Gas mask nation : visualizing civil air defense in wartime Japan / Gennifer Weisenfeld.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weisenfeld, Gennifer S. (Gennifer Stacy), 1966- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Militarization--Japan--History--20th century.

Militarization.

World War, 1939-1945--Social aspects--Japan.

World War, 1939-1945.

Air defenses--Social aspects--Japan.

Air defenses.

Japan--Civilization--1926-1945.

Japan.

Japan--Social life and customs--1912-1945.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (409 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago, Illinois ; London, England : The University of Chicago Press, [2022]

Summary:

A fascinating look at the anxious pleasures of Japanese visual culture during World War II. Airplanes, gas masks, and bombs were common images in wartime Japan. Yet amid these emblems of anxiety, tasty caramels were offered to children with paper gas masks as promotional giveaways, and magazines featured everything from attractive models in the latest civil defense fashion to futuristic weapons. Gas Mask Nation explores the multilayered construction of an anxious yet perversely pleasurable visual culture of Japanese civil air defense-or bōkū-through a diverse range of artworks, photographs, films and newsreels, magazine illustrations, postcards, cartoons, advertising, fashion, everyday goods, government posters, and state propaganda. Gennifer Weisenfeld reveals the immersive aspects of this culture, in which Japan's imperial subjects were mobilized to regularly perform highly orchestrated civil air defense drills throughout the country. The war years in Japan are often portrayed as a landscape of privation and suppression under the censorship of the war machine. But alongside the horrors, pleasure, desire, wonder, creativity, and humor were all still abundantly present in a period before air raids went from being a fearful specter to a deadly reality.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

1 Selling and Consuming Total War

2 Aviation and Japan's Aerial Imaginary

3 Gas Mask Parade

4 Bombs Away!

5 Wondrous Weapons and Future War

6 Exhibiting Air Defense

Epilogue: Afterimages

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-226-81645-1

OCLC:

1357015204