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Visible cultures, invisible politics: propaganda in the magazine Nippon Fujin , 1942–1945

2013; Routledge; Volume: 25; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09555803.2013.783092

1469-932X

Andrea Germer,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

AbstractNippon Fujin (The Japanese woman, 1942–1945) was the most prominent wartime women's magazine of Japan that shaped its propagandistic messages in gendered and culturalized forms. Scrutinizing the visual dimension of the magazine, I discern patterns of gendered visual representation that primarily produce highly visible cultural notions and thereby veil, obscure and render invisible assertions of political power over colonized people as well as enemies. Visibility is commonly associated with influence, power and political impact, whereas less visibility – or invisibility – often indicates the positions of those who are politically powerless, socially disadvantaged or culturally oppressed. Contrasting the visual propaganda in Nippon Fujin with visual examples from NS Frauen-Warte (NS women's outlook), the major Nazi women's magazine of the time, I argue that in the former case there are concepts of ‘visibility’ and ‘invisibility’ at work that do not fit neatly into the paradigmatic assumption of mediated political ‘visibility’ as a pre-condition for public acceptance in a mass culture. To a large degree, it is the ‘invisibility’ or coded visibility of political actors that forms effective strategic elements of visual propaganda.Keywords: Nippon FujinNS Frauen-Warteculture‘race’genderpropagandavisibilityinvisibilitySecond World War AcknowledgementsI would like to thank the editors and the anonymous referees of Japan Forum for their invaluable comments and suggestions for improving this article. I am also grateful for the comments from Ulrike Wöhr, Vera Mackie and Jason Karlin with whom I convened an ASCJ panel in 2010 where I presented my ideas. Special thanks also go to Yulia Mikhailova for her important suggestions, and to my former colleagues at Newcastle University, Sabrina Yu, James Babb and Martin Dusinberre, who read a very early version of this paper.All images in this paper are from my private collection. For her great help in retrieving copyright permissions, I am indebted to Katō Chika. Permissions were kindly granted by Hasegawa Michio (Figure 5), Shimizu Toki (Figure 6), Hashimoto Michio (Figure 15), Aoyama Toshiko, Katō Asami and Ikeda Mao (Figure 17). The copyrights in the other images either ceased or the copyright holders could not be located despite all efforts.Notes1‘Race’ will be understood as a popular construct that derived from ancient philosophical and from nineteenth- and twentieth-century pseudo-scientific formulations. According to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA), these ‘old racial categories were based on externally visible traits, primarily skin color….They were often imbued with non-biological attributes, based on social constructions of race’ and ‘presumed that immutable visible traits can predict the measure of all other traits in an individual or a population’ (AAPA Citation1996, p. 569). Stressing diversity in all human populations, the AAPA states: ‘Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past’ (1996, p. 569). Some argue that, in the humanities, the category of ‘race’ can be dealt with only as a social construct devoid of empirical substance. Paul Gilroy (Citation2001) in particular has renounced race-based thinking and argued ‘against race’ in a similar vein to Abu-Lughod's (1991) critique of cultures that I describe below. I shall therefore refer to ‘race’ in quotation marks to denote the constructed nature and political (mis-)use of this particular category.2The German Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda or for short, Propagandaministerium) was the ministry dedicated to enforcing the Nazi ideology in Germany, and regulating and controlling its press and culture. Founded on 13 March 1933, the ministry was headed by Dr Joseph Goebbels.3The names of the national women's organizations were Aikoku Fujinkai (Patriotic Women's Association, est. 1901), Dai Nippon Rengō Fujinkai (Greater Japan Alliance of Women's Associations, est. 1931) and Dai Nippon Kokubō Fujinkai (Greater Japan Women's National Defence Association, est. 1932). On the forced dissolution and reorganization of the three organizations, see Kanō (Citation1995), Suzuki (Citation1995, pp. 356–525), Katzoff (Citation2000) and Koyama (Citation2011, pp. 8–13).4Pushing this process were prewar feminists who eventually held posts in committees of the Kokumin Seishin Sōdōin Undō (National Spiritual Mobilization Movement): Yoshioka Yayoi who had travelled to Germany in 1939 and propagated the streamlining of women's organizations after her return (Germer Citation2007, p. 32), Ichikawa Fusae, leader of the prewar suffrage movement, Takeuchi Shigeyo, activist in the prewar women's movement, and prewar internationalist Inoue Hideko (Koyama Citation2011, pp. 9–10). For the trajectory of the pragmatic cooperation of a number of prewar feminists in the wartime state women's organization, see Nishikawa (Citation1997), Katzoff (Citation2000), Wilson (Citation2006) and Germer (Citation2007).5Membership was compulsory for all married women and all women over the age of 20 (Taisei Yokusankai 1944, in Suzuki Citation1995, Kanō Citation1995, p. 161).6With 108 pages, the inaugural issue was slightly longer. From June 1944, the paper size of the magazine was reduced. Publication numbers of all issues remain unclear (Koyama Citation2011, p. 13).7In the first issue alone we find the names of at least eight women associated with prewar radical or liberal women's movements: Takamure Itsue (historian), Hani Setsuko (journalist for the women's magazine Shufu no Tomo), Yamada Waka (translator and contributor to the feminist journal Seitō), Yoshiya Nobuko (writer), Nogami Yaeko (writer), Yoshioka Yayoi (medical doctor and founder of the first medical school for women in 1900), Kawasaki Natsu (member of the Shin Fujin Kyōkai, New Women's Association) and Ōhama Hideko (feminist who studied in England and became active in the postwar anti-prostitution movement). Other famous feminists who appeared in later editions of Nippon Fujin included Yamataka Shigeri, Kōra Tomiko, Oku Mumeo and Segawa Kiyoko.8The new genre of modern Japanese manga was born in Meiji Japan when comic pictures of the Edo period were combined with the imported Western art form of caricature (Mikhailova Citation2008, p. 155). During the Second World War, the general trend for Japanese manga artists was to cooperate, streamline their organizations and actively support the regime's propaganda, no matter what the political tendency of the artist had been up to the 1930s (Shimizu Citation2009 [1991]).9See, for example, figure 15. Feminist historian Takamure Itsue's instalments on Japanese women's history emphasize the authentic Japanese spirit that allegedly informed historical women heroes. With twenty-three instalments, she was the most frequent contributor to Nippon Fujin.10These are ornamental dolls, representing the Emperor and the Empress in court dress of the Heian period (794–1185), as well as attendants at the court. They are displayed in March every year when hinamatsuri, a festival for girls, is celebrated.11With thirty-nine issues published by the Nanshi Hakengun Hōdōbu (Information Corps of the South China Expeditionary Army) from May 1939 until May 1944, this magazine was mainly produced by lower-rank soldiers, while also soliciting work from well-known Japanese literati. Edited by Hino Ashihei and others, it carried waka, haiku, poems, short stories, essays, reports and roundtables by Japanese soldiers, with occasional additional Chinese and Taiwanese contributors. See the facsimile editions Fukkoku ‘Zasshi Heitai’ (Citation2004) and Fukkoku ‘Heitai hoi’ (Citation2004).12For discussion of the political implications of clothing in another wartime women's magazine, Shufu no Tomo, see Wakakuwa (Citation2005).13Abu-Lughod suggests writing ethnographies centred around particular individuals, thereby undermining the most problematic connotations of fixed notions of cultures, which are homogeneity, coherence and timelessness.14Atkins (Citation2010, p. 58) qualifies this quote, noting that Koreans could be characterized as primitive only when shifting the gaze from the literate, sophisticated and bureaucratic Sinophiles of Korean upper social strata to the illiterate ‘agrarian masses’ – a gaze that was favoured by anthropological convention and Japanese ethnographers.15Ulrike Wöhr (Citation2008, pp. 87–88) highlights the fact that this political recognition was not without tension and dissonance in her discussion of the (self-)representations of German women in Japanese wartime magazines.16For Japan, see Mackie (Citation2003, p. 64) and Sato (Citation2003); for international developments of the phenomenon, see the Modern Girl around the World Research Group (Citation2009) and Otto and Rocco (Citation2011).17Ohser's pseudonym was E. O. Plauen (1903–1944) and he is most famous for his comic series ‘Vater und Sohn’ (Father and son). Highly critical of the Nazis, he nevertheless worked for the NS-weekly Das Reich (founded May 1940), although with satirical and subversive intentions. He was denounced for his critical view of the Nazis, and committed suicide in prison on 6 April 1944 before he could be sentenced to death.18NS Frauen-Warte (1932–1945) was the organ of the Nazi elite women's organization N.S. Frauenschaft (NS Women's Organization) with around two million members (Stephenson Citation2001, p. 92). NS Frauen-Warte (whose title appeared in various slightly different spellings) was specifically designed for political education of its readers in the nationalist socialist world view. The highest publication numbers of the magazine are known for only October 1939, with one and a half million copies.19The article's author is noted only by the initials G. F., and is a medical doctor, as the article claims (G.F Citation1941, pp. 2, 50).20Among the various images of Russia in twentieth-century Germany, the racist image was constructed on the basis of the differing states of development of Russia and Germany, interpreted within a racist frame as showing the superiority of the Germanic race in relation to the Slavic races (Wette Citation2005, p. 25). In Mein Kampf, Hitler had laid out his plans for war against the Soviet Union (1941). In terms of geopolitics, he maintained the need for Germany to secure its food supply and become one of the great powers only through an expansion of its territory in Europe (Zehnpfennig Citation2011, pp. 216–217); in terms of racism, he combined his theory of the Slavic sub-human with his anti-Semitism and anti-Marxism, maintaining that the weakness of the Slavs made them prone to be used as slaves in an empire of the ‘Germanic master race’. On racism as state policy in Nazi Germany, see Burleigh and Wippermann (Citation2011 [1991]).21No credit is given for the image in Nippon Fujin; the image in NSFW is credited to someone by the name of Ostwald whose identity could not be ascertained. Approximately 12,000 photographers served in the propaganda troops of the German Army, Air Force, Marine and the Waffen-SS during the Second World War (Hartewig Citation2010, p. 62).22Similar visual formations of female students exercising in the Developing Asia Health Rally (1940), as photographed by Tanaka Masachika in Shashin Shūhō (Earhart Citation2008, p. 43), reveal that such techniques were part of Japan's propagandistic repertoire.23In line with Domon's wartime contributions, his postwar aesthetics aim at an emotional appeal that, Julia Thomas (Citation2008, p. 387) argues, is ‘decidedly paternalistic and nationalistic’.24Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Citation1991) applies Foucault's observation to the silence of gay and lesbian existence in her book Epistomology of the closet. In the matrix of power then, discursive power rested not only on the claim for truth and knowledge, but on the ‘fact that ignorance is as potent and as multiple a thing as knowledge’ (Sedgwick Citation1991, p. 4).Additional informationNotes on contributorsAndrea GermerAndrea Germer is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Gender Studies at the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University (Japan). She has held previous positions at Newcastle University (UK) and the German Institute for Japanese Studies (Tokyo). She has published widely in the fields of visual propaganda, cultural studies and gender studies, including a monograph on women's history in Japan (2003), as well as articles in Contemporary Japan, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Social Science Japan Journal, Intersections and Japanstudien. ‘A coedited volume (with V. Mackie and U. Wohr), Gender, nation and state in modern Japan is forthcoming from RoutledgeCourzon.’ Her current project is a monograph titled Visual propaganda in wartime Japan and Germany. She can be contacted at germer@scs.kyushu-u.ac.jp.