemn war, is always already compromised; it comes at the cost of a serious engagement with the wider Japanese population’s war responsibility and raises questions about the depth of that population’s commitment to peace and pacifism. •

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The repetitive pairing and blending of children with soldiers has worked to establish, reproduce, and naturalize the link between the maturing child and the pursuit of war. Analyzing such configurations also lays bare the enorT h e Mor a l Au t hor i t y of I n no c e nc e

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mous effort that went into sustaining the affective conditions of militarism. Such visual and textual blending of children with soldiers, especially the articulations of their similarity or even interchangeability, constitute a mechanism indicative of the modern ideology of the inevitability and naturalness of war. As the very devices for the continuous reanimation, modulation, and embodiment of the inevitability of war, the configurations of children with soldiers I have described functioned as a prosthetic of modern militarism. The Japanese commentators of the first half of the twentieth century made contradictory assumptions about how emotions work in children. Many assumed that children’s innocence makes their emotions true, that children’s emotions lie deep within them, waiting to be discovered and put to use. At the same time, adult contemporaries assumed, or at least hoped, that children’s emotions could be triggered and manipulated. And because they believed children’s expressions of their feelings could be trained, they also believed those feelings should be guided and controlled. Moreover, they were certain of the utility of the emotions that the sight of children would evoke in adults, believing that the emotional capital of children symbolically disarmed war, suppressed its violence, and redirected attention to its aftermath—peace, order, and a hopeful future. Adult readers’ and viewers’ minds were redirected to see the child and imagine its vulnerability or—alternatively or additionally—to see the world (or the war) through a child’s eyes. Both mechanisms contributed to the habituation of sentiments in both children and adults. In wartime, children make it all worthwhile—they make war just and moral; in peacetime, children become the agents of peace. No longer puppets in adults’ maneuvers, children of the Japanese empire were assigned the task of creating peace. They were to be the bond across the front lines and the moving boundaries of the empire: from Japan to the colonies and occupied territories, from the children of Japan to the children of the empire. To some degree, both this “sentimental education” regarding the AsiaPacific War and the aesthetic it has relied on have continued to permeate media coverage of wars ever since. John Hutnyk (2004: 89) has suggested that, like the ideology of tourism that “reduces social relations to fleeting encounters that ignore their contexts, . . . the romanticization of children in the midst of war” has been “turning children into little more than trinkets.” Yet the allure of children has proven powerful. They are much more than pawns or “trinkets.” Rather, in rhetoric children have been assigned an important role; they have been key figures in the rationalization and justification of war, and the carriers of peace. 164

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chapter 4

Queering War

“what did father do last night?” In March 2015, a new animated fi lm became available on the website of the Japanese Ministry of Defense.1 The film, Bōeimon Defense Lecture—the ABC of the Self-Defense Forces (Bōeimon no bōei da mon—yoku wakaru Jieitai), uses an elementary school boy’s question—“What did father do last night?”— as an opener to describe the father’s job as fighter jet pilot and major in the Air Self-Defense Force (the father had been on duty the previous night). The film also provides some general information on the composition and purpose of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) at large. Answers to various questions posed by both the boy and his two siblings are provided by a pale-blue-and-white hawk named Bōeimon, which initially had been drawn by the little boy and subsequently had come to life—and was, as such, a supremely suitable instructor for an elementary-school-level audience. (Note that the word Bōeimon is a composite of the Japanese words for “defense” [bōei] and the second character of the Japanese word for “question.”) Not surprisingly, children are front and center in the film, and they appear in a range of roles: first, they are referred to as motivators, the primary reason the male adults became SDF service members in the first place; second, as the most precious members of the Japanese population and territory as a whole, they are the key object of the kind of protection the Self-Defense Forces profess to provide; third, they are both the audience for and the voices of the description of the Self-Defense Forces; and fourth, in being cast as the recipients of instruction they are painted as being uniquely equipped to receive that instruction—while ignorant and naive, they also appear curious, eager to learn what their parents, including SDF service members, had theretofore neglected to teach them. 165

Japan’s Self-Defense Forces constitute a noncombat establishment, the result of the nation’s defeat in 1945 and of the consequent Article 9 of Japan’s constitution, which outlawed war as a means of settling international disputes. For this reason, the SDF’s public relations apparatus works within specific domestic legal limits and according to distinctly Japanese conventions of civil-military culture. This situation has ever since made both military and militarist appeals to the nation and its young people highly problematic, to the extent that it has relegated nationalism almost exclusively to the sphere of culture (Pempel 1998; Surak 2012). Consider the findings of a 1970 survey of six thousand young urbanites between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two from fift y-six countries around the world. Young people from Tokyo—along with those from Frankfurt and Stockholm—constituted the population that most valued peace, that believed that the military and militarism should be controlled as strictly as possible, and that considered its national flag and anthem mere symbols for which this population felt no special appreciation (Asahi Shūkan, 1970). The message of this and countless subsequent surveys was clear: for a vast majority of Japanese, war belonged in the past, not the future. Nobody took this message more seriously than did the Self-Defense Forces. They kept a low profi le throughout the Cold War–era of high economic growth, as they were self-conscious of their fragile legitimacy in the eyes of Japan’s population, aware of concerns about their rearmament expressed by neighbors and former colonies, and ambivalent about the increasing integration with the United States Forces, Japan. As such, the quality of the SelfDefense Forces cannot be represented as the logical, productive, and exclusive consequence of military training and war making—something that irks some of the SDF service members themselves. This restriction is additionally vexing because of the deep politicization of the question of whether Japan even constitutes a “normal” and “mature” nation-state. Starting in the early 1990s, a series of contested missions began to change the style of SDF public relations campaigns, providing new points of reference for military PR rhetoric and imagery. Despite the doubts about and popular resistance against the SDF’s roles beyond Japan’s borders, Japan’s participation in international peacekeeping missions has been given ex post facto legitimacy, a strategy that has also increased the popular approval rates of the SelfDefense Forces (Hook 1996: 125–126). The first of such missions was to Cambodia in 1992; this occurred soon after the June 1992 passage of the law that regulates Japan’s participation in peacekeeping missions (Kokusai heiwa 166

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kyōryokuhō), which was implemented in August 1992. Not surprisingly, the mission was carried out under intense media scrutiny. When it proved successful, it resulted in the beginning of an upward trend in popular approval rates for the Self-Defense Forces. Then, in 1995, the Self-Defense Forces’ slow response in the wake of the then-largest domestic earthquake, in the KobeAwaji area, boosted preparatory training for similar missions. Subsequently, the first international disaster relief mission, in Honduras in 1998, both widened the SDF’s potential field of engagement and provided grounds for expanding their domestic and international legitimacy. In 2004, despite disapproval by the popular majority, the then prime minister and commander in chief Koizumi Junichirō ordered the first SDF deployment to a war zone, Iraq—exclusively for the purpose of reconstruction. Then the unprecedented magnitude of the triple disaster—earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown—in northeastern Japan on 11 March 2011 prompted the deployment of almost all members of the Self-Defense Forces. Collectively, all of these missions have provided a boost to and left a significant imprint on subsequent Self-Defense Forces public relations and recruitment campaigns. In the Self-Defense Forces’ quest for favorable public opinion in Japan and abroad, their PR strategists have recruited television celebrities and minor pop stars in order to help them cleanse the problematic aspects from visual narratives of their missions. A second innovation, which has been key to current campaigns, is the use of children, childlike creatures, and objects that are widely associated with children—as legitimizers of both their missions and their very existence. This is where Bōeimon enters the picture. The twenty-first-century-style infantilization and sentimentalization of (the maintenance of) peace and (the utility of) the military are distinct, in a number of ways, from what has preceded. In a broad range of advertising campaigns, including the fi lm with Bōeimon and publications of the Ministry of Defense, the military and matters of defense are typically explained so as to be understood by small children, their comprehension aided by the use of child figures. These promotional materials enlist children’s culture and employ the rhetoric of childhood and maturation in order to appeal to two kinds of viewers: actual children and the “internal child” in the SDF’s young adult audience, both of which are envisioned as underinformed—indeed, clueless—about defense matters. Taken together, the aesthetics, technologies, and rhetoric of these projects differ dramatically from the legitimation and mobilization campaigns employed in the first half of the twentieth century (and, ironically, have served as models for vastly different Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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military establishments in the region, including those of South Korea, Taiwan, and China). In contrast to the actual members of the SDF’s ranks today, the key characters portrayed in military PR efforts are childlike rather than hypermasculine. Indeed, the child figures themselves are more often girls, not boys. Some of the girls exude innocence and vulnerability, others insinuate the possibility of romance, while yet others are unapologetically sexualized. No matter the specific content of any particular message, the militarized bodies that convey it are no longer exclusively, or even primarily, human. In addition, some campaigns employ media forms that appeal to a Japanese audience far beyond the child population—namely, manga and animated films that incorporate fictional creatures. The sort of cyborgish animated figures so prevalent in Japan’s popular culture increasingly join, or substitute for, drawings, paintings, and photographs of flesh-and-blood service members. Rarely are any of these figures aggrandized by an air of national purpose; instead, many are imbued with an apparent will to learn (what the Self-Defense Forces are all about) as well as the inclination to appreciate service members’ will to serve—that is, obviously, not to kill or die, attack or defend, but to rescue, save, and improve lives in Japan and abroad. Such uses of children by the military constitute attempts to tell SDF stories (in contrast to Imperial Army war stories) through mechanisms of selfinfantilization. By self-infantilization I mean two strategic moves: the choice of representing the SDF, their missions, and their roles in terms of the small, unthreatening, childlike, and cute; and the styles chosen for such representations, which are often modeled on advertising and popular culture targeted for the youngest set. The military PR apparatus employs the first strategy as a tool of normalization so as to convince a broad majority of the population that the Self-Defense Forces are useful and legitimate, populated by good men and women who engage in worthwhile, valuable missions. It employs the second strategy in an attempt to eventually recruit some of those whose styles they imitate and adopt. Children and objects that appeal to infantile sensibilities, then, reflect how thoroughly the military feels the need to suppress certain images of and messages about the military and its potential for mass violence in order to appear compelling and unproblematic. Ultimately, the centrality and value of the figure of the child in its legitimization campaigns have increased, diversified, and morphed in comparison to the efforts employed by the creative producers of children’s culture during the era of the Imperial Army—despite the fact that, unlike their predecessors, the Self168

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Defense Forces have never needed to explain and moralize their direct involvement in war as combatants. In other military PR materials, children’s and childlike bodies cross the bounds of sexual and gender conventions, defying the norms of sociocultural and political binaries. As a result, the Self-Defense Forces appear to, in effect, be “queering war”—that is, crossing, blurring, and redefining the boundaries of war/peace, man/woman, child/cyborg, and sex/violence. Sometimes, the child character or childlike creature is employed so as to sentimentalize peace and security; in efforts that baldly reprise the manipulation of children’s emotional capital, which was tapped earlier in the twentieth century, children—again vulnerable and innocent, sweet and adorable—are instrumentalized in order to legitimize the military and sentimentalize peace. At other times, the child character or childlike creature is employed to align the military with popular culture and tap into the appeal of preteen girls “as a widely recognized object of sexual fetishization” (Miller 2011: 61) and as objects and generators of sexual desire. While this queering of the military distinctly departs from previous SDF public relations campaigns, it also coexists with more conventional techniques of maintaining and increasing the appreciation of and trust in the Self-Defense Forces. Because of the United States’ position as a privileged partner in a bilateral security alliance with Japan, I include in my analysis the promotional attempts by the United States Forces, Japan, to mold their own public image—and to persuade the Japanese public of the necessity and utility of the alliance within Japan.

“exercising peace”: a matter of the heart One of the SDF public relations brochures published in 2004 aimed to inform the public about the circumstances, nature, and significance of the SDF’s Iraq mission: in early January 2004, a largely humanitarian contingent was deployed to Samawah in southern Iraq to engage in such tasks as water purification and the reconstruction of public facilities. The brochure cover, divided into quarters, features two photographs and two drawings, one in each corner; the center of the cover reads: “In order to build the future of Iraq.” The photograph in the top-left corner shows a male SDF service member with a group of Iraqi children. A girl, perhaps five years old, sits on his knee. Another girl of perhaps ten in a white-and-red Hello Kitty sweater stands next to him, together with four boys of roughly the same age. An older Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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boy and two adult men flank the group. While the service member smiles broadly at the viewer, the others look in various directions with a range of expressions on their faces, from a boy’s cheerful smile to one man’s more fi xed look. The message, however, is clear: the service member is there to help, and he gets along splendidly with the locals. The photograph in the bottom-right corner features a group of Iraqi teenage girls and boys, this time with two service members smiling in the background. This group stands in front of a wall covered with children’s drawings. Two of those wall drawings make up the other two corners of the cover. One shows a white bird that most likely represents a dove—a universal symbol of peace occasionally used in SDF regimental flags; the other drawing looks like a sports field, perhaps one that the SDF built or rebuilt. All in all, the producers of this brochure—as well as of numerous visual materials, including those produced for television reports, have taken pains to convey to the Japanese population back home that the Self-Defense Forces had been in Iraq to help and rebuild, not to fight. Likewise, many of the lengthy shots in Year One of the GSDF’s Iraq Deployment (Rikujō Jieitai Iraku haken no ichinen, 2005), a special television report by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, were views of service members surrounded by smiling Iraqi children (see also Konishi 2006: 175). Along the same lines, consider the photographs of the Iraq mission that appeared in a 2004 defense white paper: service members hoist carp flags at a river in Samawah, Iraq, for a Japanese-style boys’ festival; a female SDF physician examines an infant; SDF musicians perform an open-air concert for elementary-school-age children. Of particular note is a photograph depicting male service members teaching origami to elementary-school-age Iraqi children (Kiribayashi 2004: 15). Indeed, there is probably no other symbol of peace so intimately associated with the victimization of children during war as origami, on account of the memory of Sasaki Sadako, who is said to have folded one thousand paper cranes during the time between the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, where she then lived, and her death ten years later. On 12 January 2013, the Japanese embassy in Iraq organized an origami workshop for Iraqi NGO volunteers in the hope that they would in turn teach origami to hospitalized children.2 Subsequently, origami, often together with other markers of children’s sensibilities, has been widely used as a symbol of children’s war experience at war commemoration events, in Japan and around the world, by a great variety of organizations and initiatives, including the SDF and Japan’s diplomatic apparatus. If origami is the activity through which SDF service 170

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members engage children in deployment areas, scenes that are then featured in SDF white papers and public relations materials, “adult manga” is the medium of choice for instruction and persuasion. The “adult” in “adult manga” does not necessarily signify an adult readership. In fact, the readership of manga includes all age groups, and “adult manga” signifies manga booklets that describe complex matters, particularly for young people or people with a lack of interest in the subject matter; such booklets have been common since the 1980s. Starting in 1995, the SDF adopted this format for sharing visual narratives about its activities. Booklets range from the first-ever SDF manga, titled Prince Pickles: The Journey to Peace (Pikurusu ōji: Heiwa e no tabi, 1995), to the flood of recent defense white papers in manga format and manga describing particular missions. SDF publications in manga format prominently feature children—typically one girl and one boy, often in a normative family setting; some are data-heavy accounts embedded in mildly entertaining narratives; others are entirely narrative, with no SDF data whatsoever. For example, the 2010 manga-format defense white paper describes how the Self-Defense Forces coped with piracy in the Gulf of Aden off the Somali coast (Bōeishō 2010). The main characters are two children, Kaito, a boy of eleven, and Nanami, a twelve-year-old female classmate of Kaito with “a strong big-sister spirit” and a plan to do “work that will serve people.” The story begins with Kaito’s father, a Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) service member soon to be deployed to the Somali coast. Kaito learns that armed pirates “attack ships” and sometimes “capture crew members, demand ransom, and, if they do not receive it, end up killing the crew members.” In short, they are “an atrocious lot who threaten the safety of overseas transportation” (11). “In 2008, a huge Japanese crude oil tanker suffered an attack by pirates” (11). Though Kaito’s nervous look conveys the concern he feels for his father, his father declares that the pirates had become so problematic that their actions are considered “a threat to all of humanity” (12). In the next sequence a couple of SDF service members visit Kaito’s school for a “comprehensive learning session” (17), where they talk about the 2011 Antipiracy Law and the capacity of the Self-Defense Forces to defend themselves. As the story unfolds, the ship Kaito’s father is on ends up almost being attacked by pirates. It turns out that one of the SDF members who protected the ship (and, by extension, his father) from the air is Mr. Hatsushima, who had visited his school. Kaito is pleased to meet him and personally thanks him for protecting his father (52). Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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From there the manga proceeds to explain that Japan’s island status and its scarcity of resources necessitate international trade. The reader learns that the “Self-Defense Forces are working hard for Japan’s sake and the sake of the world too” (56), and that by protecting even areas far away from Japan, the Self-Defense Forces are “contributing to the world” in ways that are “very significant for the international community in the twenty-first century” (56). Gratitude expressed on the next few pages gives way to a number of factual explanations of the Antipiracy Law, its legal context, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the roles of the MSDF and the Air Self-Defense Force, and missions they had engaged in by then (63–64). Essentially, this publication consciously targets as its audience those who would not normally take a look at an ordinary defense white paper, especially children. The manga format, the child characters, and the storyline all provide allure—at least in the beginning. Yes, the emotional investment Kaito feels for his father’s safety is intended to be compelling, but after that moment the emotional charge dissipates, replaced by heavily factual material in the remainder of the manga. Both the Japanese military’s public relations apparatus and Japanese mainstream mass media truly rediscovered the use value of children when reporting on the SDF deployment to northeastern Japan in response to the triple disaster of 11 March 2011, which proved to be the SDF’s most significant mission, for several reasons. While the Japanese government was quickly deemed inept at handling what would become known as Japan’s “3/11,” the mission constituted an unprecedented safety risk for service members who acted under the heightened scrutiny of both domestic and global media attention. They were scrutinized domestically because they had appeared underprepared and underequipped sixteen years earlier when mobilized in the wake of the Kobe-Awaji-area Great Hanshin earthquake on 17 January 1995, then the most disastrous domestic earthquake since 1923 (Frühstück 2007); they were scrutinized internationally because of the unprecedented magnitude and nature of the disaster, which was almost immediately compared to the 26 April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The extended Self-Defense Forces mission in northeastern Japan became the defense white paper and public-relations story for the next several years; not surprisingly, PR officers took full advantage of the by-then well-utilized heartwarming potential of child figures (Bōeishō 2013). In the aftermath of the greatest disaster ever recorded in Japan, the SDF media and PR specialists alike liberally used photographs and anecdotes involving children, all of 172

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which “self-infantilized” and, eventually, sexualized their ranks and “queered” their military activities. One photograph that circulated widely in mainstream media features a female service member with a little girl smiling and flashing the peace sign. In another picture a male service member lovingly smiles down at a rescued baby in his arms. Similarly, an MSDF public relations video released on 1 March 2011, which declares the “pride” and “joy” of service members in their “mission and duty” to secure Japan’s borders, ends with a uniformed male service member taking into his arms a female toddler dressed in soft pink while a young, smiling woman—who appears to be the girl’s mother and his wife—happily looks on.3 Numerous other photographs that in succeeding years appeared in SDF public relations materials and mass media publications alike tell and retell the story of the privileged relationship of children with soldiers, one of play and laughter. And in an interesting reprise of previous years, teachers and parents encouraged children to write notes and letters to service members thanking them for their tireless postdisaster efforts—correspondence that in turn was widely printed in both mainstream mass media and SDF public relations materials. The Mainichi Magazine: The Self-Defense Forces’ Other Front Line (Mainichi mukku: Jieitai mō hitotsu no saizensen, 29 July 2011, 6–7), for instance, is permeated with pink. On its front cover, SDF service members march toward the reader through the remainder of a destroyed town, one of “various battlegrounds.” A few pages into the publication, however, another photograph shows a child who is perhaps seven years old wandering down a path carved out of heaps of debris and rubble—apparently “with all her belongings” and a determined look on her face—followed by a group of service members. Dressed in various shades of pink from top to toe, the girl also carries a pink bag. The publication’s back cover has a photograph of two girls dressed in items of pink clothing and waving at a military jeep—one of the girls also appears with a soldier in another photo—and a child’s thank-you letter written on pink stationery. An elementary school girl named Miyuki had written the following: To Everyone in the Self-Defense Forces, Thank you for cleaning up our town. I think when I grow up I want to become an SDF service member. You always waved from your cars. Thank you for waving back. Thank you so very, very much. I love SDF service members. From Miyuki. Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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More configurations of pink, girls, and military members have attracted photographers’ attention, then circulated in mainstream media, and eventually made it into SDF public relations publications. The magazine Bessatsu Takarajima, in an issue titled “The Self-Defense Forces vs. the Eastern Japan Great Earthquake” (no. 1780 [23 July 2011]: 8–9), provides a tribute to this specific configuration, a child with a military member. In this issue, a little girl in a pale pink jacket is prominently featured with a female service member in front of a Self-Defense Forces makeshift bath; the bath’s curtain-door behind them is predominantly a vibrant pink as well. Standing behind the girl, the service member smiles. Her hands rest protectively on the child’s shoulders. The girl looks shyly into the camera and flashes the peace sign. In a similar fashion, children are the main protagonists of the 2012 mangaformat white-paper devoted to the Self-Defense Forces’ disaster relief mission in northeastern Japan (Bōeishō 2012). No longer only pitiful, relieved, and grateful, as the child characters were in the early images, a boy and a girl reminiscence about the disaster, which had fallen on the day of their elementaryschool graduation ceremony. In a composed fashion they speak to a uniformed female service member, whose eyes are as big as those of any classic female manga or anime figure. A flashback to 3/11 is followed by a double-page layout of statistical data that express the disaster’s magnitude, followed by another double-page layout that shows the Self-Defense Forces’ response (10–13). The Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) commander of the deployed troops announces: “What we accomplish now with all our might will make history . . . all for the victims!” (15). Full single- or double-page layouts of quantitative data frequently interrupt the narrative. The female service member’s role is to explain some of them—including, for instance, the fact that this was the SDF’s largest disaster relief mission since their founding (16–17). Photographs of service members’ strained faces in action are interspersed with the two anime-style children’s faces. The children remember how “relieved” they had felt at the sight of service members, and how seeing them had “given [them] courage” (18). They also point out the “prompt first response” of the Self-Defense Forces (24). Drawings of service members are interspersed with photographs of service members on site—helping children, digging for survivors, unloading boxes, distributing goods—supplemented by detailed data on exactly what they did. Under the heading “Battle with an Invisible Enemy,” the boy exclaims that “the entire country had been standing up for Tōhoku [the northeastern portion of Honshu, the largest island of Japan]” (36). Just two photographs feature the damaged nuclear plant, which, even by the time of publication, was 174

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already being assiduously surveyed for both immediate and long-term impact, especially regarding increasing concerns about the effects of radiation. The white-paper manga also conveys how the Americans proved to be “true friends”—a notion I later take up from the perspective of the United States armed forces—and acknowledges other international help as well. The two children conclude that, “throughout Japan and, indeed, throughout the world, people helped us” (52). The female service member agrees, smiling warmly. “Like mothers,” service members delivered meals to the survivors (54), played music for them (63), and spread peacefulness (64). On the last page, the three of them look out into an indistinct grassy landscape that likely reminds the manga’s older readers of one of the hopeful moments at the end of Barefoot Gen, a film that I briefly featured in the previous chapter: despite the devastating scope of destruction the atom bomb had caused, Gen realizes in quick succession that his hair and the grass are growing again. Echoing Gen, the boy in the 2012 white paper says, “Our days have begun anew”; the girl admits she had not previously realized how the life she “took for granted” was “such a precious thing.” And then the final message from the female service member: “We always do our best so that everyone can live safely. You too, [when the opportunity arises], will do your best for someone, all right?” (66). Toward the end, the manga features a number of photographs of happily smiling children holding “Thank you, Self-Defense Forces” signs, all of which surround a drawing of the female service member figure. After that, a page is devoted to “messages of gratitude”: by the look of the handwriting and the sparse use of Chinese characters, all appear to be written by children (68). Published by a military concerned about its reputation from the time of its founding, the manga white paper ends with graphs reflecting the degree to which the Self-Defense Forces’ disaster-relief activities were appreciated by the population at large. The reader learns that 97.7 percent “valued” them. Similarly, despite the ambivalent and, in some quarters, hostile attitude toward the U.S. armed forces in Japan, 79.2 percent of respondents believed that their assistance, promoted under the name Operation Tomodachi, had been helpful as well. Mission accomplished, it appears. No word is wasted on the long-term impact of the disaster. While in many such materials child figures tend to include one girl and one boy, others privilege girl figures in ways not previously seen. In 2005, for instance, a short video produced for the Maritime Self-Defense Force opened with a group of men in sailor uniforms on board a ship. The sailors dance in formation to the tune of “YMCA,” the 1978 hit song by the Village People. Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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Taken at face value, the song’s lyrics seem to extol the virtues of the Young Men’s Christian Association. But in the gay culture from which the Village People emerged, the song was understood as celebrating the YMCA’s reputation as a popular cruising and hookup spot, particularly for the younger gay men to whom the song was addressed. The song’s lyrics were adapted for the MSDF recruitment video as follows: [In English] We have seamanship, seamanship, seamanship for love! We have seamanship, seamanship, seamanship for peace! [In Japanese] Japan is beautiful. Peace is beautiful. The Maritime Self-Defense Force. (Public relations video for the Maritime Self-Defense Force of Japan, previously posted, in 2005, on the Japan Defense Agency [today’s Ministry of Defense] website; Frühstück 2007)

When the uniformed men cheerfully sing “Japan is beautiful,” the camera zooms in on the face of a sweet-looking preteen girl, who smiles and salutes. By virtue of being a child, she appears to imply a special affi nity between children and soldiers, essentially lending her emotional capital to the military. Yet her appeal is different from both historical and contemporaneous representations of children described in this and the previous chapter. For one thing, the suggestion of potential state violence represented by the service members of the MSDF is crowded out by playfulness, both that of the service members and that of the child. But in addition, it matters that this child is a girl. In wartime attempts to mobilize children’s emotional capital, girls tended to be positioned in the margins, where they were the least intimately associated with the goings on. Perhaps that is why, in times of peace, the figure of the girl has the greatest potential of helping the viewer/reader to cognitively disconnect the construct of the military from the concept of war making, violence, death, loss, and disaster. How do girls’ infantile bodies lend themselves most effectively to the infantilization of the military and, by extension, peace? In the video, peace is hailed as “beautiful” just like—it apparently seeks to convey—the innocent, sweet girl’s face prominently shown along with that portion of the lyrics. The female child joyfully imitating a soldier’s salute serves as a mechanism to simultaneously reference the military and the nation-state, while also playfully distanc176

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ing her and, by implication, the military from the history of the empire—for which early-twentieth-century children had been so aggressively mobilized. It should be noted that this MSDF video circulated widely on the Internet. Together with children portrayed in other recent public-relations materials, the girl figure symbolizes children as the future, the embodiment of an entire population in constant need of protection, and, again and again, of peace. In 2014, the Self-Defense Forces’ Sapporo Regional Cooperation Office reached beyond the form of the human female child, deeper into the realm of the female, to a warm, fuzzy, and unequivocally embraceable character. The office launched a new mascot, an adorable white creature by the name of Fluff y Sheep (Hitsuji no Moko); moko moko signifies “fluff y” or “lumpy.” Child-sized, cardboard Fluff y Sheep poses with flesh-and-blood female service members at public events, where silvery Fluff y Sheep stickers are handed out and Fluff y Sheep’s story is told: She originated in Sapporo, consists of 100 percent wool, and is a female. She brims with curiosity and loves soft cream. Fluff y Sheep also adorns recruitment brochures that explain “the path toward becoming a service member” and feature photographs of combat planes, tanks, and aircraft carriers, together with a currently ubiquitous slogan: “Make peace one’s profession/ work/career” (heiwa o shigoto ni suru). Whether Fluff y Sheep does indeed do her job—endearing the Self-Defense Forces to children while warming parents’ hearts in the process—is hard to tell. It is clear, however, that the SDF public relations and recruitment campaign strategists believe that the cartoonish sheep will hit the right emotional chords to smooth the way toward a more favorable opinion of the Self-Defense Forces (Jieitai Sapporo Chihō Kyōroku Honbu 2015) while emphasizing their beneficial role “for the international community,” to which service members “are contributing” or “will need to contribute more in the future.”4 A recent slogan reads, “Make peace [our] work” (Heiwa o shigoto ni suru). The “work of peace,” one might assume, involves an ever-expanding list of tasks without national bounds. To that global effect, the newly adopted logo of the Ministry of Defense is an abstract figure embracing a globe with both arms. As in many of the SDF materials, the nation-state Japan itself remains unmentioned and out of sight.

the lolita effect Some twenty-first-century campaigns have moved beyond the mobilization of the unambiguously sweet, innocent female (human or animal) figures. Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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Instead, they have adopted and exacerbated the mirroring of another strong current in Japanese popular culture: the intense sexualization and soft-pornification of prepubescent girls. In these materials, the child whom the military appeals to, the child who is envisioned as the embodiment of the military, is not just a girl—she’s a cute, (often) uniformed girl, and a sassy one at that. One such girl goes by the name of Deko. Deko first appeared on the cover (see fig. 35) of an official manga-format defense white paper in 2005, Manga de yomu! Heisei 17 nenhan Nihon no bōei: Bōei hakusho. Running parallel to several hundred pages of defense data and photographs, Deko and Dekoposo, her stuffed bear, appear throughout the manga decrying Japan’s vulnerability in light of Article 9 and the national self-defense restrictions it imposes. The stark contrast between message and messengers peaks with the fact that the reader’s gaze at girl (and bear) is occasionally directed up Deko’s knee-length skirt. Indeed, critics claim that Deko’s frilly outfit—including a maid-style apron, bloomers, and knee-high stockings—made the manga such a popular success that second and third editions were printed. The commercial success of Deko aside, cute style has dominated Japanese popular culture since the 1980s. Meaning “childlike,” cute celebrates the sweet, adorable, innocent, pure, simple, genuine, gentle, vulnerable, weak, and inexperienced: in short, it is an “infantile, delicate, and pretty style” (Kinsella 1995: 220). This “Lolita” aesthetic borrows much from “Victorianera girls’ dress, such as lace, ruffles, high necklines, and voluminous skirts, similar to the clothing worn by the heroine of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (Winge 2008: 7). While this manga constitutes a new variant on the theme of the infantilization of the military, it also references a specific aspect of girls’ culture in present-day Japan, one that inhabits what Sharon Kinsella (2013) and others have referred to as “pornotopia.” According to Kinsella, cute and sexualized schoolgirl figures “have been celebrated as wonderfully incomprehensibly Japanese and kooky,” whether appearing in the form of official (cute and sanitized) or underground (pornographic, iconoclastic, and antibourgeois) images and narratives about Japanese schoolgirls (2). Is Deko simply a nod toward a superstar in Japanese popular culture, the “overtly sexualized, always intensely cute . . . pre-pubescent girl fighting to save the world” (Vincent 2011: ix)? Has the moral authority of the child—enlisted to justify war in the first half of the twentieth century—simply taken on a new shape, not to morally authorize war but to legitimize (and sexualize) the armed forces and peace? Does the sexualized girl undermine the innocence once ascribed to children, or does she simply 178

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fig. 35. The girl Deko and her bear, Dekoposo, enliven the cover of one of Japan’s manga-format 2005 defense white papers (Manga de yomu! Heisei 17 nenhan Nihon no bōei: Bōei hakusho).

exacerbate and reveal the perverse character of that attribution? If nothing else, she is certainly more openly defiant than any figure in previous SDF public-relations manga. For decades, government agencies and corporations had employed the transgenerational popularity of the manga format in order to appeal to a citizenry they perceived to be ever more complacent and ignorant. At least since the 1980s, large corporations and government agencies, including the Ministry of Defense and the police, aware of the educational potential of the popular cultural form, have produced many instructive manga with appealing main characters. These figures also adorn government recruitment materials and corporate promotions materials. Sold as stickers and as threedimensional figurines in various sizes, they can decorate cellular phones, bags, and rearview mirrors. They serve as mascots, fostering institutional or corporate identities among employees as well as positive feelings among the wider citizenry. In a society so permeated with the aesthetics of manga and animation, goes the rationale, this strategy is de rigueur across different agencies, institutions, and corporations—no matter what the composition of the targeted clientele. That said, the 2005 defense white paper was the first time the Ministry of Defense opted for the Lolita-style little girl character with pedophile appeal, although subsequently she did appear in military popular culture beyond the direct reach of the SDF. What has emerged since is a series of feedback loops among three distinct but overlapping styles of publications: formal and official military PR materials; other publications that straddle the military and the popular realms and which are often partly or fully funded by organizations associated with the SDF; and a segment of popular culture that is heavily infused with the soft-pornification of preteen girls. SDF white papers in Japan have become increasingly voluminous, replete with ever more data and color photographs of service members in action— often interacting with citizens in help-and-rescue missions. Since the early 1990s, the defense ministry and the regional public-relations divisions of the Self-Defense Forces have consistently queered public relations materials, using either female or androgynously-shaped anime and manga figures. Publications such as the one featuring Deko and Dekoposo have further stretched the boundaries between formal military PR pieces and militaryinspired popular culture, particularly concerning the sexualization of adult females associated with the Self-Defense Forces (Frühstück 2007). By contrast, the new commercial female impersonations created for the Self-Defense 180

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Forces tend to be animated figures with big heads and small bodies rather than flesh-and-blood figures. They appear to be preteen girls rather than grown-up women, and they are dressed in distinct Lolita-style fashion—very short skirts that frequently expose underpants, thigh-high stockings, and garters. In many ways, such representations weave two fantasies: the female child in power intertwined with the preteen female object of (adult) male desire. While the Self-Defense Forces have appropriated the cute, female, and sanitized since the early 1990s, it is the style of the preteen girl Deko—with girlish pigtails and a skirt that occasionally reveals her frilly underwear— that departs from previous SDF public relations materials. Since the first decade of the twenty-first century the SDF have embraced the softpornification of military visual culture, thus bringing the armed forces’ public aesthetic almost completely in line with what Dick Hebdige (2008: 38–40) has described as “the symbiosis between pornu(s)copic immersion (overexposure), emotional regression, and simulated innocence”—while increasingly also marking postmillennial visual culture more generally. In their struggle to gain legitimacy, sympathy, and interest among population segments far beyond the young and recruitable, the Self-Defense Forces also appear to be furthering what Laura Kipnis (2007) has called the “distribution of vulnerability,” by which she means the desire in present-day culture to hold on to and insist on vulnerability. Kipnis’s work is primarily a critique of women’s insistence on such vulnerability, but the parallel is easy to see: Particularly when appealing to the wider public, the SDF constantly project a coy vulnerability. Perhaps even more to the point, the SDF are aiming at “the distribution of infantility” while also engaging in ever more colorful and sexualized “simulations of innocence.” Such have previously been noted in a range of social and popular cultural realms (Hebdige 2008: 41; Napier 2005; Allison 2001 and 2006; Kinsella 2013). They have now entered the military and its orbit.

“moe yo!” Even a decade or two ago, the trend of mirroring, blending, and intimately connecting the aesthetic and rhetoric of formal, official defense publications with those of popular culture had been unthinkable; now, some SDF public relations materials simultaneously make use of both. Consider, for example, Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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the appeal of military-nerd publications such as Maps of the World’s Fighter Planes and Wonder Weapons of the German Third Reich, as well as the ostensible tension between (references to) weapons and (sparsely or suggestively dressed) females, as in Beauties in Airline Uniforms and the military-girl manga MC ☆Akushizu, a magazine that features fictional female animefigured Marine Corps members and pinups from the television show Girls & Panzer. It would appear that SDF public relations officers assume that their readers have been weaned on commercial publications that aggressively tie the armed forces to full-bosomed and seminude preteen girls. The year 2011, for instance, saw the publication of the first Female Service Members Calendar (for the year 2012; Josei Jieikan 2012 Karendā)—a medium otherwise reserved for women in the entertainment industries—as well as of photo books featuring female service members with more aggressively sexualized messages. The same publishing company also produces the monthly magazine Hyper Beautiful Girl-Type Military Magazine (Haipā bishōjokei miritarī magajin), along with the book series Longing! (Moe yo!). These publications employ the language and visuality of anime and the digital media world in order to attract a younger audience, which has become harder to reach through mainstream magazines and books. The introduction into military rhetoric of the concept of moe—signifying affectionate longing for two-dimensional characters—constitutes a departure from the previously cold reception of the SDF and its members by the producers of popular culture (Frühstück 2007). The term moe can also represent an internalized emotional response to an object, generally with no hope of reciprocation. In discussions about the cultural significance of anime in Japan, the notion of moe is also critically associated with how fans relate to virtual characters and worlds, as well as with the power of media producers over consumers (Condry 2011). It is as if the makers of popular media have suddenly discovered that classic Lolitas and other shapely female figures who populate Japanese popular culture infuse the Self-Defense Forces with appeal more effectively than any information about what the SDF actually do (see fig. 36). The Moe Yo! series includes titles such as Army School (Rikuji gakkō), Tank School (Sensha gakkō), Tank School II (Sensha gakkō II), Surprise! An Introduction to an Imperial Army Full of Girls (Dokki! Shōjo darake no Teikoku Rikugun nyūmon), First Love Combined Fleet (Hatsukoi rengō kantai), and Poisonous War (Dokusosen). Each volume combines considerably detailed descriptions of military matters with black-and-white illustrations and glossy color images of girls posing provocatively with guns, tanks, 182

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fig. 36. Girls in uniform, according to Tamura Naoya and Nogami Takeshi’s It’s Moe! The GSDF School (Moe yo! Rikuji gakkō, 2008).

and other military equipment. The depicted females, who are meant to resemble service members, are cute-faced, big-bosomed, and scantily dressed; with identical faces and tauntingly open mouths, they look daringly at the reader, frequently with a gun in their hands; some invite a peek at their underpants under clothing barely recognizable as skirts. Beyond the manga format, animated fi lms such as Warriors of Love and Peace (Ai to heiwa no senshi) also draw on the appeal of girls with guns (in this case more Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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as Lara Croft than as a fighting girl made in Japan). In this particular fi lm, three girl warriors dressed in little more than stripes of leather and chains are out “to defend people and peace” against an invasion of aliens from outer space.5 Even-younger girls are featured in other military science fiction produced during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the most successful of which were launched as manga, light novels, video animation, and/or anime television series. The all-female main characters in such works typically appear to be of elementary-school or middle-school age, whose bodily features indicate they are prepubescent. In the course of the narrative they might be dressed at one point in short dresses typical of elementary school girls and later appear half undressed with machine guns and the like. The main characters in the Strike Witches series (Sutoraiku Witcheezu, 2010– present), for instance, all appear to be somewhere between toddler age and ten at the most. They have thick, short legs, and some have animal ears and tails, further enhancing their feminine, infantile cuteness. And though for most of the story they are dressed in clothes considered perfectly mainstream for five- or six-year-olds, whenever they use their weapons all girls appear to be in nothing but bodices, thus suggesting a confluence between two different kinds of potential exhilaration and excitement on the part of the reader or viewer. Similarly, in the Infinite Stratos series (Infinitto Sutoratosu, 2009–present), young girls put on high-tech suits that essentially turn them into living weapons capable of mass destruction, while at the same time showing a great deal of skin—but only when they are fighting. The series Military! (Miritari!, 2009–present) and the series Warship Collection (Kantai Korekushon, 2013–present), for example, both feature groups of girls within a continuum of sexualized and pornified settings. So as to exploit such mainstream popular cultural techniques and aesthetics that feature girls and women, the Self-Defense Forces have proceeded to produce their own moe characters and moments. For example, as part of an air show in Chiba Prefecture in October 2012, it was not just the quirky new helicopter designed to blow up tanks that focused the attention of the audience. A flame-haired model in a GSDF uniform also assisted in the effort, deemed successful on account of the hundreds of photos and videos later shared on the Internet. Other regional offices have followed suit (Kendall 2012).6 Further blurring the boundaries between the Self-Defense Forces’ promotions and wider popular culture, a number of new television series have taken 184

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fig. 37. A promotional image from the television series Girls & Panzer.

the combination of simulated innocence, distribution of vulnerability, and shōjo pornification to a new level. Perhaps the most popular one, Girls & Panzer—a combination of the English word girls with the German word for “tank(s)”—features the adventures and tribulations of a high-school-girl clique as they study “the way of the tank” as though it were a traditional martial art within the context of a school club (see fig. 37). Created in 2012 by Actas, the show features girls’ outfits and sass that are similar to what is found in other mili-moe publications (mili comes from “military”), and which are further accentuated by the girls’ babyish high-pitched voices— whether they are commenting on one girl’s low blood pressure or commanding the attack of another tank (Baseel 2013). Apparently, the popularity of this daring high school drama has affected local (military) tourism to Oarai, the city in Ibaraki Prefecture where Girls & Panzer is set. In July 2013, a special event featured the mobilization of the Self-Defense Forces’ Hitomaru Shiki tanks. About thirty-two thousand people attended—five times the number from the previous year (Tackett 2013). As is typical for such events (Ben-Ari and Frühstück 2003), the SDF aggressively advertises them digitally, locally through their provincial offices, and—to a lesser degree—nationwide. A substantial portion of participants come from Ibaraki and surrounding prefectures. Others are members of SDF veterans’ and other community support organizations across the country. Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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The majority are males of all ages, although one also sees families and young women, who typically accompany their boyfriends. Similarly, the Okayama Provincial Cooperation Office reported that, owing to the use of three mascot girls designed by Shimada Fumikane—the character artist responsible for the look of Girls & Panzer—volunteer numbers in Okayama Prefecture have substantially increased; note, however, that data about the take rate are hard to come by. As is true for Self-Defense Forces mascots created throughout Japan, each of the three girls represents one branch of the military. Momoe Kibi embodies the Ground Self-Defense Force, Mizuho Seto stands for the Maritime Self-Defense Force, and Airi Bizen wears an Air Self-Defense Force uniform (Anime News Network 2014). Three striking female figures from a second new television series, titled GATE—Thus the Self-Defense Forces Fought in That [Distant] Land (GATE— Jieitai kanochi nite kaku tatakaeri) have only just begun to appear on SDF recruitment posters (see fig. 38). There is the sweet, blue-haired, sixteen-yearold human scholar Lelei La Lalea who carries her signature magic staff (left). Above her hovers the 961-year-old, black-haired and red-eyed demigoddess Rory Mercury, who is waving a battle ax (center). The 165-year-old, blonde, and blue-eyed elf Tuka Luna Marceau has her back turned to both of them, ready to draw her bow (right). So far, so mainstream fantasy for adolescents. Yet there is also the main protagonist at the center of the poster: thirty-three-yearold Itami Yōji in a camouflage uniform, who appears to be shouting, machine gun in hand, is a male SDF soldier and otaku. Compared to the colorful and dynamic aesthetic, the slogan is characteristically vague and simply commands passersby to “Protect someone, become yourself” (Dare ka o mamoreru, jinbun ni narō). The story runs like this: A portal from another world appears in Ginza, Tokyo, and a legion of soldiers and monsters attack the city. Owing to their superior weaponry and tactics, the Self-Defense Forces repel them and then force them to open peace negotiations. Thanks to his knowledge of fantasy stories, Itami makes his way in the hybrid world that now includes not only Self-Defense Forces but also magic, dragons, and elves. In many ways, the mobilization of sexualized girls and women, whether human or fantasy figures, in current SDF public relations campaigns have been intertwined with broader efforts to emotionalize and romanticize the military experience—all the while maintaining a tone that is universally associated with babies and small children. If one were to believe the imagery 186

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fig. 38. An SDF recruitment poster features characters from a television series that began airing in 2016, titled GATE—Thus the Self-Defense Forces Fought There, or, more in line with the flair of the series, GATE—Thus the Self-Defense Forces Fought in That [Distant] Land (GATE—Jieitai kanochi nite kaku tatakaeri).

on the home page of the Ministry of Defense, one might think joining the Self-Defense Forces is an act equated with following one’s heart. In one promotional visual, three cheerfully smiling, fresh-faced, young teenagers—two males and one female—in Self-Defense Forces uniforms stand in front of blue representations of their chosen vocations: blue Mount Fuji for the Ground Self-Defense Force, blue sea for the Maritime Self-Defense Force, and blue sky for Air Self-Defense Force. The slogan “Believe Your Heart” stretches across all three individuals, the characters appearing in both soft pink and blue, intending to evoke the soft, warm, and fuzzy aesthetics of babies’ clothes and other conventionally colorcoded baby items. A strangely tulip-shaped white heart with pink edges is superimposed over each individual’s chest, further emphasizing that these three individuals have indeed been following their respective hearts. On another poster from 2011, three cartoon girls also suggest that the emotional universe which the Self-Defense Forces now command is centered on the individual self. Rather than speaking of a love of the nation, as is so commonly done in similar materials elsewhere, or even using the vague expression “the people” as was done two decades earlier, these three uniformed cartoon girls promise what a self-help guide might: One who joins the Self-Defense Forces will “love oneself ” (Jibun ga suki ni naru). The theme continues in another poster, produced by the Tokushima Provincial Cooperation Office in 2012, on which two cartoon girls surrounded by floating, soft pink cherry blossoms encourage passersby “to make peace [their] work” (Heiwa o, shigoto ni suru). One salutes the viewer, smiling, while the other, viewed from the side, seemingly prays, eyes closed and fingers interlocked. Both wear eyeglasses and, interestingly, a backpack that is essentially a book with chain straps—most likely a reference to Article 9 of the constitution. The question of whether it is carried with a sense of responsibility or as a burden remains hanging in the air. On another poster from the same year, three cartoon girls, each clad in the uniform of a branch of the Self-Defense Forces, confidently announce that the Self-Defense Forces are “today’s budding place of employment” (Ima doki no moeru shushokusen). Though the message is seemingly banal, the style employed nonetheless evokes the sexualized character of recent public-relations materials, discussed above. Given the poster’s somewhat risqué choice of language, the reader might associate “budding” (moeru) with sprouting innocence, sexualized girlhood, or both. Alternatively, readers and viewers might think of “moe” as “longing for” and subsequently wonder whether the 188

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female figures on the poster are longing for the power of military might, or whether they represent the kind of girls some male readers are longing for, or whether the words are meant to allude to the Self-Defense Forces’ longing for more recruits. The shift in promotional tone and style is palpable in regional offices as well. Halfway across the country, the Tokushima Provincial Cooperation Office is one of several that have taken the Self-Defense Forces further into the realm of the personal and unequivocally romantic. On a poster that features the disaster relief mission in northeastern Japan, a girl texts her boyfriend, a Self-Defense Forces service member, after seeing him providing disaster relief, which was being played back on a news show. “That uniform,” she types, “made you twice as dashing as you usually are.” He responds with an emphatic “I love you!” Clad in a GSDF uniform, the boyfriend carries an elderly person on his back in the midst of the disaster area. The girl, whose wide-eyed expression leaves the question of her age wide open as well, is dressed in white and blue and holds a red cell phone—all three in shades reminiscent of the American flag, enough to suggest the image is an acknowledgment of the American contribution to the relief activities, as well as the United States’ military presence in the region more generally. More love is announced on the cover of the magazine Mamor (an adaptation of the Japanese word mamoru, meaning “protect”; see fig. 39). Note that, in line with other materials I have described, the cover features a young female in an SDF uniform. In contrast to the claim of the headline that people were “in love with Self-Defense Forces service members,” the related article inside the magazine simply reports (mostly teenagers’ and adult females’) respect for (male) service members. A video with the same “Believe Your Heart” rhetoric and aesthetic has been aired on television and is accessible online as well.7

operational friendships At once viewed as Japan’s security partner, bilateral ally, and a source of trouble, even crime, particularly around bases in Okinawa, the U.S. Forces, Japan (USFJ)—including its army, marine corps, navy, and air force components— are stationed in Japan pursuant to the 1960 U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, better known as AMPO. Today they consist of approximately 54,000 military personnel, 42,000 dependents, 8,000 Department of Defense civilian employees, and 25,000 Japanese workers.8 Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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fig. 39. The February 2015 cover of Mamor, a magazine that relies on the support of the Defense Ministry, suggests that some people are “in love with Self-Defense Forces service members” ( Jieikan ni koi shiteru). Printed with the kind permission of Fusōsha Publishing, Inc.

Back in the United States, and around the globe wherever U.S. armed forces are stationed, the PR efforts of the armed forces convey messages that are dramatically different from those circulated by the USFJ. Around the world, military establishments have recruited the young and naive and the underprivileged. Beyond these commonalities, the rhetoric and imagery employed by the military establishments of various countries convey a broad range of messages. In one country the military is cast as an open invitation to adventure, camaraderie, racial integration, and a privileged place in the national imaginary of heroism. In another, the military is associated with world travel, high-tech training, and careers that would otherwise be unattainable for many. Just as often, military PR campaigns present the military as a prime venue for the discovery of one’s courage, previously unknown physical strength, extended mental capacity, strength of character, and superior endurance. Advertisements articulate and portray the thrill of the close encounter with and the experience of powerful technology and speed, such as the promise of adrenaline-driven moments in high-speed aircraft . Some military organizations choose to present the military as a social apparatus fit for a particular country’s sons and daughters, and work to assure parents that the careers they offer their children are safe bets. Military organizations are equally keen on obscuring the everyday unheroic boredom of much of military life, not to mention the possibility of these “boys” (and a significantly smaller portion of “girls”) returning home as physically and psychologically damaged men and women—or, indeed, in body bags. No matter where along this spectrum one country’s military puts its PR emphases, collectively military establishments make one key promise to their potential recruits: that the military has the capacity to overcome childhood, to, in essence, cleanse its members of all childhood residues. Military establishments powerfully promise maturity, especially for unformed and directionless children. And while a military might emphasize its capability for caretaking, it typically also promotes the transformative character of its training and the superior nobility of its missions, regardless of whether these missions include or exclude war. In most cases, this maturity is defined in masculine terms, highlighting the link between male maturity and soldierhood. In present-day Taiwan, for example, one typical recruitment poster confidently announces (in English): “Shaving is about adulthood. Entering the Coast Guard is a choice of maturity.” In the ad, as in much of the military PR style in a range of other countries, nothing is said or shown of this maturity being weaponized. A typical Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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U.S. Army “influencer ad,” by contrast, pairs the visualization of high-tech weaponry with the rhetoric of the maturation recruits will inevitably undergo. Their core message is that the army instills maturity and grows men of character. One recent U.S. Army poster puts it this way: “Army training breeds selflessness.” It claims that in January 2004, gunner Maurice Henry was still best described as somebody who “never stood up for anything.” But after becoming a soldier in March 2005, he developed into a (grown) man who had been “given more strength than he had ever known.” Another poster of a group of men in combat gear announces: “Standing up for yourself is strong. Standing up for those around you is Army strong.” A 2011 U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) PR video conveys a similar message about mental maturity. A large, muscular African American man in swim trunks readies himself to jump off a ten-meter-high diving board. Viewers then hear his thoughts articulate what that jump means to him: “I faced one of the toughest challenges of my life. Right here. I couldn’t swim. . . . Don’t quit. If you quit now you’ll always quit in life. Go for it. So I jumped in. Unsure, apprehensive, and scared out of my mind. But I came up a Marine.” Indeed, in the video he resurfaces not in a swimming pool but in the ocean, not in swim trunks but in full USMC uniform, not pensive and scared but stern-faced, machine gun in hand.9 Even when uniformed service members in PR materials are women, they emphasize the transformation toward maturity. Says one such female on an army poster from 2004: “The uniform didn’t change me. Earning the right to wear it did.” No matter the actual age of the recruits, the maturity that the training and service in the U.S. armed forces ostensibly facilitate is defined in two claims: that the preadult grows up; or, that the directionless or mildly delinquent preadult grows out of childish nonsense. This prevalent rhetoric and imagery, which above all emphasize the abjection of childhood, are produced by all the branches of the American military in the United States; fitting this particular concoction into the Japanese military PR marketplace presents an enormous challenge (Ames 2010; Ames and Koguchi-Ames 2012). In Japan (and presumably elsewhere as well), the USFJ’s public relations department understands that walking a tightrope between capability and restraint, similarity and independence, is required—and that projecting messages about the USFJ’s presence, roles, and qualities, and about the character of the organization’s relationship with the Self-Defense Forces and the Japanese nation-state, calls for a very different register, not grand pronouncements 192

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about superior, typically masculine maturity and honorable service to the nation back home. This sensitive balancing act was perhaps most at play in the process of publishing a four-volume manga series intended to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of AMPO. Embracing a medium, aesthetic, and narrative model whose use by Japanese government agencies and businesses has, in many ways, been specific to Japan was a bold first step for the USFJ. Beginning with the first volume, Watashitachi no dōmei—Eizokuteki pātonāshippu/Our Alliance—A Lasting Partnership (hereafter referred to as Watashitachi no dōmei/Our Alliance), published 4 August 2010, the series professes the existence of a strong “partnership” between the military establishments of the United States and Japan and—by implication—between the people of the United States and Japan. Given the frequently contentious position of the USFJ—particularly in Okinawa, where more than 90 percent of American troops are stationed—and given their vexed relationship with the SDF, everybody involved in the production of the manga, from the local PR office to the Pentagon, comprehended the necessity of treading softly. The manga was to be an attempt to speak Japan’s language, both literally and culturally. Thus, whatever the dramatic differences and distinctions between the two organizations, USFJ public relations officers agreed with their SDF colleagues that Japan is a particularly difficult place in which to successfully convince the populace of the significance of the U.S.Japan partnership. One obstacle derives from how long Japan has enjoyed a mostly peaceful environment, which contributes to the sense among the population that a standing military is unnecessary—thus making the role of the U.S. military in Japan difficult to embrace. Accordingly, the USFJ put a great deal of thought, energy, and resources into handling this fiftieth-anniversary year. After much consideration, they decided that the popular format of a manga would be particularly suitable for endearing the USFJ to an audience in Japan. In Watashitachi no dōmei/Our Alliance, two child figures stand in for the armed forces of Japan and the United States. Even aside from plot or content, the mere existence of these two figures suggests both their benevolence and the functionality of their relationship—while, ironically, simultaneously dehistoricizing and trivializing it. Although the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary might have been an opportunity for a critical reflection on the history of the alliance, what had actually been desired, according to the PR director, was a “historical look at a successful and important relationship, [not] a political commentary on the current moment”; and so Japan’s defeat, along with ongoing conflicts over U.S. bases, remains unspoken in this manga series. The Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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goal was to keep the manga free from contentious issues, especially one issue in particular: the contradiction inherent in a “partnership” between one military establishment that has been more or less constantly at war for almost the entire period of the SDF’s existence and another without a single militaristic deployment to its name. As a result, the frequently and often violently contested alliance appears simply to be an important, long-lasting friendship between two children, a relationship cleansed of all trials, the dramatic imbalance between them thoroughly suppressed—even reversed. Yet the manga does not exude the warmth of friendship; instead, a didactic tone permeates it. Moreover, by grossly simplifying the complexities of current security challenges into cockroaches in need of extermination, the manga reaches deep into the neat goodversus-evil rhetoric of the mainstream popular imagination. The four-issue manga series playfully describes a carefree U.S.-Japan alliance, confirming its usefulness and describing the various roles the USFJ has played in the relationship. In each issue, the first chapter provides a continuing storyline, the second chapter explains the relationship between the U.S. service branch and its SDF counterpart, and the third chapter maps military installations and activities. Though both Japanese and English appear on its cover, Watashitachi no dōmei/Our Alliance is written entirely in Japanese. The premise, in short: Mr. U.S.A. visits the home of Ms. Alliance, his Japanese friend. As she is clueless about military matters, he explains to her the role of the USFJ, in three chapters: the U.S.-Japan alliance, the U.S. Army in Japan, and U.S. Army installations in Japan. Together the two figures contemplate the role of the USFJ and the usefulness of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Ms. Alliance—Japan—is the girlish Arai Anzu, a fantasy name meant to sound like Alliance (see fig. 40). She wears a blue dress and glasses and has long, dark hair and brown eyes—in essence, she is pretty nearly a flesh-andblood girl in a mainstream school uniform. Ms. Alliance first runs into the picture dragged by blue-eyed Mr. U.S.A., who is clad in a bunny-hooded white sweatshirt and blue shorts. Yet he is not so much a stereotypical American white boy as he is some sort of bunny-boy. The front of his hoodie is blazoned with a golden star on a blue background—perhaps signifying (one of the stars of) the American flag, or perhaps suggesting Superman’s costume. Mr. U.S.A.’s name, Usa-kun, constitutes a play on “U.S.A.” and usagi, the Japanese word for “bunny.” The style in which the figures are drawn is in line with manga conventions: the two children’s eyes are huge, 194

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fig. 40. The security alliance featured in Watashitachi no dōmei— Eizokuteki pātonāshippu/Our Alliance—A Lasting Partnership is embodied by two child figures: a boy-bunny as the United States and a girl as Japan (4 August 2010, cover).

their heads disproportionally large, and their faces and bodies androgynous. Physically they appear to be the same size, perhaps signaling the public view of the alliance favored by most officials as equal and balanced. Only in one frame does Ms. Alliance look down at a much shorter Mr. U.S.A. Throughout the manga, whatever its creators’ intentions, one cannot escape the fact that the two partners—whether viewed as two countries, two military establishments, two populations, or all of the above—are played by Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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children. The choice of two children as representatives of two of the world’s most powerful nation-states further infantilizes these nations and their capabilities—while also slighting the experience and intelligence of their populaces. This is curious, given the fact that the goal of the project in the first place was to not ruffle anybody’s feathers—indeed, to be as appealing to the Japanese audience as possible. After all, the manga was published in Japanese. It even somewhat resembled recent SDF public relations campaigns, particularly in terms of the triple operation of the infantilization, feminization, and sexualization of the military—even down to the genders portrayed in the narrative: a number of females, but only one male, Mr. U.S.A. Th is disparity was the work of manga artist Hirai Yukio, who convinced the USFJ’s PR officers that Japanese (male) readers wanted to see female characters no matter the (military) content. “In this politically and militarily charged environment,” explained the director of the Public Relations Office and a USMC member, “every element in the manga suddenly meant something.”10 Drafts of the manga had been carefully vetted by a slew of military and other officials beyond the Public Relations Office in Tokyo. All senior leadership—within the USFJ, the representatives in the International Public Affairs Office of the Japanese Ministry of Defense, the North America desk of the Pacific Command in Hawaii, as well as the Pentagon—were consulted before the final product was released. Available for free download from the USFJ website, in addition to having a print run of one hundred thousand copies, it was promoted at a range of venues. Many of the copies were distributed to personnel—who ranged from midteens to midthirties—around U.S. military installations, as well as to attendees at manga and anime fairs. The story begins with Mr. U.S.A. roaming Ms. Alliance’s house with a rolled-up newspaper while Ms. Alliance, watching television, eats a cookie. Before long Mr. U.S.A. announces he “has done it”: he has killed a cockroach in the kitchen (3; see fig. 41). When he shows it to Ms. Alliance, she turns away in disgust, inquiring why he has come to “protect [her] house.” He replies that they share an alliance and thus are “important friends.” Clueless, Ms. Alliance repeats, “Alliance . . .?” The answer to her query is subsequently provided in seemingly politically neutral matter-of-fact statements, graphs, and percentages demonstrating how Japan and America, both economic superpowers, are bound by a security alliance. Ms. Alliance readily admits that this is all news to her, and she suggests that, as protector, Mr. U.S.A. does not really have to work very hard. Mr. 196

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fig. 41. In Watashitachi no dōmei—Eizokuteki pātonāshippu/Our Alliance—A Lasting Partnership, a cockroach represents the unidentified enemy: the reason the United States protects Japan (4 August 2010, 3).

U.S.A., however, points out how Japan is not allowed to engage in war— ostensibly to suggest that such is his/the USFJ’s role. To this she inquires whether he is referring to the “renunciation of war” in the constitution. At this point the story shifts to factual information about Article 9 and the “right of self-defense.” As Ms. Alliance contemplates the notion of a country’s right to self-defense, Mr. U.S.A. asks her to join him in the extermination of cockroaches—but she prefers to leave that to him. Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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The AMPO security treaty, the basis for the manga and other celebratory activities, is boiled down to three articles: in accordance with the UN Charter, both nations contribute to international peace and security; both nations commit to making contributions to world economic development; and, if a peace and security crisis emerges in Japan, America assists Japan in finding a solution. Despite the children’s conversation about the fi ft y-year relationship, the narrative is decisively ahistorical. There is no place in it for the actual history of the treaty. Much of that remains too hot to handle, including the violent renewal of the security treaty in the face of entrenched popular opposition; the bases from which the USFJ launches American troops during various American wars, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan; and the political, economic, social, and environmental burden these military bases pose to Japan, particularly in Okinawa. Ostensibly in an attempt to address the deep-seated stereotype of the cultural gulf of difference between the two countries that many Japanese and Americans hold dear, the story emphasizes similarities. Out of the blue, Mr. U.S.A. announces that he and Ms. Alliance are similar. In a sudden reversal of the power imbalance of the two countries, Ms. Alliance now towers over him, Mr. U.S.A. hardly reaching her shoulder. While Ms. Alliance looks doubtfully down at him, he insists that they think the same. Various illustrations suggest how they both “love freedom” (represented by a girl walking a dog), “love people” (seen as a woman and man holding a baby), and like to “spend [their] days smiling” (depicted by a white hand holding a darker hand). Ms. Alliance agrees on all points, and Mr. U.S.A. assures her of his protection. This conversation is followed by text-heavy instruction essentially emphasizing that the two children, and by extension the two countries and their military establishments, share these values. In the end, Mr. U.S.A.’s instruction turns out to be successful, and Ms. Alliance “comes around.” He has not needed to overcome her resistance, the difference in her perspective, her lack of awareness of the inequality between them, or her concerns about the legitimacy of their relationship—though all those factors exist; he needed to overcome only her ignorance, naïveté, and doubts about the relationship’s utility. In other words, though security is complicated, with patience and instruction all can remain copacetic. Though Ms. Alliance knows that the U.S. military is in Japan, she admits she does not know much about it. As this first issue of the manga is devoted to the U.S. Army, Mr. U.S.A. says a few lines about its function (war making) and origins (the Civil War), followed by a short description of its role in 198

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Japan: “to contribute to the stability of the Asian region.” Based on the claim that such countries as South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand “share the same values,” the manga suggests that the U.S. Army secures the stability of the region on behalf of like-minded peoples. In turn, this stability contributes to the security of Japan. Not until halfway through the manga do we encounter the first military accoutrements: a tank for the army and a war ship for the navy represent the tools of “security.” Very much in line with the PR efforts of the Self-Defense Forces in Japan, but in stark contrast to PR efforts in the United States and some other countries, the absence of weaponry from most of the manga makes clear that the USFJ are aware that Japan is not an environment where an emphasis on weaponry and military capability would increase sympathy. At this point, Ms. Alliance imagines herself in a camouflage uniform, saluting. Photographs of actual soldiers undergoing field training further illustrate the manga narrative. An African American male aims a machine gun at a target in the invisible distance. Ostensibly having his back, two Caucasian male soldiers look in the other direction. In this attempt to bring the realism of flesh-and-blood soldiers in action into the otherwise primarily “talkative” manga—whose main action takes place in the living room of a middle-class house—the action appears tame, stilted, and under control. This aesthetic again sharply contrasts the typical look of recruitment materials in the United States. Suddenly, two girls appear who, except for their military uniforms, look almost identical to Ms. Alliance. The first is a service member of the U.S. Army; the other serves with the GSDF. The two acknowledge their collaboration with a high-five. With stereotypical confidence, the girl in camouflage announces that, even if one is physically small, one can accomplish all kinds of things. Ms. Alliance looks puzzled, possibly owing to the gung ho attitude and demeanor of her comrades, which contrast with the humility, caution, and cluelessness she exudes. In the dozen or so pages that follow, the manga shares the many activities of the U.S. Army, most significantly the provision of combat support in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also encounter a new character, a girl named Jiei-tan—who had earlier appeared on official SDF public relations posters. She looks just like Ms. Alliance; she establishes that the GSDF also has engaged in a number of missions in crisis and rescue situations. At the end, Ms. Alliance announces that, when the need arises, the Japanese and American branches merge: “That is because it is easier to help each other Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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together.” This collaboration, the two uniformed girls agree, allows them to be “more efficient and to be even closer.” Finally, Ms. Alliance claims to understand the work of the army. As I suggested in chapter 2 in describing Norakuro, Momotarō, and other child-animal creatures in cartoons and films, using characters to represent countries always comes with complications regarding sex, age, and physical type, none of which necessarily relate easily to the countries being represented. Despite the lengthy vetting process that Watashitachi no dōmei/Our Alliance underwent, the “Orientalist habit” (Said 1979)—of constructing the Occident (the United States) as an analytically minded male, and the Orient (Japan) as a mysterious, intuitive female—appears alive and well within its pages. Apart from the issue of depicting enemies as vermin—which is reminiscent of World War II Nazi propaganda depicting Jews, as much as it is of U.S. propaganda on Japan (Dower 1995)—Ms. Alliance’s fear and disgust reinforce another stereotype: of Japan as a squeamish weakling, even a girl, unable to defend herself/the nation. Thus, in a single stroke this story angle belies the political correctness carefully intended throughout the manga and makes a mockery of the USFJ’s claims to “respect Japanese culture.” But neither do this manga’s representations of power relations align easily with the imperialist depictions of children described in chapter 3. The characters are not vulnerable, innocent children at the mercy of, or in the care of, adult service members; they appear adept at figuring things out on their own. And the relationship between the children evolves over the course of their four-volume encounter. Volumes 2 through 4 follow essentially the same format as volume 1, but, interestingly, it’s clear from the later publications that many of the criticisms of the first issue were taken into account. Most notably, the sexist, patronizing, and borderline Orientalist style is markedly toned down. Mr. U.S.A. is no longer the boy-bunny lecturing Ms. Alliance. Nor is Ms. Alliance a clueless girl. Instead, he now respectfully addresses her as his teacher, and it is she who dutifully explains to him the marines (volume 2), the navy (volume 3), and the air force (volume 4). Each subsequent volume begins by explaining the origin of the alliance and briefly describing that issue’s branch of the U.S. armed forces and the function of its presence in Japan as “a member of Japan” (Nihon no ichi-in, vol. 2: 16). According to the manga—and reminiscent of wartime appeals to the same effect—the alliance necessitates “getting along with everyone” (minna to naka yoku naru, 17), allows for “collaboration on new issues” (atarashii mondai ni kyōryoku dekiru, vol. 2: 7), exists in order to “protect Japan” (vol. 3: 11), works essen200

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tially like an ideal friendship between two children (vol. 3: 10), and rests on the collaboration with the Self-Defense Forces (vol. 4: 16). All in all, the Watashitachi no dōmei/Our Alliance series is a lost opportunity—especially in regard to the significant tensions between the two military establishments and the fact that Japan is of two minds concerning the continued presence of the U.S. military in the country. As noted above, not a single contentious issue concerning the two countries is addressed. Instead, the manga’s vague and warmhearted language almost completely resembles the tone of a great many of the Self-Defense Forces’ materials—as if all that is needed to heal popular concerns is a reminder of the length of the two countries’ partnership and of their putative roles as friends. •

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Commissioned by the USFJ, Watashitachi no dōmei/Our Alliance owes its production to the visual artist Hirai Yukio and Hobby Japan. Hobby Japan is an important player in Japan’s military-entertainment industry as well as in the field of military and political online reporting. The company also teamed with Hirai Yukio in producing a volume (described earlier in the discussion of child characters Kaito and Nanami) titled Understanding through Manga: The Somalia Pirate Problem (Manga de wakaru: Somaria kaizoku mondai), which describes the 2009 pirate attack off the coast of Somalia (Hongo 2009). Presumably the book appeals to children. In the words of the Hobby Japan website: “Boys once at least played with toy guns. . . . We want to be closer to many more people by offering a wide range of articles—not only toy guns but also real guns, the Self-Defense Forces reports, and even the trendy military fashion. In short, Hobby Japan engages in publishing, character development, copyright management, hobby goods, planning and distribution, running a hobby news website, import and distribution of foreign hobby goods, [and] retail of hobby goods.”11 In short, both Hobby Japan and its frequent collaborator Hirai Yukio are known quantities in the mili-tainment and mili-moe field, as well as in the otaku community of people with obsessive interests, commonly including anime and manga fandom. Hirai’s signature style—blending the aesthetics of military might with sexualized preteen girls “uniformed” in thigh-high stockings and supershort skirts, with deerlike eyes in childlike faces often framed by girlish long hair and bangs, pigtails, or similar hairstyles associated with a childlike look—is easily recognizable across different publications. Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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Hirai is perhaps best known for another manga, Magical Marine Pixel☆Mari-tan (Mahō no Kaiheitai Pixel☆Maritan), which is published in Arms Magazine and also aired on the Hobby Channel. Magical Marine Pixel ☆Mari-tan features Sergeant Mari-tan, a twelve-year-old girl cum USMC drill instructor (Mari derives from “Marines”; tan is a diminutive of “chan”), who trains new recruit Army-tan under the supervision of Lieutenant Commander Navy-tan. Mari-tan wears a USMC uniform but has hot pink hair as any manga figure that personifies a girl might. She is introduced as a princess of the Magical Kingdom of Par(r)is Island, a name that could just as easily suggest the capital of France as the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in South Carolina. Mari-tan’s origin story is a parody of so-called “magical girl” (mahō shojo) shows, in which the heroine visits Earth from some fairy realm on a mission of good. Sergeant Mari-tan and her fellow characters all have the conventional cuddly shape—small bodies, big heads, large and round eyes; in the video version, they also share the squeaky voice so distinctive of anime and manga females. And, just like many of their civilian, commercial sisters, they adorn a number of consumer goods and are available as PVC figurines. But the similarities between Mari-tan and good-doing flying girls stop there. Mari-tan is not a nice girl. She spends most of her time in Magical Marine Pixel ☆Mari-tan harassing new recruit Army-tan and the occasionally appearing Jiei-tan. Indeed, she was not exactly invented as an endearing embodiment of the Marines: Mari-tan is marketed as a figure (and manga) whose ostensible intent, in Mari-tan’s English Drill: The Fuck Issue (Mari-tan eigo no doriru: Fuck-hen), is to teach Japanese readers how to swear like a U.S. Marine. The manga appropriates language from the first drill sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987).12 “It’s fucking English time!” reads the cover of one book. Readers can also learn such phrases as “Your puny little ass is mine!” and “To demonstrate our appreciation for so much power, Marines keep heaven packed with fresh souls!” The issues are presented much like conventional language textbooks, combining exercises and explanations for pronunciation, use, and sample sentences—they just teach very different sorts of lessons. One page features Mari-tan holding up a sign reading: “fuck!” As for providing sample sentences, under a “Let’s Speak!” icon it reads: “Let’s try to read this in a loud voice: ‘I like you. Come over to my house and fuck my sister!’ ” (see figs. 42 and 43). This accompanies the translation in Japanese. A “Word Check!” inset notes the meaning of the word in Japanese as both verb and noun. The “Point!” segment offers additional examples of the 202

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word in various contexts. The manga comes with an accompanying CD as well, so readers can “learn by ear” (Hirai and Ayabe 2011: 63). Neither the officials within the Self-Defense Forces nor those within the United States Forces, Japan, seemed particularly bothered by the aggressive vulgarity of Magical Marine Pixel☆Mari-tan. USFJ and SDF service members have posed for photographs with Mari-tan figurines despite the USFJ leadership’s insistence that they do not condone the manga. And so, Maritan returned in style less than a year later, in 2011, in another manga on which Hirai collaborated, this one commissioned by both the Self-Defense Forces and the USFJ: Operation Tomodachi! Understanding Japan’s Military Issues in Comic Format: An Analysis of the SDF and U.S. Armed Forces Operation with Regard to the Great Earthquake of Eastern Japan (Tomodachi sakusen! Manga de wakaru Nihon no gunji mondai: Higashi Nihon daishinsai Jieitai Amerika-gun sakusen bunseki). As this manga concerns the group effort of “friends” coming together for a crisis as enormous as the triple disaster of March 2011, Mari-tan, accordingly, appears on the inside cover with two of her armed forces friends, who remain nameless: a brown-haired girl representing the U.S. Army, and a blueeyed blonde representing the U.S. Navy. As a “member” of the U.S. Marine Corps, Mari-tan stands daringly on top of a military jeep. Wearing her characteristic short brown uniform dress with thigh-high stockings, she holds a large anchor in one hand with the other fisted in the air. The U.S. Army figure sits on the jeep’s roof in a possibly more rugged outfit—albeit one that shows more skin than Mari-tan’s—in a camouflage pattern. Around her neck is a leather choker/collar and dog tag; a munition belt is secured around her waist. The U.S. Navy girl drives the jeep, so we see only her blue eyes and blonde hair. But elsewhere in the manga, we see that her hair flows down to her ankles. While her upper body is dressed in a sleeveless uniform jacket, on her bottom half she wears only navy-blue underpants and a garter on one of her bare thighs. In other words, as far as the representatives of the USFJ go, the pairing of military with allusions to sexual availability on the part of females is maintained (see fig. 44). The fourth American military branch, the U.S. Air Force, is represented by a blue-haired girl who wears what loosely resembles an Air Force uniform; strangely, she does not appear on the inside cover with her friends. The manga includes an additional three girls, all with bobbed brown hair and glasses, who embody the three branches of the Self-Defense Forces. Their outfits are distinctly more modest and childlike; two of them even wear pants with Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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figs. 42 and 43. Mari-tan is marketed as a figure (and manga) whose ostensible intent is to teach curious Japanese readers how to swear like a U.S. Marine. These pages are from Maritan’s English Drill: The Fuck Issue (Mari-tan eigo no doriru: Fuck-hen), which was released in 2009. Printed with the kind permission of Hobby Japan.

their dress uniform tops. Miss GSDF (Ground Forces) wears full-length white tights under her long-sleeved military dress. Indeed, there is nothing suggestive about them. All seven characters adorn photographs of devastation, military installations, and equipment, in addition to photos of American service members unpacking 204

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figs. 42 and 43. (Continued)

trucks, riding motorcycles, working in command centers, saluting, and conversing over a map. Of all the photographs of military personnel in the entire manga, there is only one flesh-and-blood Japanese service member to be found—and even that is just a face in the background (26). The text provides substantial amounts of factual data on the operational and other military dimensions of the March 2011 relief mission, as well as the U.S. military installations and equipment data in Japan. And yet the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant—and Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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fig. 44. An ad for Mari-tan’s English Drill: The Fuck Issue (Mari-tan eigo no doriru: Fuckhen, 2009) appears on the last page of Operation Tomodachi! Understanding Japan’s Military Issues in Comic Format (Tomodachi sakusen! Manga de wakaru Nihon no gunji mondai; Hirai and Ayabe 2011). Printed with the kind permission of Hobby Japan.

the nuclear crisis that dominated the international press after the disaster—are noteworthy only for their absence, in both image and text. What tidbits of information the reader does learn come from the mouths of the cartoon girls. One announces, “This was the first time that units of the Ground Self-Defense Force crossed the ocean on an American military vessel” (17). A few pages later, the pantless U.S. Navy girl, her forefinger lifted in 206

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instructional mode, proclaims, “We American military also assisted the SelfDefense Forces and began to help all of Japan” (24). In other photographs, Mari-tan salutes on the command bridge of a military vessel (25) or declares from the back of a military plane that “the Marines pride themselves for the high level of their ‘deployment capability’ ” (27). Eventually, the girls declare no more military relief assistance is needed and thank the Self-Defense Forces and the American military. The last page is devoted to a full-page advertisement for the previous Hirai Yukio work featuring Mari-tan: Mari-tan’s English Drill: The Fuck Issue (Mari-tan eigo no doriru: Fuck-hen). In the ad, Mari-tan and her friends promise that readers would “learn the accurate use of ‘fuck.’ ” The U.S. Navy girl encouragingly offers her behind to the viewer. In one corner a lonely, disheveled Self-Defense Forces girl, nervously gripping her chained-book backpack, presses together her white-tighted knees.13 •

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Measuring the success of any PR effort is difficult. The USFJ Public Relations Office does so by comparing the number of hits they get on the USFJ homepage. Before the Watashitachi no dōmei/Our Alliance manga was posted, its website got about nine hundred hits a day; once the manga was available the website received about one hundred thousand hits a day. Though such analytics data can determine how much of the manga is read (or if most readers drop away at some point), it cannot, of course, convey who reads the manga—let alone how keen readers are to see the alliance through the eyes of children, or through the vantage point of girl vixens. But for those sorts of questions, 2-Channeru, which, with 10 million users, is one of the world’s largest Internet forums, provides some hints. One commentator asks in Japanese whether the cockroaches are “Korean or Chinese.” Another post calls it “propaganda.” And yet another expresses discomfort at the claim that “Japanese and Americans are similar.” Those posting in English are less polite, calling the manga “Aryan propaganda shit” and worse, or suggesting that, the boy “lives off the girl (effectively making him a waste-of-space freeloader) and, in return, only squishes a cockroach? Yeah, that about sums up America’s contributions to the world, stealing the best of our crap and attacking less powerful nations.”14 This sort of hostile tone is typical for 2-Channeru, as well as for other online discussion forums that grant anonymity to participants. Putting that aside, however, it is noteworthy that none of the contributors to this particular discussion address the infantilization and sexualization at play throughQu e e r i ng Wa r

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out the manga; not one commentator expressed a concern about the mouthpieces chosen to share the manga’s message. Instead, they express doubts only about whether the manga has achieved its main, twin goal: creating a more sympathetic attitude toward the USFJ, and solidifying the alliance in Japanese (and perhaps American) minds as the best solution to potential security issues in Japan and East Asia. As for Mari-tan and her ilk: it is decidedly curious that the publications described here—as well as other commercial, military-featuring works by the same author–production company duo—though highlighting one or more branches of the armed forces, avoid direct references to the violent charge of the military, let alone the effects of the violence the military inflicts on others. And yet the fact that Mari-tan is supposed to be an American, and a Marine at that, feeds into certain stereotypes about American Marines (and other soldiers) as being ruthless and violent. Mari-tan certainly excels in verbal harassment along such lines. In contrast, the (sexual) modesty of female representations of the Self-Defense Forces might be taken for the SelfDefense Forces’ vow of restraint (virginity) with regard to war making. Rather than representing combat and war—which is implicitly envisioned as exhilaratingly morbid and sexual—the SDF girls anxiously hold their knees together as if to shrink back from sexual advances. Concerning the thigh-highs (or their lack) and the willingly offered bluepantied bottom: while it is true that a prominent segment of Japanese popular culture is populated by childlike, sexualized figures, the Mari-tan publications take sexism to a new level—as is clearly shown in Mari-tan’s English Drill: The Fuck Issue. And yet such publications are only more blatantly sexist than the official, formal PR efforts produced by both the USFJ and the SDF. The shared aesthetics between the commercial works (such as Mari-tan) and the armed forces materials demonstrate just how porous the boundaries between the two have become. •

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In Japan’s long-term postwar transition from a nation at arms to a nation committed to peace and pacifism, the country has shifted its energies from inflicting mass violence with its Imperial Army to providing disaster relief, peacekeeping, and the Self-Defense Forces’ other humanitarian missions. Across a broad field of cultural production, these Self-Defense Forces’ potential for inflicting mass violence is either thoroughly hidden or neatly estheti208

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cized, and their service members regularly and implicitly infantilized, feminized, and sexualized. Three generations after Japan’s unconditional surrender, those tasked with shaping and promoting the SDF’s public reputation and image face a number of distinct pressures: a population majority with minimal interest in changing Japan’s antimilitarist defense posture; an ever-smaller generation of young men (and women) willing to risk their lives on behalf of a nation-state that has become a “zero sign, an empty container into which diverse audiences can insert their varied fantasies, but without having much substance” (Gerow 2006); and a new political defense rhetoric that has taken on an urgent pitch not seen since the end of the Asia-Pacific War. The two military establishments, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and U.S. Forces, Japan, have met these challenges in a number of ways. First, the military establishments’ PR strategists—regarding recruitment strategies in particular—carefully craft their pitches regarding the potential for (mass) violence. That potential is sometimes aestheticized to simultaneously attract and conceal in order to recruit the young, the naive, and the underprivileged—and the tool used in this goal is the aesthetic of the politico-military sphere of popular culture: namely, mili-moe. In this way, the present-day SelfDefense Forces’ PR apparatus insinuates the interchangeability of popular cultural militarism and military popular culture, wherein children and childlike characters simulate innocence and ignorance while learning about and learning to appreciate the military. The aesthetics and rhetoric of both incorporate the distinct features of a feminine child and sexual fantasy. In dramatic contrast to only twenty years earlier, producers of Japanese popular culture today increasingly and enthusiastically tap into the very language of war that has been carefully avoided in military PR rhetoric—in line with the Self-Defense Forces’ limited authority and the desire to cleanse the SDF of the stains of its predecessor’s modern origins, its imperialist wars, war crimes, and defeat. Newly attuned to the appeal of some of the more prominent features of mainstream popular culture, the SDF dare to trust that the young today are more likely to embrace the Self-Defense Forces if they increasingly look like popular animation characters—childlike, cheerful, and nonthreatening— which means yet again attributing some characteristics of childhood to soldiers in an effort to glamorize them and their charge. Today, the child conceptualized in military PR materials has shifted from being most likely male to being most likely female, pairing long-standing tropes of innocence and Qu e e r i ng Wa r

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vulnerability with the matter-of-fact or even aggressive sexualization of prepubescent girls. Thus, public relations strategists across Japan work to appeal to and exploit not only the modern innocence and vulnerability of children but also the current currency of moe, the longing for an object that more often than not is childlike, female, sexualized, and cyborgish. Sometimes, the military’s efforts to engage what I have called the “Lolita effect” appear ambiguous. At other times, they are blatant in both enlisting the female preteen object of (adult) male desire in their PR recruitment materials and perpetuating the pornification of childlike female bodies so prevalent in Japanese popular culture. It is difficult to fathom how the military use of the “sado-cute”—of the ever more sophisticated, colorful, and sexualized “simulations of innocence” (Hebdige 2008: 40–41)—in military recruitment and other public relations materials is condoned, let alone fostered, given the Imperial Army’s history of sexual mass violence, the instances of sexual violence committed by U.S. service members in Japan involving very young girls, the ongoing debate about sexual violence within the ranks of the U.S. armed forces, and the prominence of girls in pictures of war atrocities (Frühstück 2015; Miller 2012).15 More broadly, Japan’s Ministry of Defense employs a range of visual and rhetorical strategies in its PR efforts that signal a clear break with pre-1945 strategies to morally authorize war, while also constituting a somewhat remodeled continuity regarding the uses of children and childhood to emphasize the military’s missions and purpose today. Japan’s Defense Ministry regularly employs configurations of children with soldiers in their public relations efforts. Whether in northeastern Japan or Iraq, Self-Defense Forces service members take on well-publicized roles as saviors of children, whether they are victims of natural catastrophe or war. Some of the narrative strategies and iconography I have described in this chapter have become so ubiquitous in Japan and elsewhere that we have lost sight of how powerfully and deliberately the purported “peacemaking campaigns” (Lutz 2009: 371) shape the attitudes and sentiments of children and adults. In essence, we have hardly noticed the ways in which children and childhood have been used as technologies in order to validate, moralize, humanize, and naturalize war, and the ways we have exploited children to justify not just military actions but also the very existence of the military (the SDF) and their presence outside the boundaries of the nation-state they are charged with defending (the USFJ).

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Epilogue the rule of babies in pink

the insidious and varied mechanisms of militarization and militarism have become one of the neatly black-boxed facts of life in many societies ostensibly at peace. This applies whether we consider the weaponization and militarization of, particularly, much of American childhood; the ubiquity of photographs in war reporting around the globe that show heavily armed soldiers from (mostly) the global North with cheerful and grateful (enemy) children elsewhere; the periodic brief dismay of the public at the sight of specific children’s war-damaged bodies amid the Western democratic world’s mediascapes; and the substantial—if varied and uneven—global, corporate, and state efforts to get children to embrace the military and war, at least when playing. Since the beginning of Japan’s modern nation-building effort, the military establishment and educational institutions redefined and reconstituted the “child.” They did so in collaboration with, and sometimes in opposition to, experts in a variety of fields, who increasingly included in their studies, or specialized in the study of, children, especially their health, development, rights, and their relationships to adults and adulthood. Over the years, the Meiji government’s Fundamental Code of Education and the universal and mandatory Conscription Act have bound two spheres that had previously been distinct and separate for the vast majority of the population: childhood and war, children and the military. These codes, which have been frequently revised, have proven to govern modern childhood and the pursuit of modern war with enduring efficacy. The Japanese military establishment and war making—what had been its core business until 1945—have been frequently evoked in conjunction with conversations about both the physical and the metaphorical child. 211

Commenters discussing the “physical child”—the characteristics and needs of the child’s physique (Sakauchi [1934] 1935: 137)—suggested that the child had always already been a soldier, echoing eighteenth-century French government officials, who were certain that children were “soldiers even before they were born” (Ariès [1960] 1962: 90). Others, articulating the “metaphorical child,” worked to convince the Japanese and, during the colonial era, the colonized populace that the child was a peacemaker by nature and at heart. Whether addressed as physical war-maker or metaphorical peacemaker, the child has continually been rhetorically mobilized to speak about its own nature and, by extension, the nature of humanity. In Japan, this presumed nature was used to justify state mass violence until 1945—since then it has been used for precisely the opposite agenda: peacemaking, even while both strategies globally coexist today. With this book I want to shift the debate about children and war in Japan by complicating what have been, up until now, the main lines of inquiry: first, the question of whether children are primarily victims or perpetrators of war; and second, the analysis of propaganda and indoctrination as the main sources of information about children’s place in modern war. I make no claims regarding children’s particular vulnerabilities or innocence during times of war. And I do not sugarcoat the enormous—if unevenly distributed—pressures of propaganda, indoctrination, and victimization of children and youth during Japan’s modern wars throughout the empire. Rather, my intention has been twofold. First, I show that the modern notion of children as vulnerable, innocent, and morally pure is an ideological construct that has had enormous political consequences for attitudes regarding modern war. To give an example regarding a completely different setting—the context of contemporary humanitarian aid interventions by the International Finnish Red Cross—Liisa Malkki (2015: 79) has found that the child is cast as an “apolitical, even suprapolitical” creature, an “exemplary human” that is simultaneously “politically harmless and neutral, the most neutral of neutrals.” Similarly and paradoxically, both Japan’s modern militarism and Japan’s post-1945 antimilitarism and pacifism have in part depended on this notion of children and childhood—especially since the beginning of the twenty-first century. These attributions enable the metaphorical child to do a great deal of political work in the affective imagination of children and adults. By sanctifying the child’s vulnerability, innocence, and moral authority, both the military and the political and popular culture at large have successfully instrumentalized the child while also silencing it. 212

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Children held tremendous use value for both the modern militarism and the pacifism that followed Japan’s defeat in 1945. The authoritarian, imperialist Japanese regime brought the modern bifurcated vision of children—both as always already soldiers and as intrinsically innocent, morally pure, and vulnerable creatures—into the heart of nation- and empire-building and war. By strategically shaping and exploiting the affective and ethical responses to the child, through the creation and marketing of a plethora of children’s publications and other children’s products, as well as propaganda, the regime and the marketplace coproduced endless incitements and opportunities for children to play, participate in, and contribute to war and empire-building— while simultaneously also indoctrinating, victimizing, and suppressing them. As propaganda and indoctrination are not simply practices of authoritarian wartime regimes, I have also examined their postwar ramifications. After 1945, peacetime democratizing government agencies, businesses, and individuals retooled the modern vision of children and childhood in order to underwrite peace. And so, the child has served to legitimize the Self-Defense Forces and their activities, which, though excluding war making, have spanned a broad range of contemporary military missions for peacekeeping and domestic and international disaster relief—in addition to escort operations off the coast of Somalia and the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula. To tell a specific story of children and war—a story that begins with Japan’s first modern and victorious wars in 1894–1895 and 1904–1905 and extends to the global present—I have focused on exemplary moments of articulation. These moments tell an analytical story rather than a narrative. I also took some risks in choosing what material to include and what to leave out. Here and there, I fear, I may have violated the law and order of the historiography of war, the historiography of visual culture, and the historiography of emotions. If I did so, it was in an attempt to make visible the intersections, overlaps, and mutual reinforcements across these fields of study, which conspire in their objects despite the traditional distance maintained by their practitioners. In part 1 of this book, I examined how and under what circumstances Japanese children played war. I probed how parents, teachers, journalists, scholars, military men, and politicians made sense of such games. Before the end of the nineteenth century, childhood experts had already begun to discuss “educationally sensitive toys,” as well as the pedagogical value of games and play, but it was not until the early twentieth century that both children’s enjoyment of learning through play and play as preparation for adult life were accepted as common sense. The idea that learning through play would occur E pi l o gu e

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“without the children realizing it” became a part of expert and everyday conversations about child’s play, including children’s war games. To some it seemed that children’s playfulness naturally extended to war games. They forcefully exploited this understanding of children’s “nature” to propose that, just as war play appealed to some children, embracing war lay deep within humanity’s nature. Adult perceptions of war games have shifted in neither a monolithic nor a linear fashion. Instead, views of war games have changed frequently and have varied across different types of commentators, including policy makers, journalists, scholarly experts, public intellectuals, teachers, and parents. At one historical moment, journalists lamented that children’s war games were dangerous or perhaps even deadly; at another moment, public intellectuals promoted war games as an effective technique in the educational process. Some commentators claimed that children had a special, instinctive relationship to war games, while others welcomed war games as a mode of discipline for unruly or subversive children who might otherwise subvert norms or reject adult control altogether. This latter discourse promoted war games as suitable for channeling children’s energies to help them become healthy and socially functional adults and—for the boys at least—soldiers. Th is juncture marked the time when the Japanese military establishment, and the Japanese state more generally, had the greatest hand in controlling children’s games and determining what should guide children’s maturation. Part 2 moves from play to pictures in order to critically examine the visual and rhetorical practices of depicting children in the immediate vicinity of soldiers. Products for children, images of children, images children made, and words children wrote during the wars of the early twentieth century loudly demonstrate the increasing commercialization of children’s culture. In this period, the metaphorical child became ubiquitous in a wide range of visual and narrative configurations, strategies, and conventions. These visual and narrative compositions either fashioned the male adult soldier character as the savior and protector of children or infantilized soldiers as children’s playmates in order to evoke intimacy, similarity, and interchangeability with children. In these ways, the compositions rhetorically disabled and symbolically undermined the contradiction between the modern, mass state violence of war and children’s presumed attributes of vulnerability, innocence, purity, and moral authority. These pictures and narratives also became important components of a modern ethics that is militarist at its core. They have helped to create, habitu214

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alize, and sustain sensory and sentimental perspectives on war, turning children’s presumed vulnerability, innocence, and purity into moral authority for war. They mobilize the affective capital of childhood for the continuous formation and reformation of a militarist sensorium. This sensorium insists that war is natural and forever, an ahistorical and unchangeable expression of true human nature. In the move from play to pictures and from war to peace, a key question emerges: namely, whether images, and particularly images of children, can indeed transcend the constraints of time and place and cross the boundaries of war and peace. What appears certain is that numerous variations on the same iconography have insisted precisely on such transcendence, regardless of variations over time in the production of texts (and contexts) and images of children and soldiers in Japan and elsewhere. These texts and images repetitively and ubiquitously feature in ever-new variations a child or a small group of children with one or more soldiers—whether the soldier figures are rescuing and protecting the children or simply chatting and playing with them. Photography played a role in this. By the time of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), faster camera lenses and the quicker, more portable dry-plate process enabled photographers to capture a much wider range of military activity. Five thousand photographs shot by the IJA Photographic Unit conveyed to readers of newspapers and magazines the Japanese mastery of war through weaponry, technology, and military precision (Fraser 2011: 101–103). Like experts on images in news reporting elsewhere in Asia (Reeves 2015: 117), the photographers of the IJA Photographic Unit believed in the wisdom commonly ascribed to Arthur Brisbane: that pictures are “worth a thousand words.” By the 1930s and 1940s, photography was a hobby for the urban middle class (Ross 2015). As photographs proliferated in the private sphere of people’s homes, IJA photographers began to focus on the emotional, human aspects of war as well. Some of their photographs intruded into children’s cultural domain, particularly in the form of supplements and photo albums, sometimes produced in collaboration with the IJA, that were either enclosed with children’s magazines or featured on cards and other paper games. In these publications, photographs competed with a range of black-and-white as well as color drawings and paintings, which had adorned children’s publications for decades. Photo albums also brought the war, military technology and capacity, and pride and patriotism to civilian family members, including young boys and girls. They provided a means for children to picture E pi l o gu e

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themselves in war scenarios, including while wearing military uniforms and holding toy weapons. Posing for and looking at such photographs must have thrilled and assured some of these children of the grandeur of war—perhaps even of its inevitability. Most certainly, these photographs were also intended to convince children in particular that what they saw was true and just. The notion of childhood as a time of vulnerability, innocence, and purity—a notion that once served militarist purposes—was effectively recycled by a democratic, antimilitary state after the Allied occupation of Japan ended in 1952 and the new armed forces were established in 1954. Since then, the child has been evoked, not to justify war, but to legitimize peace, pacifism, and the initially exclusively domestic missions of the new SDF. In stark contrast to the IJA, these new armed forces, under Japan’s 1946 constitution, have never been deployed to wage war; yet, they are being equipped and primarily trained to defend the nation. In early twenty-first-century Japan, the child and children’s culture has provided Japan’s SDF with moral legitimacy. A good deal of the SDF’s public relations materials has much in common with the materials associated with otherwise distinct kinds of international interventions—namely, the strictly humanitarian missions of, for example, the International Red Cross, as well as ongoing wars, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which until recently were enhanced by the Human Terrain System, a United States Army Training and Doctrine Command support program that employed social scientists to provide them with an understanding of the local population (Frühstück 2010; Jaschik 2015). In short, the contemporary iconography that the SDF utilizes to enhance its legitimacy and popularity originated in an older, dramatically different medium: the drawings found in early children’s readers and primers. Almost a hundred years ago, Japanese authors and illustrators of children’s books and magazines created a particular pictography and rhetoric for consumption by young children, all designed to shape their (and their family members’) perceptions of war. But today, the images and texts featuring children and childhood in close proximity to soldiers, materials that have become globally recognizable, are often employed to puncture the boundaries of war and peace and blur the distinction between military violence and noncombative military operations. They confuse our recognition of, and ability to distinguish, violence and destruction from rescue and the establishment of peace on the ground. And they are consumed by both adults and children in various outlets, including state-sponsored, mainstream, and independent media. 216

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The scope of Japan’s right of collective self-defense, along with the ability of the SDF to exercise that right, is increasingly being contested in light of new security legislation that continues to baffle more than 80 percent of the Japanese public (Martin 2014; Bōeishō 2015: 136; Yoshida and Aoki 2015; Mori 2015). As service members commit to “defending Japan,” SDF public relations materials utilize children and childlike creatures to emphasize that the SDF’s missions are humanitarian and peaceful in nature. In a newly confident nod to the otaku-friendly aspects of Japanese popular culture—namely, sexualized child figures, anime, and manga—today’s SDF public relations campaigns have remobilized the metaphorical child. (By metaphorical child I mean references to and representations of children—in contrast to the mobilization of actual children.) In other words, the SDF articulates the metaphorical child in order to connect to a globally circulating visual culture of (military) humanitarianism. Liisa Malkki (2015: 79) has written of the warm and fuzzy “bear humanity,” which manifests itself in “an enormous, expanding constellation of phenomena—objects, practices, moral economies, forms of social imagination, techniques of enchantment, and spurs to affect—that are commonly belittled, considered trivial, amusing, ‘childish,’ even ‘ridiculous,’ and that are nevertheless pervasive in and around humanitarian and ‘helping’ practices.” This “bear humanity” circulates more prominently in the SDF than in the armed forces of other nations, embodying a distinctly Japanese encounter between military public relations and the popular cultural sphere. The Japanese bear/child takes on new characteristics, which both enhance and upset the long-standing composition of emotional and ethical values attributed to the child in military contexts. In Japan, the child sometimes appears as “the most neutral of neutrals” (79), but at other times the child is gendered female and sexualized and occasionally pornified. In the twenty-first century, Japan’s dramatic move from the infantilization of war to the infantilization of peace has taken on a new tone, one in which the SDF has utilized the ubiquitous soft-pornification of girl culture in its efforts to extend its reach into popular cultural consumption of the military. This move has occurred precisely at the moment when the armed forces of other nations are working to portray, through images of the child, instances of state mass violence as humanitarian endeavors. Today, states and military establishments around the globe recognize their polities’ desire to be convinced of the justness of war—or at least of the necessity and inevitability of war. In these campaigns, the “merchants of war” (Elter 2005) reinforce E pi l o gu e

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modern notions of children and childhood as inherently natural and universal. Deployments of armed forces for war and humanitarian missions coexist, intermingle, and collide with the ways war has changed from the old to the new (Kaldor 2007)—from the trench warfare of the Great War to the unmanned drone warfare conducted today in Iraq and elsewhere. The infantilization tactics of both the war-making military establishment and military humanitarian missions have blurred the line between war and peace. These tactics obscure differences in children’s experiences of war across the lines of battle, and they flatten the varied experiences of soldiers engaged in different kinds of missions at distinct moments in history. They trivialize the effects of war and turn peace into a utopia to make us forget all we do not want to see and know of war. The infantilization of war renders exceptional photographs like one published on 18 August 2014 in the Austrian weekly magazine Profil: that of a baby’s corpse in the outstretched arms of a young man, a victim of an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza strip (Feist, Fink, and Treichler 2014: 53). War pictures of dead babies covered in rubble are usually carefully hidden from civilian eyes. Instead, we want to see photographs like the one featuring an Israeli tank covered with young children’s drawings and letters of support to soldiers. That photograph, which was shot during the same 2014 Gaza conflict, was tweeted by a prominent journalist with the caption “The new defense of the APC” (armored personnel carrier). Though this picture is from a different country, a different war, it recalls the letters and drawings Japanese children sent to IJA soldiers seventy years earlier in cooperation with a concerted attempt by the government to exploit civilian children’s emotional capital to comfort IJA soldiers they had never even met. And it makes us wonder about the letters and drawings American children today are prompted to send to American troops around military holidays. The rhetoric and iconography of children intertwined with soldiers has become so normal, seductive, and comforting that it has begun to inform soldiers’ personal photographic practices as well. When Sabrina Harman, one of the United States Army reservists who were convicted of torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib, brought home the torture photographs that had been circulating the Internet, included among them was a souvenir photograph of Harman with her arm flung around a young Iraqi boy, both smiling happily at the camera (Gourevitch 2008). Five years later, on 12 April 2008, a News Blaze article picturing Abu Ghraib featured a photograph of Sergeant James Hunter in full combat gear exchanging grins with Iraqi boys. The article bore the headline “Strike Soldiers Patrol Abu Ghraib Market, Discover 218

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Needs of Local Iraqi City.” The article’s tone and the embedded photograph reminded me of the gratefully smiling Chinese children receiving caramels from IJA soldiers, as depicted in soldiers’ memoirs and pictured over and over again in Japanese children’s books and magazines of the 1930s and 1940s. Likewise, in 2010, the editors of the German government’s youth publication Schekker: das jugendmagazin framed the country’s recent military deployments to Kosovo and Afghanistan as missions to “protect children” in both countries, a designation that was further emphasized with heartwarming pictures of soldiers with local babies and children. And a 2015 photograph of a baby in pink held by a military man in camouflage was so powerful it was included in The Atlantic‘s “picture of the week” gallery (May 9–15). Photographed by Gunnery Sergeant Ricardo Morales of the United States Marine Corps, the picture features a Nepalese soldier carrying an injured baby girl after an earthquake (not in wartime) from a U.S. Marine Corps UH-1Y Venom helicopter to a medical triage area at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on 12 May 2015. Similar imagery and rhetoric from military deployments around the world reinforce children’s use value for moralizing and sentimentalizing war and peace. Slipping from the theater of their production and adopted by military self-representation apparatuses or the mainstream media, such imagery and rhetoric work to blur the boundaries of one kind of military activity and another, make war appear to be a humanitarian mission, infantilize war and peace, turn war into an inevitable and ongoing human activity, and, ultimately, render peace trivial, even unattainable.

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introduction 1. Political scientists and security experts have begun to use the term postmodern in order to legitimize and emphasize the distinctive characteristics of current-day wars and armed forces—despite their being notoriously conservative and skeptical of such philosophical concepts (Moskos and Williams 1999; Gray 1998; Command and General Staff College 2014; Peters 2003). 2. Commentators across the political spectrum acknowledge the confusing nature of this new security legislation; more than two-thirds of the population felt underinformed and expressed concern about the consequences with regards to a potential Self-Defense Forces deployment in a war (Mori 2015; Japan Times 2015). 3. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own. 4. Both readers were distributed as supplements to the subscribers of Housewives’ Companion (Shufu no Tomo 21, no. 8 [8 July 1937], and 21, no. 2 [8 February 1937], respectively) and were between 330 and 450 pages thick (private collection). 5. The Global Peace Index is a creation of the Institute for Economics and Peace, which is designated to measure peace, its causes, and its economic value. The institute describes itself as an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress. Based on a definition of “negative peace” as the absence of violence or fear of violence—as distinguished from “positive peace” as the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies—the institute found that between 2008 and 2015 the world became slightly less peaceful (Institute for Economics and Peace 2015: 81). 6. According to the public opinion surveys published by the Prime Minister’s Office, 41.4 percent of respondents claimed to have a positive opinion of the SDF, another 50.8 percent claimed a “rather good” opinion, with only 4.8 percent claiming a negative opinion. It is noteworthy that, when respondents were asked about the role of the SDF, 81.9 percent considered disaster relief their most important role,

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followed by Japan’s international security, Japan’s domestic security, and contributions to international peacekeeping operations (Seron Chōsa, accessed 10 November 2015, http://survey.gov-online.go.jp/h26/h26-bouei/2–2.html). 7. In line with such a projection, Japan’s notoriously conservative Education Ministry, for instance, revealed the plan to introduce moral education as an official subject in elementary and junior high schools in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Th is recalibration of moral education as a graded subject rather than as an informal component of school education has been criticized as an attempt to “instill in children a blind love of their nation.” “Moral education raises risks,” Japan Times, 10 February 2015. 8. This language was on a campaign poster for the election of Yamazoe Taku for the Upper House in the Meguro district of Tokyo, 21 November 2015. 9. David M. Rosen’s Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism (2005), for instance, illustrates the complexities of the “child-soldier problem” across a range of conflicts, including the Jewish partisan resistance in Eastern Europe during World War II, the civil war in Sierra Leone, and a number of Palestinian uprisings. In further examining how in the Western imagination child soldiers, who used to be viewed as patriots, came to be perceived instead as victims, his Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination: From Patriots to Victims (2015) makes great strides in putting to rest the notion of child soldiers being a recent phenomenon of the global South. In addition, two more volumes broaden the scope: James Marten’s Children and War (2002) and Marshall J. Beier’s interdisciplinary collection of essays, The Militarization of Childhood: Thinking beyond the Global South (2011). Both situate “child soldiers” within a yet broader context of the militarization of societies around the world.

chapter 1. field games 1. Kondō Juhaku, ed., Kinsei fūbun-mimi no aka (Tokyo: Seiabō, 1972), 163; quoted in Minami 1989, 26–27. 2. Sociologist, cultural critic, and fi lm theorist Siegfried Kracauer (1960: 171) wrote of “childlike omnipotence” in a similar context. For Kracauer, childlike omnipotence was what took hold of the audience in the movie theater. In his view, the moviegoer magically rules the world onscreen in the same way that a child at play imagines: “by dint of dreams which overgrow stubborn reality.” 3. The average height of fourteen-year-old boys was 147 cm (4′8″) in 1900, 154 cm (5′0″) in 1939, 146 cm (4′8″) in 1948, and 158 cm (5′2″) in 1959. That for twelve-yearold girls was recorded as 132 cm (4′3″) in 1900, 139 cm (4′5″) in 1939, 136 cm (4′4″) in 1948, and 143 cm (4′7″) in 1959 (Kami 1977: 81). 4. For early statistical studies of the health of the male population, see Kawai 1994 and Frühstück 2003. 5. This further formalization of military-style training at schools was not an isolated move. It was made against the backdrop of new universal suffrage for men—along with the implementation of the Public Security Preservation Law, designed to contain the democratizing, and thus potentially destabilizing, effects of those voting rights. 222

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6. The documentary Japanese School Children and War Games, a twenty-twominute, 35-mm fi lm shot in 1942 with Japanese and Indonesian voices, shows Japanese children at school engaging in various activities, including a mock battle. Source: Film ID F06931, courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, www.awm.gov .au/collection/F06931, accessed September 11, 2005.

chapter 2. paper battles 1. For a critical description of other kinds of games as propaganda for both children and adults, see Barak Kushner’s (2009: 243–264) engaging analysis of kamishibai. See also Orbaugh 2015. 2. Though similar maps were included in 1920s children’s publications, more survived from the 1930s and 1940s. 3. For details about The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, see www.imdb.com/title /tt0046576/. For The Lone Ranger, see www.imdb.com/title/tt0041038/. For Gunsmoke, see www.imdb.com/title/tt0047736/. 4. The lowest rank in the Imperial Army was actually “second class.” “Th ird class” thus indicates an even lower standing and the robot’s incompetence. 5. For details on the treaty, see www.mofa.go.jp/region/n-america/us/q&a/ref/1 .html (accessed on September 23, 2016) and www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66150 /george-r-packard/the-united-states-japan-security-treaty-at-50. 6. According to the American Entertainment Soft ware Association, 155 million Americans play computer games, spending over $22 billion a year, as compared to $10.4 billion on movie tickets (Winslow-Yost 2015: 28). 7. CESA (2014) divides game users into eleven age categories, with “70- to 79-yearolds” being the oldest. In my discussion of these data I refer to “children” as the two youngest age groups: “3- to 9-year-olds” and “10- to 14-year-olds.” Note the significance of the fact that children as young as three play in such numbers that they are included in this data. 8. In 1989, a young man named Miyazaki Tsutomu killed four little girls over the course of ten months. The discovery upon his arrest that he possessed a huge collection of various animated fi lms, comics, and video games—only some of which could be considered violent—immediately triggered a debate about the social significance of such entertainment media. And yet, public utterances on the topic veered more toward the idea that the true culprit was not depictions of violence but rather the social alienation resulting from youngsters’ intense focus on fictional characters and games—whether those be manga, anime, or video games. It was that alienation, critics suggested, that resulted in violence against and among children. In the wake of these killings, each of a handful of subsequent child murder cases was initially examined under this new framework in order to consider both the impact of new media technologies on children’s behavior and the necessity of refocusing attention “on the inner self or heart of these children” (Arai 2016). No t e s t o Pag e s 5 4 – 99

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9. The cross-cultural studies that have been conducted make an additional point about cultural differences with regard to aggression. Players in Japan, for instance, report being less likely to respond aggressively to an offense than do people in Western cultures. Research on ideal affect suggests that Japanese and other Asians are more likely to try to adjust themselves to their social environment (adjustment goals), whereas Westerners are more likely to try to influence that environment (influence goals). Psychologists, who have also found that Japanese players are more likely to pay attention to situational contexts than are Western players, suggest there are cultural differences in the meaning, experience, processing of emotions, and emotion-action linkages that occur while playing such games (Anderson, Bushman, Ihori et al. 2010: 154; Shibuya, Ihori, Sakamoto et al. 2008: 536–537).

chapter 3. the mor al authority of innocence 1. All emphases added. Nihon Gangu Kenkyūkai 1940b: inside cover. 2. Early in the war, children resisted. When Hayashi Ichizō, for instance, was a child, he and his friends “went to a nearby airbase to dissuade young boys from volunteering to be pilots, telling them they could not win the war by such an act” (Ohnuki-Tierney 2002: 233). 3. Today the Association annually celebrates on 20 November the Day of Children’s Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Among the ten basic rights noted in the Convention, children have the right to a “violence-free education in the spirit of equality and peace,” and “protection from cruelty, neglect, exploitation, and pursuit.” Additional protocols prohibit the participation in armed confl ict of children under the age of eighteen. See also www.unicef.org/ malaysia/1959-Declaration-of-the-Rights-of-the-Child.pdf, accessed 8 March 2016. 4. For a more comprehensive discussion of the anthology, see Yukiko Koshiro’s Transpacific Racism and the U.S. Occupation of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 85–86. 5. Jun Hongo, “ ‘Barefoot Gen’ pulled as anti-war images strike too close to home?” Japan Times, 21 August 2013. 6. In 1994, Japan ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 3 of the Convention mandates that “with regards to all activities that concern children, the interest of children should take priority.” Japan’s only minor modification to the principles of the Convention was that the age limit for the application of criminal law be set at twenty rather than eighteen (UN 2009). Among the ten basic children’s rights put forth is the protection from “all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse.” Japan condemned the participation of minors (defined as people under the age of eighteen) in armed conflict, which continues to be legal in the United Kingdom, the United States, and a number of other countries. The text is found here: www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest /crc.pdf. 224

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chapter 4. queering war 1. The eighteen-minute defense animation Bōeimon Defense Lecture—the ABC of the Self-Defense Forces (Bōeimon no bōei da mon—yoku wakaru Jieitai) was released in March 2015. It is available as a YouTube video via the Ministry of Defense website in Japanese and English, at www.mod.go.jp/j/publication/kohoshiryo /video/anime_boemon.html. 2. See Embassy of Japan in Iraq: Archives, entry for 12 January 2013, www.iraq .emb-japan.go.jp/8whatsnew_archives.html. 3. See “Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Recruiting Commercial,” 1 March 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eji0g3AM9do. 4. See Japan Self-Defense Forces, www.mod.go.jp/gsdf/jieikanbosyu/streaming /comic/index.html, accessed 25 February 2014. 5. See Nico Nico Seiga, http://seiga.nicovideo.jp, accessed 1 March 2016. 6. Kisarazu Akane was the red-haired female spokesmodel in a GSDF uniform who attracted so much attention at the air show. See Rocket News 24, 19 October 2012, http://en.rocketnews24.com/2012/10/19/japans-armed-forces-show-their-playful-sidemoe-style-attack-helicopter-wows-crowds/). 7. The video, which was aired most recently on Sakura Channel on 12 August 2014, was also posted on YouTube, 13 August 2013: www.youtube.com /watch?v=X-Wt3Nl-HVo. 8. For current data see the website of U.S. Forces, Japan, at www.usfj.mil /AboutUSFJ.aspx, accessed 25 October 2015. 9. USMC video posted on YouTube, 1 March 2011, www.youtube.com /watch?v=1Q77ROnxL7o. 10. All quotations and references to the USFJ Public Relations Office are based on the author’s interview with Major Neil Fisher, director of the USFJ Public Relations Office in Yokota, 10 September 2010. 11. See Hobby Japan, https://hobbyjapan.co.jp/en/publications.html, accessed 15 March 2016. 12. Parts of the manga are available on the Pixel-maritan.net website at http:// pixel-maritan.net/comic_new.php, accessed 29 November 2015. 13. See www.Pixel-maritan.net/, accessed 9 December 2015. 14. See, for instance, see the Easymodo.net site at http://archive.easymodo.net /cgi-board.pl/jp/thread/5853878, accessed 9 December 2015. 15. Critique of the ubiquity of sexualized Lolitas in manga and other art forms has been mounting (Mclelland 2011; Gomez 2014; Morita 2014).

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Page numbers in italics denote images. Ambaras, David R., 4, 13, 27, 28, 40 American Psychological Association, 98–99 American Wild West, 90 America’s Army (video game), 98 AMPO. See U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security animals: “critter soldiers,” 78, 79–81, 82–84, 85, 86–88, 90–91; Hitsuji no Moko (Fluff y Sheep, SDF recruitment mascot), 177; and pacification process, 152–153; and paper war games, 62; on pictorial maps, 73, 74, 75; PR campaigns of SDF, nonhumans and animals in, 168, 177, 184, 186, 217; PR campaigns of USFJ and, 200; soldiers represented as protecting, 69 animated fi lms: antiwar, of post–WW II era, 161–163, 175; Momotarō, 87; PR campaigns for SDF, 165, 167, 183–185, 185, 186, 187; and WW II as setting for entertainment, 91–93. See also fi lm and video anime. See animated fi lms anthropology: childhood and war and, 11–14; Human Terrain System and, 13, 216 Antipiracy Law (2011), 171, 172 Antoni, Klaus, 86, 88 Arai, Andrea, 8, 223n8

Abe Shinzō, 10, 11 abortion, 7 Abu Ghraib, 218–219 Actas, 185 adult response to the sight of children and associated objects, 114. See also emotional capital of children Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, The (TV series), 90 advertising: commercialization of childhood and, 60; girls as military nurses as assumption in, 149; maps and pictorial maps in, 75; and postwar “war story” boom, 91–92; soldiers giving candy to children in, 143–144, 145; on sugoroku boards, 71; for toy weapons, 45–46. See also entries at public relations Afghanistan, 199, 216, 219 African American GIs: giving candy to children, 150; in PR campaigns, 192, 199 Ai to heiwa no senshi (animated fi lm), 183–184 Akabane Reiko, 148, 153 Akagawa Busuke, Boku no Senjō Nikki, 131–132, 137–138 Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, “Shōnen,” 55 Alexiyevich, Svetlana, 150 alienation due to cyberspace addiction, 99–100, 223n8 Allison, Anne, 99, 181

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Boshin War (1868–1869), 25 Bourdieu, Pierre, 114 Bourke, Joanna, 45 boys: average height of, 28, 222n3. See also gender; maturity Boy Scouts, 40, 41 Brisbane, Arthur, 215

Ariès, Philippe, 12, 212 Army Active Service Commissioned Officer School Ordinance (Imperial Army), 47 art education, and war games, 48–49, 51 Asahi Gurafu (magazine), 112, 113 Asahi Shinbun (newspaper), 95, 97 Asahi Shūkan (newspaper), 156, 166 Asia-Pacific War: animated fi lm series using footage from, 91–93; antiwar animated fi lms set in, 161–163; enthusiasm for war games and, 23; Japan as victim of, as narrative, 163; and peacemaking decree for children, 133–135; postwar futuristic narratives of, 90; teenaged suicide pilots, 77, 147–148, 152, 224n2; video games set in, 94–95. See also pacifism of post–World War II era; post–World War II era; World War II Association of Consumer Groups, 93 Atlantic (magazine), 219 atom bombs: and antiwar animated fi lms, 161–162, 163, 175; dropped on Japan, 56, 156; and localization of global video games (censorship), 96; origami and, 170; and postwar “war stories” for children, 89 Atomic Games (company), 96–97 Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, 12 Austria, 218 baby boom years, 7 Base Children (Kichi no ko), 157–160 bathhouses, and American occupation of Japan, 158 battle game tournament(s), 46 Battle of Midway, 92, 93, 127 Battle of Okinawa, 56, 95, 147–148, 149, 152 Battle of Sabo Island, 93 “bear humanity,” 217 Beier, J. Marshall, 14, 222n9 Bessatsu Takarajima (magazine), 174 Bigot, Georges Ferdinand, 37, 38, 39 “Black Ships,” 21 Bōeimon no bōei da mon—yoku wakaru Jieitai (animated fi lm), 165, 167 Bogost, Ian, 97

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Cambodia, peacekeeping mission (1992), 166–167 candy and sweets, soldiers giving to children: overview, 124–125; advertisements illustrating, 143–144, 145; by American GIs, 150–151; Japanese soldiers in China and, 134, 138, 139, 151, 219 Carroll, Lewis, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 178 “century of the child,” 28 CESA (Konpyūta Entāteinmento Kyōkai), 95, 223n7 2-Channeru, 207–208 Chaplin, Charlie, 90 “Chibiwan Tokku-kun hei” (manga), 82–83 the child: “child-centered society,” 6, 13, 60–61; “good child”, construction of, 89; as prototype of the people, 4; “winning over of,” 116. See also childhood, codification of; children; emotional capital of children; maturity; metaphorical child; modern figure of the child; rights of the child; soldier/child formations Child Abuse Prevention Act (1933), 5 “child-centered society,” 6, 13, 60–61 childhood, codification of: age-work laws and, 4; Child Abuse Prevention Act (1933), 5; Child Welfare Law (1947), 7; conventional view of loss of, to militarism, 6; crimes committed by children and scrutiny of vulnerability hypothesis, 8; demographic crisis and, 8; early childhood education, development of, 4–5; education, universal, 26–29; Foundling Law and, 4; health and fitness, 28–29; innocence of children, protection vs. control of, 56, 60–61, 102–103; Japanese Charter of Children’s Rights (1951), 7, 156; and mothers, child welfare and,

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6–7; and “physical child” vs. “metaphorical child,” 211–213; and reading, children’s right to, 59; school attendance rates and, 4, 27; UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), 7–8, 162, 224nn3,6; UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, 8; variability of construct of, 3–4. See also commercialization of childhood; emotional capital of children; vulnerability, innocence, and purity— children as embodiment of childlike omnipotence, 23, 222n2 children: average height of, 28–29, 222n3. See also children as always already soldiers; children’s and youth groups; children’s publications; child soldiers; child, the; emotional capital of children; friendly goodwill of children; maturity; soldier/child formations; writings of children children as always already soldiers: children’s publications and, 22; and “physical child,” 211–212; use value of children and, 213; war games and, 22, 103 children’s and youth groups: overview, 41; and classification of students, 27; concerns about modernity as prompting foundation of, 41; Germany and, 41–44, 116; merging into Greater Japan Alliance of Youth Associations, 47; military training in, 47; paramilitary groups, 40, 41–44 Children’s Charter (Japan), 7, 156 children’s publications: circulation and accessibility of, 65, 123; establishment of market for, 59–60; and militarism, normalization of, 61–62; preliterate children and, 77, 78, 126–127; and training of children’s sentiments, 125– 127; weaponry education in, 77. See also friendly goodwill of children; maps; school textbooks; soldier/child formations —and pacifism of post–world war ii era: ambivalent and ambiguous messages in, 89–90; American Wild

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West stories, 90; boundaries of war and peace blurred in, 216; “critter soldiers” and, 90–91; futurism and, 90, 223n4; mocking of Imperial Army soldiers, 90, 223n4; samurai stories, 90; “war stories” (1950s), 89–91; “war story boom” (1960s–70s), 91–94. See also pacifism of post–World War II era —field war games represented in: overview, 22, 62; and children as always already soldiers, 22; “critter soldiers,” 78, 79–81, 82–84, 85, 86–88; gender roles for war games, 77–78; instructions for war games, 51, 53, 77; toy weapons and accessories promoted in, 31, 77; unsupervised games, 40 —paper war games published in: and colonization of territory, mimicking of, 62, 63, 65, 69–71, 72–73; formats of, 62; and protecting-versus-militarizing debate, 60–62; wars and aggressions of Japanese empire ignored or minimized in, 69, 70, 72. See also sugoroku (board game) child soldiers: as global phenomenon, 222n2; in the global South, 14; of occupied China, 141; UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as prohibiting, 224nn3,6; WW II suicide pilots, 7, 147–148, 152, 224n2 Child Welfare Law (Jidō fukushihō, 1947), 7 China: and cyberspace addiction, 100; military aspirations of, 10; Nanking Massacre (1937), 51, 55; PR strategies for military of, 167–168; and role-playing video games, 95–96; toy rifle advertising, 46; as traditional foe in children’s war games, 34, 35. See also Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) —japanese colonialism in: Manchurian Incident (1931), and Manchukuo, 47–48, 49, 61, 69, 109, 112, 122, 127; paper war games and, 61, 69–70; picture books and molding of children’s sentiments toward, 126, 135–136; soldier diaries and memoirs, 133–135; WW I and establishment of Japanese rights, 46. See also soldier/child formations— with colonized and enemy children

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Chōna Shinbun (newspaper), 26 Chutes and Ladders, 64. See also sugoroku class, and normalization of war games, 48, 51 Clausewitz, Carl von, 103 Cold War, 166 colonization. See imperial Japan comfort bags, 82, 118, 119–120, 121, 122, 125, 138, 139 comfort letters, 77, 118–119, 119, 135–136, 144, 218; guidebook for writing, 119, 121–122 commercialization of childhood: educational concerns tied to, 60; Meiji-era and, 59–60; and the metaphorical child, 214 commercial sex, restriction of recruits’ access to, 29 Communist Party (Japan), 10–11, 222n8 Condry, Ian, 99, 102 Confucianism, 54–55 conscription: introduction in 1872 of, 8–9, 26, 211; physical standards for conscripts, 28–29, 222n3; resistance to, 9; SinoJapanese War, 30; terminology for, 33 Conscription Act (1872), 26, 211 Constitution of Japan: collective right of self-defense, interpretation allowing, 10–11, 197, 217, 222nn7–8; debate on changes in, to allow engagement on foreign soil, 10, 100; pacifism officially codified in Article 9, 9, 100, 166, 216; public opinion in support of pacifism of, 10, 221–222n6; symbolized on recruitment poster, 188 consumers. See commercialization of childhood continuous war: and alignment of entertainment industry and military-industrial complex, 103; war games and justification of, 102; war games as teaching children order of, 103 “critter soldiers,” 78, 79–81, 82–84, 85, 86–88, 90–91 cute style, 178 cyborgs, 94, 99, 103 Dai Nippon Rengō Joshi Seinendan, 116 Dai Nippon Rengō Seinendan, 116

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Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha, 51, 61, 62, 65, 71, 73, 74–75, 77, 78, 79–81, 82–83, 89, 116, 117, 120, 123–125, 126, 127, 130, 132–133, 136, 139, 152; Noma Prize, 138 death. See war games of children— deaths and injuries in Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), 160 Deko, 178, 179, 180, 181 demographics, children, lowered numbers of, 11 department stores, and commercialization of childhood, 59, 60 disaster relief. See Self-Defense Forces (SDF)— humanitarian/disaster-relief missions; triple disaster of 2011 (3/11) dogs: as “critter soldiers,” 82–84, 85, 86; and pacification process, 152; and paper war games, 62; and pictorial maps, 74, 75. See also animals Domon Ken, Kondō Isami to Karama Tengu, 57 Dorsey, Paul, 51 Dower, John W., 87, 107, 153, 200 Earhart, David C., 13 Edo period (1603–1868): children’s and youth organizations of, 41; war games observed during, 19, 21; war games prohibited during, 24. See also samurai world education: age classification of children in, 26–27; attendance rates, 4, 27; childcentered, 61; commercialization of childhood tied to, 60; early childhood education, 4–5; internationalism of interwar pedagogy, 40; mandatory, 26; physical exam systems in schools, 28–29; textbooks about, prescriptions for war games in, 36; violence free, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on, 224n3. See also school curriculum; school textbooks educational toys, development of, 4–5, 213 Education Department, prohibition of war games, 25 Education Law (1879), 26 e-monogatari, 90. See also manga

i n de x

emotional capital of children: and appeasement of the home-front, 15, 114, 125, 128; and comfort letters/bags, representation of, 118–119, 119–120, 121–122, 218; definition of, 114, 164; moral authority of, 132, 178, 214–215, 216; overview of, 15–16, 163–164; and pacifism (antiwar animated fi lms), 163; and picture books, value of, 125–127; and public relations of SDF, 169, 176; and redemption of soldiers, 15, 114, 115, 137, 144–146, 146; as romanticization, 164. See also friendly goodwill of children; gratitude; photographs and photography— of war; soldier/child formations; use value of children; vulnerability, innocence, and purity— children as embodiment of emotions: cognitive view of, 122; paradox of children’s as natural and innate yet to be “properly expressed” via manipulation, 119, 121–122, 164; sadness, suppression of, 147–150; social constructivist view of, 115, 122; of soldiers, 121; suppression of, vs. selective nurturance of strategic, 115, 126, 147. See also emotional capital of children; friendly goodwill of children; gratitude emotions as utilized for war effort. See emotional capital of children enactments of adults’ recent conflicts, war games as, 21–22, 25–26, 37, 38 Enloe, Cynthia, 2 Fallout 3 (video game), 96 Fallujah, video game based on, 96–97 feudal government of Japan (1185–1868): war games prohibited during, 24. See also Edo period figure of the child. See modern figure of the child fi lm and video: and purge of affirmative war stories (1970s), 94; and Self-Defense Forces PR campaigns, 165–166, 167, 175–177, 189. See also animated fi lms Finland, Red Cross of, 212 Fischer, Aloys, 43–44 flags, and models for war games, 35 Foucault, Michel, 2, 15

i n de x

Foundling Law (Sutego yōiku kome kyūyo hō, 1871), 4 France: and children as soldiers, 212; liberation of, 150–151 Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, 3, 60 friendly goodwill of children: advertisements and, 143–144, 145; appeals to mothers and teachers in children’s publications, 143; children’s books and magazines and, 135–136, 141, 142, 143; Chinese government and military blamed for violence, 137–140; defined as emotional capital, 132; empathy and pity, development of, 136–137; ethnography-style account of, 140–141; as key sentiment, 127; and occupation of Japan by Allied Forces, 154–155; peace-making decree, 132–136, 164; picture books and, 135–136; redemption of soldiers and, 144–146, 146; soldier diaries and memoirs about, 133–140; training of children’s sentiments and, 126. See also soldier/child formations with colonized and enemy children Fröbel, Friedrich Wilhelm August, 5, 43 Fujin Kurabu (magazine), 47–48, 82 Fujin to Kodomo (magazine), 39–40, 39 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, 205–206. See also triple disaster of 2011 (3/11) Fundamental Code of Education (1872), 26, 27, 211 futurism: future wars, vs. past or present, 32; and post–WW II era children’s print culture, 90, 223n4; and post– WW II era popular culture, 94; and video games, 103 Gahō Senki (Illustrated War History, children’s magazine), 91 GATE—Jieitai kanochi nite kaku tatakaeri (TV series), 186, 187 Gaza conflict (2014), 218 Gemelli, Agostino, 44 gender: children’s publications and norms of, in support of war, 77–78; and postwar occupation of Japan, 156; and PR

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gender (continued) campaigns of military, 192, 196; and public relations campaigns of SDF, 168, 169, 176–177, 189; and soldier/child formations, 116, 118; sugoroku games and norms of, in support of war, 68–69, 71–72. See also boys; girls; women Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1946), 160 Germany: children’s war games, 41–44; paramilitary youth groups and, 41–44; postwar soldier/child formations, 150; and “winning over of the child,” 116; WW I and, 41–44, 46 Gibelli, Antonio, 12, 44–45 Girls & Panzer (TV series), 185–186, 185 girls: average height of, 28, 222n3; as cheering on soldiers, 147–149; as military nurses, 149; physical exam systems excluding beyond elementary school, 28; as soldiers, 149; as war-game nurses, 35, 44; and war games played with boys, 32, 33, 45. See also gender; public relations campaigns of SDF— sexualization of preteen girls in Girl Scouts, 41 Glico caramels, 134 Global Peace Index, 9, 221n5 Godzilla, 94 Goodman, Roger, 7–8 gratitude: comfort letters expressing, as exchange, 118, 119, 121; of enemy/colonized children for soldiers, 127, 128, 129–130, 136, 137, 143–144; as family affair, 128–129, 131–132; as key emotion to be honed, 127–132, 129, 130; and public relations campaigns of SDF, 172, 173, 175; sugoroku games emphasizing, 69; for triple-disaster mission, 173, 175 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 30, 87–88, 126, 143 Greater Japan Alliance of Youth Associations, 47 Greater Japan Youth Party (Dai Nippon Seinen-tō), 41 Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake, 9–10 Griffis, William Elliot, 25 Groos, Karl, Die Spiele der Tiere, 43

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Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF). See Self-Defense Forces (SDF) Gunji Gahō (magazine), 109 Gunsmoke (TV series), 90 “Guntai jīsan” (children’s cartoon), 78, 79–81 Hadashi no Gen (manga series, animated fi lm, etc.), 161–162, 175 Haga Masao, 78 Hanzawa Toshirō, 33–34 Harman, Sabrina, 218 Hase Kōsaku, 135–136 Hashimoto Kingorō, 41 Hayashi Ichizō, 224n2 Hebdige, Dick, 181 Higuchi Ichiyō, Takekurabe, 55 Himeyuri Girls Corps, 152 Hino Ashihei, 140 Hinomaru flags, 68, 69, 74, 77, 82, 128 Hirai Yukio, 196, 201–207 Hirakawa Tadaichi, 154 Hirohito, Emperor: death of, 12; and pacifism of postwar era, 88, 152, 163; unconditional surrender in WW II, 9 historiography, and methodology of text, 213 Hitler, Adolf, 116, 117; Mein Kampf, 116 Hitler Youth, 40, 41, 116 Hitomaru Shiki tanks, 185 Hitsuji no Moko (Fluff y Sheep), 177 Hobby Japan, 201 Höhn, Maria, 150 Home Department: Child Welfare Bureau, push for, 60–61; Information Bureau, 65 Homefront (video game), 96 Hōmu Raifu (magazine), 48, 50, 109, 110–111 Honda Shōtarō, 48, 50 Honduras, disaster relief mission (1998), 167 Hori Shichizō, 61 Hotaru no haka (animated fi lm), 161, 162–163 humanitarian missions. See Self-Defense Forces (SDF)— humanitarian/disasterrelief missions

i n de x

Human Terrain System, 13, 216 Hunter, James, 218 Huth, Albert, Vom Kriegsspiel der Jugend, 43–44 Hutnyk, John, 164 Ienaga Saburō, 12 Ikeda Saburō, 75 Imperial Army (IJA): anniversary of founding of, 47; Communications Department, 109; establishment of, 124; grand maneuvers of, as spectacle, 30, 39, 47; information divisions of, 65; and Korea, recruitment of soldiers from, 54–55; military training of students by, 47, 222n5; Photographic Unit of, 107, 109, 215; postwar “war story” boom and, 91–94; PR campaigns of, 168–169; reputation of, in rural areas, 30; and sexual violence, history of, 210; SinoJapanese War preparation and, 30; war games supervised by, 53, 102, 112. See also conscription; imperial Japan; pacifism of post–World War II era; soldier/child formations; soldier diaries and memoirs imperial Japan: attitudes toward war games and, 54–55; colonization of territory, paper war games and maps as mimicking, 62, 63, 65, 69–71, 72–73; colonization of territory, pictorial maps as mimicking, 62, 73–74; colonization of territory, war games as mimicking, 23, 72–73; colonized children, evoked to control Japanese children, 129, 131–132; general agreement on importance of children growing up fit for war, 23; geography instruction and, 63; mobilization of children for war work, 7; Momotarō paradigm and, 87–88; wars and aggressions ignored in accounts of war games, 55; wars and aggressions ignored in paper war games, 69, 70, 72; WW I and, 46–47. See also Asia-Pacific War; friendly goodwill of children; Imperial Army (IJA); post–World War II era; Russo-Japanese War (1904– 1905); Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895);

i n de x

soldier/child formations with colonized and enemy children; World War II Imperial Rescript for Education (1890), 27 Indonesia, children’s war games and, 54, 222n6 infantilization: of military and peace, PR campaigns of SDF and, 167–169, 172– 173, 176–177, 178, 181, 217–219; of U.S. and Japan nation-states, PR campaigns of USFJ and, 196 Infinitto Sutoratosu series, 184 innocence. See vulnerability, innocence, and purity— children as embodiment of In-Q-Tel, 96 Institute for Economics and Peace, 221n5 internationalism, war games and, 40 International Red Cross, 212, 216 Internet addiction, 99–100, 223n8 Iraq, SDF mission to (2003–2009), 11, 167, 169–171, 210 Iraq War (2003–2011), 96–97, 199, 216, 218–219 Isao Takahata, 162–163 Israel, Gaza conflict (2014), 218 Italy, and children’s war games, 44–45 Itō Kikuzō, 123 Itō Kimio, 88, 93 Itō Shunya, Puraido: Unmei no toki (film), 94 Iwaya Sazanami, 59 Jacobson, Lisa, 45–46 Japan: “economic miracle” of, 99; opening of to the West, 21; PR campaigns of SDF as suppressing nation-state of, 177; PR campaigns of USFJ as infantilizing nation-state of, 196; question of “normality” and “maturity” of, as nationstate, 166; renaming, national wave of, 33; trajectory of nation-state of, 2–3; violent crime rate of, 99. See also Constitution of Japan; Edo period (1603–1868); imperial Japan; Meiji era (1868–1912); post–World War II era; samurai world Japanese Association for the Protection of Children (Nihon kodomo o mamoru kai), 7, 93, 156–157, 224n3 Japanese Charter of Children’s Rights, 7, 156

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Japanese Computer Entertainment Suppliers’ Association (CESA), 95, 223n7 Japanese Kindergarten Association, 39 Japanese School Children and War Games (fi lm), 223n6 Japanese South Pacific Mandate, 46 Japan Forum, 13 Japan Teachers Union, 57 Japan Times (newspaper), 101 Japan Toy Research Society, 5 Java, 54 Jidō Shinri (journal), 155, 156 Jimmu, Emperor, 124 Jinno Yuki, 59–60 Jones, Mark A., 6, 8, 13, 40 Kaibara Ekken, Onna daigaku, 6 Kaldor, Mary, 1, 218 kamikaze pilots, teenaged, 7, 147–148, 224n2 Kami Shōichirō, 12 Kantai Korekushon series, 184 Kan Takashi, 155 Katō Kenichi, 83 Katō Masao, 127–128 Kawakami Shirō, 128–129 Kawame Teiji, 77 Kawasaki Taiji, Mura no hoikusho 5–7, 146 Kawashima Haruyo, 77 Key, Ellen, 28 Kichi no ko (Base Children), 157–160 Kim Jong Il, 96 Kindābukku: Heitai-san, 122, 123 Kindābukku: Otonari nakayoshi, 141, 142, 143 Kindergarten Ordinance (1927), 26 Kingu (magazine), 74 Kinjo Shigeaki, 150 Kinsella, Sharon, 178 Kipnis, Laura, 181 Kobayashi Sadayo, 109, 111 Kobayashi Yoshinori, 94 Kobe-Awaji-area Great Hanshin earthquake (1995), 167, 172 Kōdansha (publisher). See Dai Nippon Yūbenkai Kōdansha Kōdansha no ehon, 51, 61, 62, 65, 71, 73, 74–75, 77, 78, 79–81, 82–83, 89, 116, 117, 120, 123–125, 126, 127, 130, 132–133, 136, 139, 152

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Koga Tadamichi, 152 Koizumi Junichirō, 167 Kojima Hisao, 135 Kokubō Fujinakai (National Defense Women’s Association), 71–72 Kokubō Yōjokai (National Defense Girls’ Association), 71–72 Kokubun Ichitarō, Senchi no kodomo, 140–141 Konami Digital Publishers, 96–97 Kondō Juhaku, Kinsei fūbun: Mimi no aka, 21–22 Konishi Shigenao, 63 Konno Kiyoko, 148–149 Korea: children’s war games in, 54–55; as Japanese colony, 54–55, 127; Sino-Japanese War fought for control of, 30. See also Korean War; North Korea; South Korea Korean War (1950–1953), 156–157 Kosovo, 219 Kracauer, Siegfried, 222n2 Kubrick, Stanley, Full Metal Jacket (fi lm), 202 Kucherenko, Olga, 12 Kuntsevich, Sofia Adamovna, 150 Kuwashiro Chino, 147–148 Law for the Protection of Mother and Child (Boshi hogohō, 1937), 6–7 Law on Special Volunteer Soldiers from Korea, 54 League of Nations, 46, 47 Life magazine, 51, 52 Linhart, Sepp, 144 “Lolita” aesthetic, 178, 181 “Lolita” effect (sexualization of girls) in SDF public relations campaigns, 169, 177–181, 179, 182, 209–210 Lone Ranger, The (TV series), 90 Lone, Stewart, 30, 33, 35–36 Long Live the Imperial Army Sugoroku, 65, 66–67, 68–71, 125, 126 Losh, Elizabeth, 97 Lutz, Catherine, 13–14, 210 Maetani Koremitsu, 90 “magical girl” shows, 202

i n de x

Mahō no Kaiheitai Pixel *** ED: insert star character*** Maritan, 202, 203 Mainichi mukku: Jieitai mō hitotsu no saizensen (magazine), 173 Malkki, Liisa, 151, 212, 217 Mamor (magazine), 189, 190 Manchukuo, 47, 112 Manchurian Incident (1931), and Manchukuo, 47–48, 49, 61, 69, 109, 112, 122, 127 mandatory education, 26 mandatory military service. See conscription manga: adult manga, defined, 171; defense white papers using medium of, 170–171, 172, 178, 179, 180; Norakuro Jōtōhei (critter-soldier) in, 84; and pacifism of post–WW II era, 161–162; public relations of SDF using medium of, 171–172, 174–175, 178–183, 183, 203–207, 204– 206; public relations of USFJ using medium of, 193–201, 195, 197; and purge of affirmative war perspectives (1970s), 94; turn to, 90; and war story boom (1960s–70s), 91–94 Manga de wakaru: Somaria kaizoku mondai (manga), 201 Manga de yomu! Heisei 17 nenhan Nihon no bōei: Bōei hakusho (manga-format defense white paper), 178 Mann, Alfred, “Jugendliches Seelenleben und Krieg,” 41–43 maps, geography education and war, connection between, 63, 72–73 —paper war games and: as core component of war game representations, 64–65; as emulating soldier’s use of maps, 62; map of empire on reverse side of board, 64, 71, 73; as modeled on Japan’s colonial empire, 62, 64 —pictorial: and colonization of territory, mimicking of, 62, 73–74; invisibility of enemy on, 73; and nation and empire building, 74; and soldier/child formations, 74; and support for soldiers, 74–75; support for soldiers depicted on, 74–75, 76

i n de x

Mari-tan eigo no doriru: Fuck-hen (manga), 202–203, 204–206, 207, 208 Mari-tan stories, 202–207, 204–206, 208 Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF). See Self-Defense Forces (SDF) Marten, James, 222n9 martial songs: male maturity and, 33; ordinances mandating use in schools of, 29; Sino-Japanese War and use of, 30; war games including, 35 Maru (magazine), 90–91 maternal love, 6, 60 Matsumoto Kōjirō, 4–5 Matsuura Seizan, 19 maturity: age classifications in schools, 26–27; critter-soldier stories and, 88; as key promise in military PR campaigns worldwide, 191–192; soldier/child formations and, 116, 122; spiritual education and normalization of military service with, 31 Meiji era (1868–1912): antiforeign sentiments and, 21–22; children’s and youth organizations, 41; children’s reading and, 59; commercialization of childhood and, 59–60; education and, 26–29; Imperial Army, establishment of, 124; key goals of government, 86; samurai attempts to overthrow government, 25; war game prohibitions during, 24–26. See also conscription Meiji Seika, 143–144, 145 metaphorical child: commercialization of children’s culture and, 214; and PR campaigns of SDF, 217; vs. physical child, 211–213 Mikito Ujiie, 25, 26 mili-moe: definition of, 182, 185; PR campaigns of SDF and, 181–186, 183, 185, 187, 188–189, 201, 209, 210 militarism: antiwar fi lms condemning, 162, 163; conventional view of childhood as lost to, 6; definition of, 2–3; public spectacles of camps and maneuvers, 30, 39, 47; Sino-Japanese War and enthusiasm for, 23–24. See also conscription; martial songs; war games of children— enthusiasm for war as nurtured by

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military: terminological changes for, 33; training via video games, 96–97. See also candy and sweets, soldiers giving to children; public relations campaigns of militaries; soldier/child formations; soldier diaries and memoirs; weaponry; specific military organizations, wars, and battles Military Virtue Society, 31 Ministry of Defense, 10, 98, 165; logo of, 177; and PR campaigns of SDF, 165, 167, 180, 210; and PR manga of USFJ, 196. See also public relations campaigns of SDF Ministry of Education, and child-centered education, 61 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 90 Miritari! series, 184 Mitsubishi A6M fighter plane, 92 Miyagawa Shuntei, Ikusa gokko, 20 Miyagi Kikuko, 149, 153–154 Miyahara Seiichi, 157 Miyatake Gaikotsu, 19 Miyazaki Hayao, 88–89, 153 Miyazaki Tsutomu, 123n8 mobile phones, 95 modern figure of the child: overview, 1–2; and morality, justness, and inevitability of war, 114, 115, 214–215, 217–218; and SDF public relations campaigns, 168, 176–177. See also emotional capital of children modern war: and mix of war and humanitarian missions, 218; postmodern war distinguished from, 1, 221n1; terminology for, changes to, 33. See also conscription; modern figure of the child; specific wars moe: definition of, 182; PR campaigns of SDF and, 181–186, 183, 185, 187, 188–189, 201, 209, 210 Moe yo! series, 182–183, 183 Momotarō: Umi no Shinhei (animated fi lm), 87 Momotarō and the Momotarō paradigm, 86–88, 89 monsters, 94 Moore, Aaron, 147

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moral education, introduced as official subject, 222n7 Morales, Ricardo, 219 morality, justness, and inevitability of war, 114–115, 118, 164, 214–215, 216, 217–218 Mori Arinori, 26 Mori Masaki, 162 Morse, Edward S., 25 MSDF (Maritime Self-Defense Force). See Self-Defense Forces (SDF) Muneta Hiroshi, 138; Heitai to kodomo, 138–140 Murata rifle, 31, 46 Murata Tsuneyoshi, 31 music: Norakuro song, 84. See also martial songs Nakamura Seika, 68 Nakane Mihōko, 55, 56 Nakano Masaharu, 73 Nakazawa Keiji, 161–162 Nanking Massacre (1937), 51, 55 Napier, Susan, 163 National Defense Academy, 11 National Defense Women’s Association, 148 nationalism: ordinances prescribing education in, 29; relegated to sphere of culture, 166; as suppressed in SDF public relations campaigns, 177; video games as less connected to, 103 neo-Confucianism, 6 Nepal, 219 Netherland Indies, 54 Newest Map of Greater Japan, 74 News Blaze (newspaper), 218–219 newspapers and magazines: and photographic coverage of war, 109; portraits of children posing as soldiers, 109, 112; Russo-Japanese War mobilization via, 31. See also children’s publications —and war games: control and suppression of, 57–58; fear of danger in, 36–37; international coverage of Japanese games, 51, 52; and Japanese empire, 54–55; promotion of, 39–40, 46, 47–48, 51, 52 Nihon Gangu Kenkyūkai, 62, 122, 125–126, 141, 142

i n de x

Nintendo, 95 Nippon no kodomo (book), 51, 53, 118, 119, 122–123, 124 Nishikawa, Commander, 148 Nishiyama Tetsuji, 48 Noma Literary Prize, 138 Noma Seiji, 138 Norakuro (TV series), 91 Norakuro Jōtōhei (children’s manga book), 84 Norakuro kesshi taichō (comic book), 84, 85, 86 Norakuro manga, 83–86, 85, 90–91 northeastern Japan, disaster of. See triple disaster of 2011 (3/11) North Korea: edited from imported video games, 96; military aspirations of, 10. See also Korea; South Korea Nosaka Akiyuki: “Amerikan hijiki,” 154– 155; Hotaru no haka, 162–163 novels: military science fiction (21st c.), 184; and pacifism of post–WW II era, 161; war games and, 19, 21, 55. See also manga format Numero (children’s magazine), 44–45 occupation of Japan by Allied Forces: bases, social impact of, 156–160; candy and sweets given to children during, 151, 153; children’s publications and, 89; invasion of Japan, 56; and pacification process, ambivalence toward, 153–155; San Francisco Peace Treaty ending, 58, 153; and soldier/child formations, 150–151. See also U.S. Forces, Japan (USFJ) Ogi Naoki, 8 Ōgiya Shōzō, 155–156 Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, 147 Okada Gyokusan, 21 Okinawa. See Battle of Okinawa; occupation of Japan by Allied Forces; U.S. Forces, Japan— bases of Omiya Setsuko, 147 Operation Desert Storm (Persian Gulf War, 1990–1991), 100 Operation Tomodachi (USFJ triple-disaster relief activities), 175, 203–207, 206 Orbaugh, Sharalyn, 13

i n de x

Orientalism, and PR campaigns of USFJ, 200 origami, 170–171 Osada Arata, 156–157; Genbaku no ko, 156, 157 Ōsaka Aishu Kindergarten, 48, 50 Ōtsuki Sadao, 73 Oze Hoan, Taikō-ki, 19, 21 pacifism of post–World War II era: and affirmative perspectives on WW II, purge of, 94; ambivalent individual responses to, 88–89, 153–155; animal images enlisted in process of, 152–153; emotional capital of children and, 163; and “good child”, construction of, 89; and “metaphorical child,” 211–213; mocking of Imperial Army soldiers, 90; as norm, establishment of, 88; resistance against American military bases, 156– 160; tolerance of Self-Defense Forces, 100; use value of children and, 213, 219; and victims, children as, 161–163; video games and, 94–95; vulnerability, innocence, and purity of children reinforced in, 151–153, 161–163, 216. See also children’s publications— and pacifism of post–World War II era paper war games. See children’s publications— paper war games published in; sugoroku (board game) paramilitary youth groups, 40, 41–44. See also children’s and youth groups Paris Peace Conference, 46 peace: figure of the girl and, 176; negative vs. positive peace, 221n5; origami as symbol of, 170; survey of 1970 showing value of, 166 peace exhibition (Heiwa Kinen Tōkyō Hakurankai, 1922), 47 peacekeeping missions. See Self-Defense Forces (SDF)— peacekeeping missions peace-making decree for children, 132–136, 164. See also friendly goodwill of children pediatrics, 27–28 Perry, Commodore Matthew C., 21 Persian Gulf War (1990–1991), 100

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Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, 5, 43, 156 Philippines, and USFJ, 199 photographs and photography: as middleclass hobby, 215; occupation-era, 151, 152; pacification process and, 152; of war games, 33, 34, 39, 48, 50, 51, 52, 57 —of soldier/child interactions, 218; global North and, 211; personal photographic practices of soldiers and, 218–219; protection of children and, 219; in public relations campaigns of SDF, 170, 172–173, 173, 174–175; and use value of children in normalizing war, 219. See also soldier/child formations —of war: commemorative photographs of kamikaze pilots, 152; family photo albums and children posed as soldiers, 109, 110–111, 112, 113, 215–216; focus on emotional, human elements of war, 109, 215–216; focus on technology and materiel, 107, 109, 215; Imperial Army departments and, 107, 109; infantilization of war and, 218; personal photographic practices of soldiers, 218–219; public relations brochures of SDF, 169–170, 172–173, 174–175, 177, 180, 204–205; public relations brochures of SDF, sexualization of children in, 199, 203, 204–205, 207; and publishing/ entertainment industries aligned with military propagandists, 109; studio portraits of soldiers, 109; technology of photography and, 215 physical vs. metaphorical child, 211–213 Pignot, Manon, 12 Pikurusu ōji: Heiwa e no tabi (adult manga), 171 piracy off Somalian coast, 171–172, 201 play, free development of children vs. naturalization of war, 61–62, 213–214. See also child-centered society; war games popular culture of Japan: cute style and, 178; other publications and, 180; SDF PR campaigns and use of, 167, 169, 180–182, 208, 209–210, 217; sexual violence in, 210, 225n15; worldwide embrace of, 99. See also futurism

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pornotopia, 178 postmodern war, as term, 1, 221n1 post–World War II era: baby boom and, 7; Child Welfare Law (1947), 7; education laws, 26–27; infantilization of peace and, 151; pacifism as norm, establishment of, 88; and war games, control and suppression of, 57–58; and WW II as setting for entertainment, 91, 92, 94–95. See also occupation of Japan by Allied Forces; pacifism of post–World War II era; U.S. Forces, Japan (USFJ) Profil (magazine), 218 propaganda: colonialist overtones of “critter soldiers,” 87–88; and ever closer alignment of creative class and establishment, 102; literature review on, 13; sugoroku games and, 64, 65, 71; use value of children shaped by, 213; woodblock prints, 107, 108 public opinion: on engagement of SDF on foreign soil, 10, 100; opposition to USFJ bases, 193–194, 198, 201; on SDF and mission of, 9–10, 100, 221–222n6; on SDF PR campaigns, 207–208; on USFJ, 175, 193. See also war games of children— promotion of; entries at public relations public relations campaigns of militaries: of IJA, 168–169; male maturity as key promise of, 191–192; suppression of realities in, 191; of U.S. and other militaries worldwide, 191–192, 199; of USFJ for U.S.-Japan alliance, 192–201, 195, 197; variety of messages conveyed in, 191 public relations campaigns of SDF: overview, 165–169, 208–210; animal and nonhuman figures in, 168, 177, 184, 186, 217; animated films and, 165, 167, 183–185, 185, 186, 187; audience of children and “internal child” of young adults, 167; “Believe Your Heart” slogan, 188, 189; children’s culture as model for, 168, 178; children’s roles in, 165, 167, 168, 171; cute style and, 178, 184; emotional capital of children and, 169, 176; film and video, 165–166, 167, 175–177, 189; and fragile legitimacy of SDF, 166, 209; gender and, 168, 169,

i n de x

176–177, 189; Imperial Army PR compared to, 168–169; infantilization of military and peace and, 167–169, 172– 173, 176–177, 178, 181, 217–219; and innocence, simulations of, 181, 184–185, 209–210; manga as medium for, 171–172, 174–175, 178–183, 183, 203–207, 204–206; and mass violence of military, suppression of, 168, 176, 208–209; measuring the success of, 207–208; as model for other militaries, 167–168; nation-state of Japan as suppressed in, 177; peacekeeping and disaster-relief missions of SDF and, 166–167, 169–175, 189, 203–207, 210, 213; popular culture used in, 167, 169, 180– 182, 208, 209–210, 217; as “queering war,” 169, 172–173; romanticization of the military, 186, 188–189, 190; sexual modesty and, 208; soldier/child interactions and, 169–170, 173–174; tourism events, 185–186; USFJ depicted in, 189, 203–207, 204–206; USFJ public relations campaigns resembling, 196; and volunteerism, 186 —sexualization of preteen girls in: in light of sexual violence of military and popular culture, 210, 225n15; “Lolita” effect and soft-pornification, 169, 177–181, 179, 182, 209–210; Mari-tan stories, 202–207, 204–206, 208; moe and mili-moe culture, 181–186, 183, 185, 187, 188–189, 201, 209, 210 Public Security Preservation Law, 222n5 purity. See vulnerability, innocence, and purity— children as embodiment of renaming, national wave of, 33 rights of the child: and “child-centered society,” 6; Children’s Charter of, 7, 156; as individuals separate from family, 3, 7–8; to reading and culture, 59; UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 7–8, 162, 224nn3,6; vulnerability as issue in, 160 Rikugun Gahō (magazine), 149 Rikujō Jieitai Iraku haken no ichinen (TV report), 170 Roberts, Mary Louise, 150–151

i n de x

Robotto Santōhei (comic), 90, 223n4 romanticization: emotional capital of children as, 164; of the military, in PR campaigns of SDF, 186, 188–189, 190; of samurai world, 51 Rosen, David M., 14, 222n9 Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905): mandatory military service and, 9; photography and, 215; propagandistic “war reportage,” 107, 109; and war games, 23, 30–31, 35, 36, 37, 38, 102; and war games, paper, 64–65, 69 sadness, suppression of, 147–150 Saga Rebellion (1874), 25 Saitō Yaso, 129 Sakurai Hitoshi, 119, 121–122 samurai world: attempts to overthrow Meiji government, 25; dismissal of, with Conscription Act, 26, 33; postwar children’s print culture and, 90; postwar television dramas, 90; romanticization of, 51. See also conscription San Francisco Peace Treaty, 58, 153 Sasaki Sadako, 170 Satō Hachirō, 77 Satsuma Rebellion (1877), 25 Schekker: das jugendmagazin (magazine), 219 School Art Association, 48–49, 51 school curriculum: geography, 63; loyalty and fi lial piety as core of, 63; military exercise programs adopted in, 29, 30, 112; military training of students, 47, 222n5; moral education introduced as official subject, 222n7; nationalism taught in, by ordinance, 29, 63; physical education programs in, 29, 31; “spiritual education” as new subject, 31; war games in, 31–33, 34, 36, 102; war games in, as large-scale mock battles, 33, 35–36, 47, 223n6. See also education school textbooks: Kokumin shindokuhon, 31, 32; Momotarō (critter soldier) as fi xture in, 86–87, 89; sugoroku (board game) supplements in, 71; toy weapons featured in, 31; war games promoted and taught in, 31, 32–33, 32. See also children’s publications

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school uniforms, Sino-Japanese War and alteration of, 30 Schwarzkopf, General Norman, 100 SDF. See Self-Defense Forces (SDF) Second Battle of Fallujah, 96–97 Self-Defense Forces (SDF): age of admission to, 8; anthropological study of, literature review, 14; deployment abroad in war, as debate, 3, 9–10, 100, 221– 222nn2,6; integration with USFJ as increasing, 166, 199–200; pacifism codified into, 9, 100, 166, 216; and Persian Gulf War, 100; and postwar “war story” boom, 93; rearmament of, concerns about, 166; and right of Japan to self-defense, 10–11, 197, 217, 222nn7– 8; silence shrouding, in public sphere, 101; tolerance of, in postwar era, 100 —humanitarian/disaster-relief missions: overview, 216–217; “bear humanity” and, 217; Honduras mission, 167; Iraq mission, 11, 167, 169–171, 210; legislation allowing (1998), 100; lines between war and, as blurred, 216, 218, 219; metaphorical child and, 217; PR campaigns and, 166–167, 169–175, 189, 203–207, 210, 213; PR materials for, generally, 216, 219; slow response to 1995 Kobe-Awaji earthquake, 167, 172; state mass violence portrayed as, 217–218. See also triple disaster of 2011 (3/11) —membership and recruitment: and lack of “victory culture,” 101; retirements and resignations in face of potential for war, 11, 101; shortfalls in, 11, 101; video for, 175–177; video game analogy for, 100–101. See also public relations campaigns of SDF —peacekeeping missions: Cambodian mission, 166–167; June 1992 law regulating, 100, 166–167; piracy in Somalia, 171–172; PR campaigns and, 166–167, 169–175, 189, 203–207, 210, 213 —white papers: adult manga as medium of, 170–171, 172, 178, 179, 180; expansion of, 180–181; Iraq mission, 170; SDF mission in northeastern Japan (triple

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disaster) and, 172–175. See also public relations campaigns of SDF Sengoku Shashin Gahō (magazine), 109 Sensōron (manga), 94 sexism, and PR campaigns: SDF, 208; USFJ, 200, 208 sexualization. See public relations campaigns of SDF— sexualization of preteen girls in Shakai Fukuri (magazine), 141 Shanghai Incident (1932), 134 Shanghai Incident (1937), 133–134 Shimada Fumikane, 186 Shimizu Ikutarō, 157 Shinmi Masatomo, Hachijūō mukashibanashi, 19 Shinto shrines, 71 Shochiku Studios, 87 Shōgakkan (publisher), 71 Shōgaku Ninen-sei (textbook), 71 Shōgakusei no kagaku (children’s magazine), 75, 76 Shōjo Kurabu (children’s magazine), 65, 66–67, 82 Shōnen Janpu (manga), 162 Shōnen Kingu (children’s magazine), 91 Shōnen Kurabu (children’s magazine), 83–84, 90, 109 Shōnen Magajin (children’s magazine), 91 Shōnen Sandē (children’s magazine), 93 Shōnen Senki (book series), 90 Shōnen shōjo jishu gaten, 48–49, 50, 51 Singer, P. W., 12 Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895): boys’ physiques and, 28; conscription and, 30; Korea as object of, 30; mandatory military service and, 9; manga character Momotarō and, 87; and militarism, 23–24; as modern war, 33; school war exercises and, 30; and war games, 23, 36, 102; and war games on paper, 64–65; woodblock-print “war reportage” on, 107, 108 Six Days in Fallujah (video game), 96–97 Snakes and Ladders (game), 62, 64. See also sugoroku snowball-fight model for war games, 35 socialism, eschewed in pacifism, 89

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soldier/child formations: overview, 215; adults as audience for, 116; everyday life in the military shown via, 123–125; and family members, soldiers as, 122, 123; gender roles and, 116, 118; heroism and (woodblock prints), 107, 108; and liberation of Europe, 150–151; and maturity/ maturation, 116, 122; as mirror images, 56; and morality, justness, and inevitability of war, 114–115, 118, 164, 214–215; as normalizing violence of war, 122; and once-innocent child persona of the soldier, 127; overview, 114–116, 118, 163–164; and personal photographic practices of soldiers, 218–219; similarity/interchangeability of soldiers and children, 82, 109, 112, 115, 118, 127, 164, 214; sugoroku games and, 70–71, 125; and weakness/vulnerability of soldiers, 122–123, 124, 125, 126; and “winning over of the child,” 116. See also photographs and photography— of soldier/ child interactions; public relations campaigns of SDF —with colonized and enemy children: overview, 116, 124–125; gratitude of children to soldiers, 127, 128, 129–130, 136, 137, 143–144; soldier-savior and the child-victim dynamic, 127, 145–146. See also candy and sweets, soldiers giving to children; friendly goodwill of children soldier diaries and memoirs: and children’s peace-making decree, 133–136; empathy and pity, appeal to, 136–137; the “good Chinese boy” story, 135, 140; publication of, 137; and sadness, 147 Somali coast, piracy and, 171–172, 201 Southern Advance (Asia-Pacific War), 95 South Korea: and cyberspace addiction, 100; PR strategies for military of, 167– 168; and role-playing video games, 95–96; and USFJ, 199. See also Korea; North Korea South Manchurian Railway, 69 “spiritual education” as school subject, 31 Stargardt, Nicholas, 12 suffrage, universal, for men, 222n2 Sugita Genpaku, 19

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sugoroku (board game): adult players of, 71; and colonization of territory, mimicking of, 62, 63, 65, 69–71, 72–73; definition of, 64; gender norms in support of war, 68–69, 71–72; invisibility/minimization of enemy on, 70, 72; as magazine supplement vs. individually packaged, 64, 65; map of empire on reverse side of board, 64, 71, 73; maps as “modeled on” actual maps, 62, 64; as normalizing and naturalizing war, 65; propaganda and, 64, 65, 71; and soldier/child formations, 70–71, 125; as war game component, 64–65 suicide, mass civilian, 149–150 suicide pilots (kamikaze): commemorative photographs taken of, 152; teenaged, 7, 147–148, 224n2 Sutoraiku Witcheezu series, 184 Tagawa Suihō, 83–84, 85, 86, 91 Tainichi Gurafu (magazine), 48, 49 Taiwan, 127; PR strategies for military of, 167–168, 191–192 Takaichi Jiro, 5 Takashima Heisaburō, 4–5, 27 Takee nenpyō, 33 Teikoku Rikugun Dai-shashin-shū (magazine supplement), 109 television: postwar Norakuro revival, 91; postwar samurai dramas, 90; postwar WW II settings as entertainment, 91–92, 93; PR campaigns of SDF, 170, 184–185, 185, 186, 187 Terauchi Manjirō, 74–75 textbooks. See school textbooks Thailand, and USFJ, 199 Tōhō (company), 90 Tokyo Girls High School, 61 Tokyo International Toy Trade Fair, 94 Tomodachi sakusen! Manga de wakaru Nihon no gunji mondai: Higashi Nihon daishinsai Jieitai Amerika-gun sakusen bunseki (manga), 203–207, 206 Tomonaga Iwatarō, Kyōikuteki yūgi no genri ayobi jissai, 36 tourist guides, war games described in, 25 Toyota Chiaki, 139

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Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 19, 20 toys, development of educational, 4–5, 213 toy weaponry and accessories: advertising for, 45–46; children’s publications promoting, 31, 77; as ever more realistic, 34; mass-production of, 40, 45–46, 201; parental enthusiasm for, 48, 49–50, 51; portraits of children holding, 109, 110–111, 112, 113; prohibitions and repeals of prohibitions of, 24, 31, 57, 93–94; Russo-Japanese War and, 30–31; varying degrees of inclusion of, 35 triple disaster of 2011 (3/11), 172; and disaster relief mission of SDF, 9–10, 167; and PR campaigns of SDF, 172–175, 189, 203–207, 210 Tsuji Naoki, 91 2-Channeru, 207–208 Uchū senkan Yamato (fi lm series), 94 Ueda Shōzaburō, 157 Ueki Emori, 3, 6 United Kingdom: children’s war games and, 45; youths serving in armed forces, 14, 224n6 United Nations: Charter, AMPO treaty and, 198; Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), 7–8, 162, 224nn3,6; Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, 8; Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 160 United States: childhood in, as militarized and weaponized, 211; children’s and youth organizations of, 41; as foe in children’s war games, 21–22; permanent war footing of, 13–14; Second Amendment to the Constitution, 98; and triple disaster (3/11), 175. See also occupation of Japan by Allied Forces; U.S. Forces, Japan (USFJ); U.S. military Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 160 Uno, Kathleen S., 13 use value of children, 15; and humanitarian/peacekeeping missions of SDF, 172, 210; and militarism, 16, 213, 219; and

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pacifism, 213, 219. See also emotional capital of children USFJ. See U.S. Forces, Japan (USFJ) U.S. Forces, Japan (USFJ): increasing integration of SDF with, 166, 199–200; Operation Tomodachi (triple-disaster relief activities), 175, 203–207, 206; personnel statistics, 189, 193; PR campaigns of, 169, 192–201, 195, 197, 207– 208; PR campaigns of SDF referring to, 189, 203–207, 204–206; public opinion about, 175, 193. See also U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security (AMPO) —bases of: American wars waged from, 198; opposition to, 193–194, 198, 201; social and environmental effects of, 156–160, 189, 198, 210 U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security (AMPO), 91, 189, 198; PR manga to celebrate 50th anniversary of, 193–201, 195, 197, 207 U.S. military: candy given to children by soldiers, 150–151; Human Terrain System program, 13, 216; sexual violence in, 210; video games and, 96–97, 98; youths serving in, 14, 224n6. See also occupation of Japan by Allied Forces; U.S. Forces, Japan (USFJ) venereal diseases, conscription and, 29 Versailles Peace Conference, 46 video games: addiction/alienation and, 99–100, 223n8; critical response to, 94–95, 98–100, 103, 223–224nn8–9; death and, 97; futurism and, 103; introduction and popularity of, 94–96, 223nn6–7; military training via, 96–97; modifications for different locales, 96–97; Persian Gulf War referred to as, 100; persuasion and rhetoric and, 97–98; role-playing games, 95–96; violence in, debate on effects of, 98–100, 223–224nn8–9 Vietnam War, 94 violence: public relations campaigns of SDF and suppression of images of, 168, 176, 208–209; sexual violence in military and

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i n de x

popular culture, as context of PR campaigns of SDF, 210, 225n15; of video games, debate on, 98–100, 223–224nn8–9 virility, toy weapon advertising and, 45–46 vulnerability, distribution of, 181, 184–185 vulnerability, innocence, and purity— children as embodiment of: appearance of figure of, 107; contradiction between mass state violence of war and, 214; as ideological construct, 212–213; imperialist Japan and, 112; and moral authority for military/war, 214–215, 216; pacifism of postwar era and, 151–153, 161–163, 216; protection vs. control of, 56, 60–61, 102–103; scrutiny of vulnerability hypothesis, 8; sexualization of preteen girls and, 178, 180, 181, 184–185; simulations of innocence, 181, 184–185, 209– 210. See also emotional capital of children; rights of the child; soldier/child formations war games of children: corrupting effects of modern urban life countered by, 40; as enactment of adults’ recent conflicts, 21–22, 25–26, 37, 38; enjoyment of, 53–54, 55; general form of, 33–34; in Germany, 41–44; girls playing nurses, 35, 44; group spirit vs. individuality and, 40; Imperial Army as supervising, 53, 102, 112; in Italy, 44–45; maneuvers of Imperial Army simulated by, 30, 39, 47; maps as core component of publications featuring, 64–65; as mimicking the colonization of territory, 23, 72–73; mixed boys and girls playing together, 32, 33, 45; models of, used in games initiated by children, 34–35; realism of, as encouraged, 51–53; as rhetorical platform for control and management of children’s “nature,” 30, 40; seasonality of, 39; styles of, as coexisting and mutually informing, 23; terminology for, changes to, 33; in UK, 45; and war as inherently human endeavor, 56, 103. See also children’s publications— paper war games published in; school curriculum; school textbooks; toy weaponry and accessories

i n de x

—control and suppression of: and colonies of Japan, 54–55; as cyclical with promotion of, 22, 56–58, 102, 214; deaths and injuries despite, 25, 26; in Edo period, 24; feudal government and, 24; Meiji government and, 24–26; parental disapproval, 25, 32; public worry about children’s safety, 25–26, 36–37; toy weapons, prohibitions and repeals of prohibitions of, 24, 31, 57, 93–94; of unsupervised (nonschool) games, 36–37 —deaths and injuries in: court finding in favor of aggressor in, 21; coverage in print media, 51; despite prohibitions on war games, 25, 26; pedagogical treatises cautioning to prevent, 36; in video games, 97 —enthusiasm for war as nurtured by: overview, 23, 40; and childhood to soldierdom pathway, 55–56; and fun, war games as, 53–54; Germany and, 41–44; internationalism and, 40; Italy and, 44–45 —as manifestation of innate human desire to destroy and kill: overview, 22; continuous and universal justness of war confirmed by, 102, 103; and embrace of war, 24, 102; Germany and, 43–44; and war as inherently human endeavor, 56, 103 —promotion of: and childhood to soldierdom pathway, 55–56; as cyclical with suppression of, 22, 56–58, 102, 214; and defiance of boys, 32; and future wars, vs. past or present confl icts, 32; by parents, 58; as preparation for school, 47–48; textbooks and, 31, 32–33, 32 War Game Sugoroku, 71–72, 71–73 Watanabe Fukuo, “Children’s Games of War,” 39–40 Watashitachi no dōmei/Our Alliance (manga series), 193–201, 195, 197, 207 weaponry: children’s publications teaching about, 77; export of technology, 10; as industry, 98. See also toy weaponry and accessories

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Wells, Herbert George (H. G.), Little Wars, 45 Westerners, and violent video games, 99–100, 224n9 white papers. See Self-Defense Forces (SDF)— white papers Wigen, Kären, 63 Winichakul, Thongchai, 63 women: naturalization as caretakers and educators of children, 6; organizations of, and mobilization for Russo-Japanese War, 31; “training of the will” charged to, 40 woodblock prints, 107, 108, 114 World War I: Germany and, 41–44, 46; Japan and, 46–47; literature review on childhood and, 11–12 World War II: literature review on childhood and, 12–13, 222n9; as setting for entertainment, 91, 92, 94–95; unconditional surrender of Axis Powers, 150; unconditional surrender of Japan in, 9, 56. See also Asia-Pacific War; atom bombs; occupation of Japan by Allied Forces; post–World War II era writings of children: fear and sadness expressed in, 147; gratitude for SDF

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disaster-relief mission, 173, 175; and mobilization against American military presence, 157–160. See also comfort letters Yamagami Entarō, 109, 110 Yamanaka Hisashi, 12 Yamazoe Taku, 222n8 Yanagida, Kunio, 9, 23–24 Yanagita Kunio, 23–24, 93 “YMCA” (Village People song), 175–176 Yōchien (children’s magazine), 71 Yomiuri Shinbun (newspaper), 25, 37, 39, 46, 47, 51–53, 54–55, 57–58, 91 Yōnen Chishiki (children’s magazine), 71 Yōnen Kurabu (children’s magazine), 77, 82–83, 83, 128–129, 129, 143–144, 145 Yoneyama Aishi, Tairiku no kodomo to heitai, 133–135, 136 Yoshida Eijirō, 140 Youth Division of the Police Agency, 57 youth groups. See children’s and youth groups Zero-Sen Hayato (animated fi lm series), 91–93

i n de x