Women and Icon: Japanese Propaganda, Mass Media, and Gendering the Population
Chelsea Stevenson
Ryosai Kenbo
1890s-1920s
Art by Patricia Nelson
Photo Credits
Earhart, David C. Certain Victory: Images of World War II in the
Japanese Media. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2008. Print.
Gordon, Andrew. Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in
Modern Japan. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2012. Print.
Old Photos of Japan. 1890’s. Web. March 30th, 2013.
Shashin Shuho (Weekly Photographical Journal). 1938-45.
Photograph. National Archives of Japan. Japan Center for Asian
Historical Record. National Archives of Japan. Web. 13 Mar. 2013.
Modan Garu
1920s-1930s
For the Empire
1930s-1940s
Beginning in its invasions into Asia and conflicts in the South Pacific in World War II, the casual historian can easily observe a change in Japan’s mass
culture, which shifted from a highly fashionable, modern, and increasingly westernized society into a militaristic regime vehemently asserting their
unique Japanese traditions and race above enemies and subordinates. Women, in particular, experienced rapid transformations in their roles as
Japanese citizens. This paper studies changes of the female image in Japanese mass media during the Pacific War, more specifically in propaganda.
By studying government produced images of Japanese women I hope to peel away the manufactured social constructs they erected and understand the
changing nature of gendered expectations the Showa administration popularized during the wartime. In order to explore the evolution of this process
I first began by examining the influences of earlier female representation sanctioned by society, or the government, preceding this period in the
cultural phenomena of the Good-Wife/Wise-Mother duality present in the Meiji Era and the 1920’s modan garu before deconstructing women in
propaganda from the early years of the war into its final stages preceding the dropping of the atomic bomb. What I found was a surprising fluidity of
gender and gender roles—ultimately, the Japanese government was not as concerned with promoting one kind of iconic female as they were putting
forward their own agenda toward the propagation of war. A woman could not exemplify the perfect citizen, for her existence was not one which
reconciled with itself. Women were called to be traditional vessels of Japanese custom and yet were also encouraged to move out of the home and
become the bulwark of the home front—depicted as capable and modern even as they were painted as genteel and domestic.