Introduction xx
section chiefs were selected from each government ministry, and the officials
of each section were chosen from among civil public organizations (newspa-
pers, motion pictures, book, and magazine companies).9 Aside from the Cab-
inet Information Bureau, the Information Departments of the Army and Navy
had primary responsibility for strategic information including the planning and
execution of military propaganda.
Throughout the war, the Japanese made effective use of two major tools of
mass media, cinema, and radio to support national morale and provide essen-
tial information for its home population. Both radio and film were rigorously
controlled by the Japanese authorities and strict censorship controls prevented
the portrayal of images or messages that might have a critical or detrimental
effect upon the regime or its emperor.
Although the Cabinet Board of Information (loosely based on the Nazi’s
Ministry of Propaganda) officially managed nonmilitary propaganda, the Jap-
anese employed a variety of institutions to assist with its propaganda cam-
paigns. Privately owned entertainment companies such as film giants Toho and
Shochiku and the entertainment company Yoshimoto sent platoons of enter-
tainers to China to amuse the imperial troops. These brigades then returned
to the home islands and publicized Japanese military success in China.
Government-sponsored programs urged writers to reorganize into “voluntary”
blocs and write about the effort to educate the civilian population during war-
time. Semi-private advertising companies, employed as subcontractors for the
Imperial General Headquarters, designed and produced propaganda leaflets
that blanketed villages and fields in China and Southeast Asia. The Japanese
military itself often distributed these materials and kept records of how local
areas responded.
Official Japanese propaganda asked its people, already under duress since
the 1930s, now to endure further economic restrictions, recycle scarce mate-
rials, make do with less, and live by slogans such as “luxury is the enemy.”
On the home front, the police and their various special agencies maintained
careful surveillance of the domestic population, tabulating rumor campaigns,
arresting so-called spies, and censoring media deemed anti-imperial. Intense
propaganda campaigns directed at Japanese soldiers encouraged suicide over
capture.10
The Home Front
In 1939–1945, civilians were in the frontline as never before. Advances in the
technology of war, particularly in aerial bombing, served to transform their
experience of war. Other advances meant that radio and cinema were now
firmly established as mass media, and governments of all the belligerent states
were conscious of the need to gauge the impact of propaganda. During the
war, “feedback” agencies assessed the state of public opinion and the factors
affecting public morale. In Britain, for example, this involved using the results
of the Home Intelligence Reports and the social-research Mass Observation
