Playing war : children and the paradoxes of modern militarism in Japan / Sabine Frühstück.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Frühstück, Sabine, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Children and war--Japan.

Children and war.

Children and war--Japan--History.

Militarism--Japan--History--20th century.

Militarism.

War--History--20th century.

War.

History.

Japan.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 276 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2017]

Summary:

"For over a century throughout Japan and beyond, children and concepts of childhood have been appropriated as tools for decidedly unchildlike purposes: to validate, moralize, humanize, and naturalize war, and to sentimentalize peace. Playing War argues that modern conceptions of war insist on and exploit a specific and static notion of the child: that the child, though the embodiment of vulnerability and innocence, nonetheless possesses an inherent will to war, and that this seemingly contradictory creature demonstrates what it means to be human. In examining the intersection of children/childhood with war/military, Sabine Frühstück identifies the insidious factors perpetuating this alliance, thus rethinking the very foundations of modern militarism. She also interrogates how essentialist notions of both childhood and war 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 and early twentieth centuries up to the uneven manifestations of globalization at the beginning of the twenty-first."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Playing War: Field games. Paper battles

Picturing war: The moral authority of innocence. Queering war

Epilogue: the rule of babies in pink.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Frühstück, Sabine. Playing war.

ISBN:

9780520295445

0520295447

9780520295452

0520295455

OCLC:

967791131