Planes, Trains and Games: Selling Japan’s War in Asia

In a 1940 Japanese produced guidebook to Taiwan, a full-page photograph of a young child sleeping on top of a water buffalo included a deragatory caption that lazy behavior was what Japan wished to renovate out of Asia. Late 1930s popular Japanese sentiment advocated promoting a war and reformation in Asia that would force the region to modernize and develop. Part of this mobilization plan obviously included military and official propaganda, stemming from government agencies and the armed forces. The more intriguing aspects of molding the popular consciousness, and focusing on the youth of Japan, the soldiers of the future, dealt with games, planes and trains. Many of these commercial products found their way into kamishibai, paper plays, that were performed to the delight of children within Japan’s empire from the 1930s until the early 1950s.

Wartime kamishibai researcher Saki Akio wrote in his 1943 treatise on the topic that kamishibai were essential to renovating Japan. In short, he penned, kamishibai were a weapon to promote kinrôbunka, or a “cultural work ethic.” Private media and publishing companies in Osaka and Tokyo considered kamishibai critical to guiding Japanese and colonial socieities in a variety of behaviors to aid the growth of the empire. In this paper I will detail how a non-governmental form of entertainment directed at the youth of Japan served as a barometer of popular wartime sentiment. The research will also analyze the manner in which private industry crafted war as a consumer product, tied into a mass marketing campaign to appeal to urban and rural wartime customers.