Displaying The Worldview of Japanese Fas

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Displaying the Worldview of Japanese

Fascism: The Tokyo Thought War
Exhibition of 1938
a
Max Ward
a
Middlebury College, Department of History, Middlebury, VT, USA
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Critical Asian Studies, 2015
Vol. 47, No. 3, 414–439, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2015.1057026
Displaying the Worldview of Japanese Fascism:

The Tokyo Thought War Exhibition of 1938
Max Ward
Middlebury College, Department of History, Middlebury, VT, USA
ABSTRACT: This essay explores an imperial state exhibition held in Tokyo in 1938 and
explains how the exhibition displayed a fascist worldview of historical crisis and national
regeneration that was taking shape in Japan in the late 1930s. The exhibition – entitled the
Thought War Exhibition (Shisōsen tenrankai) – was curated by the Japanese state’s newly
formed Cabinet Information Division (Naikaku jōhōbu) and held in Takashimaya

Department Store in downtown Tokyo. Comprised of materials related to the Communist
International, the Spanish Civil War, the national liberation struggle in China, and the
communist and anticolonial movements inside the Japanese Empire, the Exhibition
portrayed Japan’s invasion of the Chinese mainland in 1937 as an extension of a global
thought war against communism, requiring all imperial subjects to purify themselves of
foreign influences and mobilize for national thought defense. While on the surface this
Exhibition was an example of prewar state propaganda, it also expressed a fascist
worldview that was coalescing in the Japanese state in the late 1930s. This essay
investigates how this fascist worldview was exhibited in a sequence of displays, including
dioramas, panoramas, illuminated maps, and display cases, and how these displays revealed
constitutive contradictions that underwrote the formation of fascism in Japan.
Keywords: Fascism; anticommunism; China Incident; thought war exhibition; Japanese
imperialism
1. Introduction: Exhibiting Ideology and Exhibition as Ideology

In February 1938, an exhibition entitled the “Thought War Exhibition” (Shisōsen tenrankai) was
staged in the Takashimaya Department Store in the Nihonbashi area of central Tokyo.1 As visitors
– or, more likely, unsuspecting Takashimaya shoppers – climbed the stairs to the eighth floor exhi-
bition hall, they would have seen two prominent neon signs marking the entrance to the Exhibi-
tion. The sign on the left read, “A War without Weapons, Engulfing the World” (Buki naki tatakai,
sekai ni uzumaku); the sign on the right explained that the imperial state’s newly formed Cabinet
Information Division (Naikaku jōhōbu, CID) had curated the Exhibition (Figure 1). The CID stra-
tegically used these neon signs to appeal to a visitor who had just perused seven floors of fashion,
Correspondence Address: Max Ward, Department of History, Axinn Center at Starr Library, 14 Old Chapel
Rd., Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT 05753 USA. Email: maxw@middlebury.edu
1
Very little has been written on the Exhibition. For general information on the Exhibition, see the editors’
brief synopsis in Tsuganesawa and Satō eds., 1994. Concurrent with the Exhibition, the CID held a
closed-door Thought War Symposium (Shisōsen kōshūkai) attended by military officials, state bureaucrats,
media executives, academics, and nationalist ideologues. On the Symposium, see Naikaku jōhōbu, ed.
1938b; Satō 1998; and Ward 2014.
© 2015 BCAS, Inc.

Critical Asian Studies 415
Figure 1. Neon sign at the entrance to the Tokyo Thought War

Exhibition (Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 17). (All images courtesy of
the author.)
homewares, gadgets, and imported commodities illuminated in Takashimaya Department Store’s

display cases, making the transition from window shopping to viewing the Exhibition a smooth
one. Moving through the Exhibition, the attendee would pass display cases, dioramas, panoramas,
illuminated wall maps, miniature models, and poster collages, which, taken together, displayed a
purported ideological war taking place throughout the world, one that had reached a critical
turning point in East Asia following the China Incident (Shina jihen) of July 1937. As the
visitor neared the end of the Exhibition, s/he could purchase commemorative memorabilia
from a small gift shop. The visitor’s purchase not only guaranteed that the message of
“thought war” would be brought back into his or her home, it also functioned as a transition
back into the department store, where the attendee could resume browsing the plethora of com-
modities on offer. In this fashion, the state’s mobilization for ideological warfare was woven into
the entertaining spectacles and consumption of the urban department store.
The CID’s decision to hold the Thought War Exhibition at an urban department store might
seem puzzling at first. However, exhibitions and their constitutive modes of display were central
to the development of the Exhibition’s two sponsoring institutions: the imperial nation-state and
the urban department store. For example, in the effort to construct a modern state apparatus and a
loyal and productive national polity, the Meiji state (1868–1912) established national museums,2
constructed war memorials,3 organized domestic industrial fairs (naikoku kangyō hakurankai),4
and actively contributed to world expositions overseas.5 Parallel with these state efforts, depart-
ment stores in Japan had collaborated with domestic expositions (hakurankai) in the mid-Meiji
period, becoming by the early twentieth century modern emporiums of consumption,6 with soph-
isticated national advertising campaigns and cutting-edge retail display technologies. Department
stores also hosted art exhibitions,7 and by the 1920s they were collaborating with the mass media
2
For the relation between Meiji era industrial expositions and the birth of the museum in Japan, see Aso 2013
and 1997; Seki 2005; and Shiina 2005.
3
On war memorials and military reviews, see Fujitani 1996, chap. 3.
4
On the early hakurankai, see Kornicki 1994 and Yoshimi 1992.
5
On Japan’s early contributions to world fairs, see Harris 1975.
6
On the history of the department store in Japan, see Hori 1957; Tamari 2006; and Young 1999. One unique
development in the case of Japan is the so-called terminal department stores (taaminaru hyakkaten), which
are department stores built by commuter train companies at their main terminal. Originally, these train com-
panies were involved in housing developments in the suburbs where their trains ran, thus integrating real
estate, commuter transportation, and service industry into one capital network. See Katō 1972.
7
See Sapin 2004. Noriko Aso has shown that department stores in Japan were more heavily involved in exhi-
biting art than their Euro-American counterparts, becoming familiar exhibitors of artwork by the 1920s and
1930s. See Aso 2013, 190–195.
416 M. Ward
to encode consumption as the practice of “modern life” (modan raifu)8 – an endeavor that Louise
Young has aptly called “marketing the modern.”9 Already by the early twentieth century, then,
these institutions – including national memorials, industrial exhibitions, museums, and depart-
ment stores, with their shared modes of display, scopic regulations, and architecture – had con-
verged to form what Tony Bennett has deemed in the European context a combined
“exhibitionary complex” that structured the lived experience of urban modernity in Japan.10
And as Aso Noriko has argued, the development of these institutions occurred in such a
compact timeframe in Japan that the “domestic institutional boundaries” between expositions,
museums, and department stores were often blurred.11 With this history in mind, then, it is not
surprising that the imperial state chose a department store for its Exhibition.
Parallel with Takashimaya Department Store’s desire to draw more shoppers into its store, the
CID saw the location of this Exhibition as beneficial to its aims of revealing, as a 1937 planning
report stated, “the importance of the thought war to the nation [ippan kokumin]” particularly “in
light of the gravity of the current situation.”12 The Exhibition at Takashimaya Department Store
was hugely successful, with attendance at the Tokyo event reportedly averaging 70,000 attendees
per day and totaling 1.3 million visitors over the Exhibition’s eighteen-day run.13 Inspired by
these numbers, the CID sent the Exhibition on a tour of department store chains throughout
Japan, including Marubutsu in Kyoto, Tamaya in Fukuoka, and Imai in Sapporo.14 Additionally,
the CID cooperated with the Korean governor-general to hold the Thought War Exhibition at Mit-
sukoshi Department Store in downtown Keijō Korea (present-day Seoul) in order to mobilize
urban colonial subjects for thought war as well.15 For all of these department stores, the Exhibi-
tion promised to bring tens of thousands of potential shoppers through their doors. Advertise-
ments and short articles on the traveling Exhibition were printed in local newspapers, thereby
introducing the term “thought war” beyond the urban middle-class shoppers to the wider
public. Those who lived beyond the urban centers would have read about the Exhibition in
national mass-culture magazines that promoted the image of “modern life.” Furthermore, prefec-
tural and local municipal governments financially sponsored the event outside Tokyo, illustrating
the coordination between the CID, the Home Ministry, municipal offices, and local business –
what Barak Kushner has called the “reciprocity” of the production of imperial ideology in inter-
war Japan.16
8
On the new cultural magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly those that established the consumption
habits of the middle-class housewife, see Sato 2003 and Silverberg 1991.
9
Young 1999.
10
Bennett narrates a general history wherein emporiums, museums, fairs, department stores, and other insti-
tutions of display merged to form what he calls an “exhibitionary complex” in Europe by the mid nineteenth
century. See Bennett 1995. For a similar theory of spectacular regimes and the creation of modern spectators
from a visual cultures paradigm, see Schwartz 1998.
11
Aso 2013, 190.
12
Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 1.
13
Ibid., 135. The CID most likely exagerrated these numbers.
14
These department store chains introduced the newest trends, gadgets, and fashions to people living outside
of Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, in what Louise Young has called Japan’s “second cities,” for example,
Sapporo or Fukuoka. See Young 2013.
15
The following is a complete list of department stores in which the Exhibition was held: Takashimaya,
Tokyo; Takashimaya, Osaka; Marubutsu, Kyoto; Tamaya, Fukuoka; Tamaya, Sasebo; Tamaya, Saga-city;
Sentoku, Fukumoto City; Tokiha, Ōita; Imai, Sapporo; and Mitsukoshi in Keijō. See Naikaku jōhōbu
1938a, 135.
16
For example, the Exhibition was sponsored by the prefectural governments of Fukuoka, Saga, Fukumoto,
and Ōita; by municipal offices in Sasebo; and the Korean governor-general in Keijō. In regards to Barak
Kushner’s theory of reciprocity, see Kushner 1996, 6. In contrast to Kushner, who understands this
The Exhibition was organized by the recently created Cabinet Information Division, a govern-
ment body that was charged with streamlining information between government ministries, the
media, and general public, an endeavor that became critically important after Japan’s full-scale
invasion of China in 1937.17 The CID was staffed by so-called renovationist bureaucrats
(kakushin kanryō), a new breed of imperial officials who believed it was their duty to alleviate
the dislocations endemic to capitalism, replace the inefficient political process, streamline colonial
development, and completely remake Japanese society through rational planning and bureaucratic
intervention.18 The CID’s first activities after it was formed were organized under the rubric of
thought war (shisōsen), a term that had been used in the early 1930s to signify something to
the effect of a “war of propaganda” (sendensen).19 Consequently, in the conventional literature
“thought war” is approached through a propaganda studies paradigm and understood as merely
a new instrumental mode of state propaganda that emerged as Japan mobilized for total war.20
Following Japan’s invasion of China in the summer of 1937, however, thought war began to
signify much more than the organization of information during war. It now became a way to
encapsulate both a pervasive sense of social, political, economic, and cultural crisis that had
been accumulating in Japan throughout the 1930s, and the hope that this conjunctural crisis
could be resolved by regenerating Japan’s national spirit and stimulating a cultural awakening
throughout East Asia.21 Thus, I focus here on the ideological aspects of thought war, showing
how it reveals the ideological worldview that underwrote the consolidation of fascism in the
imperial state in the late 1930s. And as one form in which this ideology was displayed to the
public, the Thought War Exhibition can be interpreted as “exhibiting” this fascist worldview.
In this essay, I explore the ideological nature of the Tokyo Thought War Exhibition by ana-
lyzing the content of its ideological message and foregrounding the particular form through which
this ideology was displayed. I will consider the formal aspects of the Exhibition at two levels:
first, by the very nature of their form, exhibitionary narratives unfold through space. For this
reason, I will “walk” us through the Exhibition and outline how specific displays were located
at key points in the Exhibition to emplot a spatial narrative of thought war. Second, I will consider
the institutional collaboration between the CID and Takashimaya Department Store, and analyze
how the interwar culture of consumer capitalism served as a vehicle for, but also mediated the
urgency of, the imperial state’s ideological message. I will show how the formal requirements
of the Exhibition and its location in a department store reduced the global thought war and the
embattled Japanese spirit into mere spectacles arranged in display cases. This approach, I
contend, complicates the conventional argument that in the formation of fascism in interwar
Japan, the imperial state unilaterally suppressed a previously flourishing mass culture.22
reciprocity as the unique quality of Japanese propaganda, I contend that what is being reproduced is better
understood as ideology. This shifts the analysis from questions related to the state’s instrumental use of infor-
mation to a more expansive understanding that can encapsulate the sense of crisis and national regeneration
expressed in thought war discourse. See Ward 2014, 463–465.
17
For information on the institutional development of the Cabinet Information Division, see Fukushima
1986; Okudaira, ed. 1992; and Uchikawa 1989.
18
On the kakushin kanryō, see Hashikawa 1965; Mimura 2011; and Spaulding 1970.
19
See, for instance, the influential pamphlet written by Shimizu Moriaki (Rikugunshō, ed. 1934). For studies
on this pamphlet, see Kasza 1988, 124; Satō 1998, 300–301; Uchikawa 1989, 195–196.
20
See, for instance, Kasza 1988; Kushner 2006; Satomi 2004; Shibuya 1991; and Uchikawa and Kōuchi
1961.
21
On the changing significance of thought war discourse in the late 1930s, see Ward 2014.
22
In addition to complicating 1930s’ cultural history, my analysis also has implications for understanding the
limits of 1920s’ mass culture for political-ideological critique, at least as they have been characterized thus
far. For example, in her important study of 1920s’ Japanese cultural history, Miriam Silverberg portrays the
418 M. Ward
Rather, in the example of the Thought War Exhibition, we find institutional collaboration between
the state and department store chains, whereby the spectacles encoded as modern life in the 1920s
were easily re-encoded with the ideology of thought war.
In addition to the Exhibition’s format, space also operated at the level of its content,
wherein the global political-economic crisis of the 1930s was re-presented as a conflict
between spatialized thought regimes. As the post–World War I order of nation-states was dis-
aggregating under the pressure of the Great Depression, the Exhibition represented this
breakup through the prism of “thought,” mapped as ideological blocs. This representation pro-
duced a geo-ideological map of the world and the intellectual influences that had supposedly
infiltrated the Japanese empire. This cartographic model was not necessarily novel. The world
exhibitions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries mapped the world into a series
of different cultures, locating attendees in specific national-subject positions from which to
observe these differences.23 Thus the 1938 Exhibition assumed an exhibitionary form that
had been well established.24 The Thought War Exhibition was unique, however, in that it
demarcated the constitutive divisions of the world as spatialized thought regimes at war,
rather than through cultural differences.

These geo-ideological divisions were represented not only as an external cartography of the
world, but also as the conflicting intellectual influences inside the minds of each Japanese imperial
subject. Here, the political responses to the social dislocations of the economic crisis afflicting the
Japanese empire in the 1930s – including the socialist, communist, and anticolonial movements –
were portrayed solely as the result of dangerous foreign ideologies.25 Nationalist movements in
Japan’s colonies were shown to be signs of “foreign ideological infiltration.” This is where the
didactic message of the Exhibition can be found, for the attendees were urged to reflect on
their own thoughts and purify them of any harmful intellectual influences in order to become
loyal imperial subjects. Apparently social crisis and colonial nationalism would be overcome
through the revitalization and fortification of imperial subjectivity.
2. Displaying the Thought War: Preparation and Explication

The Tokyo Thought War Exhibition ran from 9 to 26 February 1938. Special events were held on
the first three days in the larger banquet hall adjacent to the Exhibition, including radio broadcasts
from Tokyo Broadcast Agency (JOAK), the radio show “Dawn of the East” (Tōa no akebono), the
emerging mass culture of the 1920s as a field that, while not completely outside of the state’s determinations,
still provided an area of play. Constituted between the imperatives of the imperial state and mass culture was
what Silverberg calls the “consumer-subject,” a subject that was both a loyal imperial subject producing for
the nation and a consumer lured by a mass of durable goods, luxury items, and leisure activities. (See Silver-
berg 1991 and 2006.) While Silverberg’s notion of the “consumer-subject” views state power and capitalist
consumption through one analytical lens, she may have overinvested the consumption side of this construct
with a critical agency. For Silverberg, the fluidity of “code-switching” between the identities and cultural
images attached to commodities became a mode of practice – a praxis of montage – that she argues was
in excess of, and in tension with, the state (Silverberg 2006, 4). In this formulation, the state is understood
only through its restrictive intervention into mass culture, while consumption is left open as a space of
possibility.
23
See, for example, Corfe 1979; Reeves 2004; Rydell 1987 and 1993; and Rydell and Gwinn 1994.
24
To cite one example, Timothy Mitchell analyzes the Egyptian bazaar at the World Exhibition held in Paris
in 1889 and argues that such exotic bazaars created the effect of an “external reality” that was beyond rep-
resentation (i.e., the Orient as the West’s exterior other). In this way, the world itself was rendered as exhibit.
For Mitchell, the 1889 Exhibition operated as a “method of order and truth” in which the world was
“enframed” through the particular form of the exhibit. See Mitchell 1989 and 1991.
25
On the economic crisis in interwar Japan, see Nakamura 1988.
radio comedy “A Dreadful Spy” (Aru osorushiki supai), movies such as newsreels from the
Dōmei News Agency, dance troupes performing to the “Patriotic Marching Song” (Aikoku
kōshin kyoku), a theatrical review entitled the “Spring of the Military Nation” (Gunkoku no
haru), and lectures from state officials. The Exhibition was thus not simply an assemblage of
stationary displays: it combined theater, broadcasting, movies, and music into one spectacular
event. Even after the opening events concluded, the gift shop at the end of the Exhibition
played a soundtrack of patriotic music as visitors walked through the hall. The Exhibition’s com-
memorative book explained that the combination of these multiple elements allowed attendees to
truly “experience” (taiken) the urgency of the thought war in the current time of crisis.26
On 2 February an advertising campaign in the Tokyo dailies was launched, calling attention to
the Exhibition and indirectly introducing the concept of “thought war” to journalists and the
general public. The image used in the ads was of a statue on the grounds of the Imperial
Palace of the fourteenth-century samurai Kusunoki Masashige, the paragon of military loyalty
and sacrifice to the emperor (Figure 2).27
The CID tracked daily attendance and documented when noted dignitaries came to visit the
Exhibition, including Prince Chichibu on opening day, Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro on 16
February, and General Araki Sadao on 23 February. Along with these notable attendees, CID
records show that 302 foreign visitors visited the Exhibition: 274 Westerners and 28 Chinese/
Manchurians.
Finally, a comments box at the exit gave the public a chance to “express how they became
aware of the importance of the thought war” and intended to purchase “materials related to the
Exhibition.” Although the responses were not published, the commemorative book reports that
many visitors expressed their hope that the Exhibition could be held throughout Japan so their
fellow countrymen could also experience the urgency of the thought war.28
In the illustrated compendium commemorating the Exhibition, the head of the CID, Yoko-
mizo Mitsuteru, admitted that “the term ‘thought war’ might be difficult to understand.” He sum-
marized it for readers as a “battle without weapons” (buki naki tatakai), one that was not restricted
to “peacetime nor times of war” but “that occurs at all times.”29 Indeed, although the thought war
took various forms in different historical epochs and geo-political conditions, the important thing
to recognize in Yokomizo’s conceptualization is that thought war never ceases. States may rise
and fall, economic systems may radically transform, but thought war continues to be the grid
upon which all cultural, economic, political, and intellectual encounters have occurred between
nations.
Yokomizo differentiated between the forms of the thought war depending on context. During
wartime, thought war was fought through conventional propaganda, wherein it became a “means
for making known the righteousness of one’s position to the other side, and to reveal one’s resolve
in order to weaken their will to fight [seni].” Toward neutral countries, it was important to “correct
their understanding [ninshiki no zesei]” in order “to develop their position into one of support.”
On the battlefield, thought war was waged to “disintegrate the [enemy’s] frontline,” while behind
enemy lines, it was to “break [the enemy’s] will to execute the war domestically.”30 Yokomizo’s
conception of thought war during wartime, then, reaffirms our conventional understanding of the
26
27
On the creation of Kusunoki Masashige as paragon of imperial loyalty in the 1930s, see Nishimura 1983.
28
Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 9–10.
29
Yokomizo 1938, 1.
30
Ibid., 1–2.
420 M. Ward
aims of propaganda, namely, to mobilize one’s

population, break the will of the enemy, and con-
vince neutral countries of the righteousness of
one’s cause.
Yokomizo distinguished thought war from
propaganda, however, reducing the latter to a
“technological component” (gijutsuteki bumon)
within the former.31 He insisted that thought
war was not restricted to wartime, nor was it redu-
cible to propaganda. In this light, intellectual
exchange between nations during times of
peace lost its neutrality. Yokomizo argued that,
in response to “another nation’s thought-offen-
sive” (shisō kōsei), a nation needed to mobilize
“its own national spirit, its own national will
[kokka ishi]” and thus develop a thought war

policy in order to “defend the life of the nation
[kokumin seikatsu].”32 The exemplary case for
Yokomizo was the rise of international commun-
ism in the 1920s, evidenced in the formation of
communist parties throughout East Asia. Yoko-
mizo went so far as to argue that communism
was “clearly … the primary cause of the current
China Incident.” In response to what Yokomizo
considered to be the “disease of communism”
afflicting East Asia, each individual Japanese
was called to “strike back with the bullet of the
Japanese spirit” on the home front, while the
1936 Anti-Comintern Pact constituted a “united
frontline of defense against the Comintern’s
Figure 2. Advertisement for the Tokyo Thought
War Exhibition (Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 123). offensive” internationally.33 In Yokomizo’s for-
mulation, peacetime and wartime had collapsed
into a single duration, while the battlefront and
the home front constituted one extended space of ideological conflict against communism.
Reiterating a common theme, Yokomizo argued that the recent China Incident inaugurated a
new stage in the thought war as well as a turning point in world history. This demanded that “each
Japanese, in his/her own efforts,” would have to “make known overseas the true meaning of the
righteousness of Japan [seigi nihon no shini] … and to contribute to elevating the Japanese spirit.”
Everyday life was transfigured into an ideological battlefield wherein “Each and every Japanese,
even those not on the field of military battle, must be active as a soldier of the thought war, so that
we can confront the extended war as a unified empire.”34
31
Ibid., 3. Following the international condemnation of Japan’s seizure of Manchuria in 1931 (the so-called
Manchurian Incident, or Manshū jihen), military theorists had looked to Germany’s defeat in World War I as
an instance when propaganda was the decisive factor. See, for instance, Rikugunshō, ed. 1934, which used
the term shisōsen in this regard.
32
Yokomizo 1938, 2.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid., 3–4.
The 1938 Exhibition thus aimed to render legible the urgency of this global conflict and
mobilize the attendee for intellectual battle.
3. The Exhibitionary Narrative of Thought War

The Exhibition was organized into thirteen thematic sections, each curated by a specific govern-
ment ministry or institution. Each section employed a particular display technology: dioramas,
panoramas, display cases, poster collages, and two-dimensional maps (Figure 3).35 The thirteen
themes were spatially outlined, constituting an explanatory narrative that an attendee would order
as s/he walked through the Exhibition. Main themes and their respective curators listed in the pre-
liminary plans included “Representations of the Japanese Spirit” (Ministry of Education), “The
Significance of the Thought War” (CID), “Map of the Thought of the Various Countries of the
World” (Takashimaya), “Various Aspects of the Thought War Enveloping Japan” (CID/Justice
Ministry/Ministry of the Navy), “The China Incident at the Center of the Thought-Propaganda
War” (CID), “Aspects of Cultural Propaganda” (Bureau of International Tourism), and “National
Spirit Mobilization Movement” (Central Committee of the National Spirit Mobilization Move-
ment).36 On one level, this thematic organization presented an all-encompassing portrayal of
the conventional understanding of propaganda, covering the history of propaganda, recent devel-
opments in propaganda technology, and the then-current anti-Japanese propaganda produced in
China and in Western countries. For this reason, the Exhibition was both an exhaustive overview
of international propaganda in 1938 as well as a form of propaganda itself; in telling the history of
propaganda, it was seeking to mobilize the attendee for this war of representation. But, more
importantly, in this effort to mobilize the population by representing the world as a field of ideo-
logical struggle, the Exhibition also revealed the underlying ideology of historical crisis and
national revitalization that was taking shape in the imperial state in 1938.
The Ideological Coordinates of the Thought War: Geo-Ideology and the Japanese Spirit
The Exhibition’s narrative unfolded along two trajectories: first, the geo-ideological divisions
that constituted the world, wherein political alliances, cultural exchanges and international con-
flicts were rendered through the prism of thought; and second, the Japanese spirit that pro-
vided the subjective position from which the attendee would view this ideologically divided
world. These two trajectories were not limited to the spatial configuration of contemporary
geopolitics, but were coterminous with the cartography of thought in the mind of each indi-
vidual Japanese, wherein a subdued Japanese spirit was continually struggling against
imported Western intellectual influences. The realm of individual consciousness became an
ideological battlefield itself.
Entering the Exhibition, the observer was immediately flanked on the right by a display of the
“Symbols of the Japanese Spirit” (Nihon seishin no shōchō), which included calligraphy in clas-
sical Chinese that read “A long arduous road lies ahead,” by then–prime minister Konoe Fumi-
maro,37 the national flag, reprints from the eighth-century text Kojiki, paintings of Mount Fuji,
35
State officials, not artists or professional designers, were responsible for the design of most of the Exhibi-
tion’s displays. As I will note below, ex-communists arrested for “thought crime” (shisōhanzai) also contrib-
uted materials that conveyed their experience of “ideological conversion” (tenkō). But with few exceptions,
the displays were created by government officials.
36
The thematic outline and schedule of the Exhibition is described in Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 4–10.
37
The original Chinese characters were 任重而道遠 (in conventional Japanese this phrase would be read
“nin-omoku oyobi michi-tōshi”). See Ibid., 10, 19.
422 M. Ward
and a scroll painted by Okakura

Tenshin in 1898 (Figure 4).This
assemblage of symbolic and
textual works purportedly
archived the Japanese spirit and
ostensibly provided the attendee
a position from which to interpret
the subsequent displays. But the
very assumption that the Japa-
nese spirit could be represented
by a few items in a display case
reveals a constitutive contradic-
tion of the Thought War Exhibi-
tion, namely, how to exhibit the
radiant imperial spirit – a spirit
that was so glorious as to be

beyond representation? The
formal requirements of the Exhi-
bition rendered this spirit into
objects that were on par with
the newest fashions and gadgetry
presented in Takashimaya
Department Store’s display
cases; all were to be marveled at
as spectacles. The issue had less
to do with an alleged ideological
threat against the Japanese spirit
Figure 3. Layout of the Tokyo Thought War Exhibition (Naikaku and more with the inability to
jōhōbu 1938a, 16). re-present the Japanese spirit
without relying on reified forms.
As we shall see, however, the Exhibition skirted this problem by continually emphasizing the
“threat” foreign ideology posed to the Japanese spirit.
On the opposite side of the “Symbols of the Japanese Spirit” display a large placard detailed
the objectives of the Exhibition:
The prosperity of the nation depends on the health of national thought and together with the diplomatic
war, the economic war, and the military war, there is a thought war taking place in all domains of the
current international conflict, a form of struggle that occurs in times of peace and war, where the differ-
ence between victory and defeat is a matter of the rise or decline of a nation. Therefore, the Thought War
Exhibition has opened in order to reveal the entirety of the thought war which envelops the empire
internally and abroad, to make the nation aware of its importance, and to uplift the Japanese spirit,
to engineer a united thought war effort abroad and ultimately overcome the challenges of times.38
These displays established the Exhibition’s two trajectories: the placard described the external
geo-ideological divisions of the international thought war and the symbols of the Japanese
spirit display case represented the internal Japanese spirit that was fighting this ideological war.
38
Ibid., 19. This statement is also reprinted in the photo magazine the CID printed: Shashin shūhō [Pictorial
Weekly Bulletin] 1 (16 February 1938): 16–17.
Figure 4. Display case: “Symbols of the Japanese spirit” (Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 19).
The most exemplary displays of the geo-ideological trajectory were the maps that marked the
Exhibition’s narrative at key moments. Separating the “Symbols of the Japanese Spirit” display
and the placard explaining the thought war was a wall-sized illuminated map created by the Taka-
shimaya Department Store that detailed the alleged threat of international communism (Figure 5).
The map, entitled “Thought Tendencies of the Contemporary World as Seen from the Anti-
Comintern Pact” (Bōkyōkyōtei yori mitaru gendai sekai shisō no dōkō), represented the coordi-
nated efforts of the signatories of the Anti-Comintern Pact to contain communism within the
borders of the Soviet Union.39 Japan, Germany, and Italy, represented by photographs of
Konoe, Hitler, and Mussolini, formed a vector of ideological containment, overlaying the exten-
sion of communism into Europe and Asia from the Soviet Union (signified by a picture of Stalin).
The map depicted communism’s western drive with an illuminated red tube that extended from
the Soviet Union through the Popular Front government of Camille Chautemps in France, to
the border of Spain. This tube connected the Spanish Civil War directly with the Soviet Union
and thus marked the Civil War as the key battlefront of the thought war in Europe. To the east,
another red tube extended downwards into central China (bypassing the puppet state of Manchu-
kuo, established in 1932 by Japan), positing the China Incident as the eastern front in the global
thought war. The only other country transfigured into an image of a leader was England. Here,
39
Accompanying the map was a list of nations divided into the following categories: Anti-Comintern states
(Bōkyō kokka); allies of the Anti-Comintern states (shinbōkyō kokka); pro-communist states (yōkyō kokka);
and neutral states (chūritsukoku). Interestingly, the KMT is listed in the “pro-communist states” category
even though it had received military support from Nazi Germany up until 1936 and was engaged in its
own anticommunist campaigns. See Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 29. On the KMT’s anticommunist campaigns,
see Clinton 2009.
424 M. Ward
Figure 5. Illuminated Map: “Thought tendencies of the contemporary world as seen from the anti-
Comintern Pact” (Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 25).
Neville Chamberlain was isolated from the events taking place on the map, an isolation that sig-
nified Britain’s supposed lack of courage in the struggle against communism.40
This wall-sized map was placed on a pillar that divided the first two displays at the entrance of
the Exhibition. The bifurcation between the Japanese spirit and the global thought war continued into
the first corridor of the Exhibition, where the observer found two complementary histories: on the
right was a display detailing the history of propaganda throughout the ages; on the left, a long panor-
ama charted the history of “The Glorious Japanese Spirit” from the time of Emperor Jimmu’s ascent
to the construction of the Meiji empire. The first display, entitled “The Development of Propaganda”
(Shisō senden no hattatsu), told the story of propaganda from primitive society through the Roman
empire, the religious wars in Europe, the French Revolution, Napoleon, Bismarck, and the American
Civil War, to William Randolph Hearst’s articles, which precipitated the Spanish–American War in
1898.41 This history was diagrammed in images that formed the Latin letters for the word “propa-
ganda.” The display informed the observer that “propaganda is as old as human society,” wherein
ancient societies united warring clans by using the names and images of gods and devils.42 The
message was that while propaganda’s content and modalities might have changed, its significance
to the formation and mobilization of human societies has continued throughout history.43
40
The commemorative book describes the map this way: “This is constructed by separating a world map into
different colors according to thought, adhering pictures of those who represent these thoughts and electric
lines illuminating the various connections [between] Anti-Comintern countries and the Soviet Union”
(Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 11).
41
Ibid., 22–23.
42
Ibid., 23.
43
The subtext in the commemorative book alerts the reader to the etymological origins of the term “propa-
ganda,” noting that the term itself was first used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries during the Euro-
pean Wars of Religion, but that the activities that are now understood as “propaganda” go back to the
beginning of human history. See Ibid., 22–23.
Coextensive with this display was a parallel history of the Japanese spirit depicted in a
diorama entitled the “Glorious Japanese Spirit” (Sentari nihon seishin). This was a visual rep-
resentation of the mythical endowment of the imperial state going back to Jimmu’s ascension
to the throne in the year 660 BCE. The Chinese characters written in calligraphy above the
display listed the ethics of “reverence” (keishin), “loyalty” (chū), “filiality” (kō), “loyalty and
patriotism” ( jinchū hōkoku), and “purity” (seimeishin). These characteristics ostensibly com-
prised Japan’s enduring national ethos. A diorama narrated the unfolding of this national ethos
throughout Japanese history, beginning with a landscape view of the sun overlooking fertile
plains (signifying the divine origins of the Japanese islands), running through Heian society up
through Meiji, culminating in a landscape view of Mount Fuji. Curiously, the current Shōwa
emperor – Emperor Hirohito – was not depicted at the end of this symbolic timeline, possibly
in fear of delimiting the imperial radiance within the formal limits of a diorama.
Exiting this corridor and returning to the main area of the Exhibition, the attendee encoun-
tered materials that described the organizational structure of propaganda ministries in Japan
(the CID) and other countries. Particularly interesting in this generally descriptive area of
the Exhibition is how direct and forthcoming these materials were concerning the adminis-
tration of propaganda in Japan. For example, a detailed organizational outline of the CID
and its relationship to other ministries made no attempt to hide the CID’s propaganda
efforts or conceal its organizational structure. Rather, the CID represented itself directly to
the public.44
The Two Battlefronts of the Global Thought War: Spain and China
The two trajectories of the Exhibition – the Japanese spirit and the international thought war –
were then linked to two significant events in the contemporary moment. First, a display entitled
“The Spanish Upheaval and the Thought War” (Supein no dōran to shisōsen) explained the invol-
vement of various European countries in the Spanish Civil War and noted the differences in the
style of propaganda produced by the Republican Forces and Franco’s Nationalists. Whereas the
“red popular front” (i.e., the Republic) received support from the Comintern and partook in
“unethical activities” such as distributing “antireligious propaganda,” Franco’s Nationalist
Front was portrayed as aptly utilizing the newest radio technology to broadcast their message
of national defense.45
In another display, the China Incident was shown to have crystallized the thought war in
East Asia. Here, a second illuminated map, entitled “The Various Forces of World-Thought
that Are Assailing East Asia” (Tōa o osou sekai shisō no shoseiryoku), transfigured the compet-
ing colonialisms in China and East Asia into blocs of thought (Figure 6).46 This map portrayed
China as being enveloped by foreign thought: the Soviet Union stretched over Manchukuo into
the northern tip of Sakhalin, the Mongolian People’s Republic stood to the west, and, to the
south were the possessions of the US (Philippines) and France (French Indochina). In China
44
The CID described its mandate as, “the facilitation of, and transmission between, the various offices” that
are responsible for (1) “the execution of international policy”; (2) “domestic and foreign information”; (3)
“distributing [keihatsu] propaganda”; and (4) “collecting information, [producing] news and developing pro-
paganda.” The CID’s organizational coordination with media agencies and state ministries was explicitly dis-
played and then compared to the Italian Propaganda Ministry and the Germany Ministry of Propaganda. See
Ibid., 24.
45
Ibid., 29.
46
The commemorative guidebook described this map as depicting “what kinds of, and from which directions,
thought was coming to assail East Asia” (ibid., 11).
426 M. Ward
Figure 6. Illuminated map: “The various forces of world thought that are assailing East Asia” (Naikaku
jōhōbu 1938a, 30).
itself, Shanghai was shown as being split into the French, English, and US intellectual conces-
sions. Interestingly, Japan’s Shanghai concession was not represented. Japan and its colonial
possessions (Korea and Taiwan), the puppet state of Manchukuo, and the Japanese-occupied ter-
ritories of northeast China were not shaded on the map as the other areas were; rather they were
clear white. Indeed, in this map’s cartographic representation, these Japanese-controlled areas
were depicted as virtually free of ideology (if not “thought” itself). According to this map, it
was ideology in general that was “assailing” East Asia, not any specific ideology such as com-
munism. The implication was that the two polarities of the thought war in East Asia were
(foreign) ideology versus the Japanese spirit. The vexing problem of how to represent the Japa-
nese spirit within the register of thought war but without reducing it to just another ideology was
not dealt with.47
The geo-ideological rendering of the global thought war was also represented by a mass of
foreign propaganda materials that provided the content of the ideological divisions of the world.
The bulk of this material was related to the China Incident, including resistance propaganda
from inside China and propaganda from Western countries that condemned Japanese aggression.
Display after display showcased anti-Japanese materials from China, including magazines,
school textbooks, military posters, fliers, frontline leaflets, and even a letter written to the ador-
able American child-star Shirley Temple by two equally adorable Chinese children in which
47
On this point, see Shibuya 1991, chap. 3. The issue of how to re-present Japan’s unique spirit and national
polity (kokutai) into thought was already a major source of concern by the mid 1930s, as exemplified in the
movement to “clarify the kokutai” (kokutai meichō undō). See Tansman 2009, chap. 4. For an excellent
history of kokutai discourse in modern Japan, see Konno 2008.
they described the plight of their country.48 These materials demonstrated the importance of
defining Japan’s purportedly benevolent mission in China to the Chinese and to the world.
Differences between the Kuomintang (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were
underplayed in these displays; the entire China Incident was collapsed into an effect of the infil-
tration of communism into East Asia. For example, many of the Japanese materials represented
Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT as Soviet puppets.49 The many Imperial Army propaganda pieces
on display portrayed Japan’s mission in China as “cleansing” East Asia of communism and
stressed the importance of “creating a New China” (shin shina kensetsu) for establishing an ever-
lasting East Asian peace. One such poster entitled “Look! The Havoc Wrought by the Communist
Party!” depicted the Imperial Army chasing out an animal-like agent with a bag full of gold who
was controlling by puppet strings an army that was massacring the civilian population. A “red
demon” behind the agent was pulling off its “mask of peace,” revealing its true wickedness.50
Alongside a crowd of Chinese civilians waving Japanese flags, a printed caption explained that
the “Japanese military is relieving the people’s suffering” (jinmin no tsūka o sukui) by “eradicat-
ing the self-interested militarists [i.e., the KMT] and the inhumane Communist Party.” Paradoxi-
cally, these types of messages echoed the KMT’s own domestic propaganda, which had similarly
called for eradicating communism from China, relieving the people’s suffering, and uniting China
under a single government.51 Anticommunism thus served to legitimate both Japan’s imperialist
aggression and the KMT’s efforts to mobilize China against foreign aggression.
Positioned in the center of the Exhibition was a three-panel circular diorama entitled “The China
Incident and the Thought War: We Must Also Win the Thought War!” (Shina jihen to shisōsen: Shi-
sōsen ni mo kataneba naranu!). The first panel, entitled “Chinese Anti-Japanese Education,” showed
a school in China, where, through a window, visitors could view a class in session where anti-Japa-
nese curriculum was being taught (Figure 7). Outside, an instructor was pictured posting anti-Japa-
nese bills on the wall. The commerative guidebook explained that from an early age, Chinese children
were taught “anti-Japanese sentiment and anti-Japanese thought” (kōnichi kanjō, kōnichi shisō). The
result was that when students reached middle school, they were already “baptized in anti-Japanese
thought” (kōnichi shisō no senrei o uke), resulting in the formation of “subjects [shutai] of an increas-
ingly unyielding and defiant anti-Japanese movement.”52 The other two panels in the diorama illus-
trated the Imperial Army’s propaganda efforts in China. In one, an officer was shown hurling
propaganda materials into the trenches of Chinese soldiers; in the other, Imperial Army soldiers
are seen affably talking with Chinese civilians in occupied territories, demonstrating how in “paci-
fication maneuvers” the average civilian was not treated “as an enemy.”53
Anti-Imperialism and the Comintern

Also on display in the Exhibition were Korean independence materials that urged European audi-
ences to support Korean soveriegnty and badges and fliers from Western countries that
48
The presentation of this letter in the commemorative record of the Exhibition begins by noting the inge-
nuity of the Chinese, exclaiming “the Chinese think of everything!” (Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 56).
49
Ibid., 90.
50
The poster is reprinted in ibid., 92.
51
See Clinton 2009.
52
53
Ibid. 69. Interestingly, in the closed-door Thought War Symposium that took place simultaneously with
this Exhibition, Justice Officer Hirata Isao lectured that his work to rehabilitate Japanese communists as
reformed imperial subjects was equal to the “work of the pacification units” in China (sebuhanteki na
shigoto). See Hirata 1938, 228; and Ward 2011, 407–408.
428 M. Ward
Figure 7. Diorama: “The China Incident and the Thought War. We

must also win the Thought War!” (Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 69).
condemned Japanese imperialism and called for a boycott of Japanese imports. Additionally,
articles on China and Spain from European leftist and Popular Front newspapers were displayed.
The latter articles represented these two conflicts as key battlefronts in the fight against fascism.
Alongside socialist critiques of Japanese aggression in China, a display entitled “Identifying
Anti-Japanese Lies” (Kōnichi dema no shōtai) featured a collage of articles from international
newspapers that were purportedly printing “lies” about Japan’s actions in China.54 These
media accounts illustrated how Japanese “affairs” in China and Korea were being “misrepre-
sented” in the world press and how, at least for the moment, Japan was losing this war of
representation.
The single culprit that linked anti-Japanese propaganda in Europe with the war in China and
with the rise of dangerous foreign thought within the Japanese empire was, it was said, inter-
national communism. The Exhibition’s commemorative guidebook noted that the Exhibition pro-
vided the “opportunity to display to the average citizen the dreadful communist influence through
actual concrete evidence.” It reported that “the depth and urgency of the conspiracy aroused shock
and fear” in visitors.55 A display entitled “Uncovering the Influence of the Comintern” (Komin-
terun no mashu o abaku), which mapped the organizational structure of the Communist Inter-
national, included posters connecting Freemasonry and the KMT to the Comintern. In one
poster, the “anti-Japanese propaganda” of France, Britain, the US, and the Soviet Union were
linked through the figure of a caricatured “Jew” – replete with top hat, a Masonic star, and
black mask – with the words “the Jewish movement” (yudaya minzoku undō) printed across
the figure. Entitled “What Are the Objectives of Various Anti-Japanese Propaganda?” this
poster alleged that the Comintern was a Jewish organization and that Jews controlled the
media in France, America, and Britain.56 This was the only overt image of anti-Semitism in
the Exhibition. Generally, anti-Semitism did not appear in the Japanese state’s representation
of its military or diplomatic endeavors.57 However, when placed in a series of posters depicting
54
See Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 97–100.
55
Ibid., 70.
56
See Ibid., 71.
57
On anti-Semitism in Japan, see Krebs 2004.
the threat posed by the Popular Front, Freemasonry, and the Comintern, it was not hard to infer
that all of these constituted a worldwide “Jewish conspiracy.”
The biggest collection of foreign materials outside the Chinese theater came from the Soviet
Union. Alongside organizational charts of the Comintern and the Popular Front were posters from
the Soviet Union and the Spanish Civil War depicting the international antifascist movement as a
combined struggle against capitalism, the clergy, and fascist squadristi.58 Both in their quantity
and size, these posters occupied a good deal of space in the Exhibition, and thus attendees
could not have escaped noticing the striking aesthetics of Soviet political posters. Ironically,
while these posters were presented as enemy propaganda, they were displayed with no indications
of having been censored: themes of international worker solidarity, the struggle against capitalist
exploitation, and the threat posed by international fascism were presented in a straightforward
manner. One must wonder how these themes of liberation and internationalism were understood
by an audience who were being asked to see them solely as a threat to the Japanese spirit, a spirit
moreover, that was being associated in the posters with global fascism.59
4. Everyday Life as Thought War

The two threads of the Exhibition’s narrative reviewed thus far, namely, the geo-ideological frame-
work of thought war and the Japanese imperial spirit, intersected in displays that exhorted attendees
to purify their thoughts of dangerous foreign influences and reawaken their latent imperial subjectiv-
ity. The primary pedagogical message of the Exhibition, then, was to present thought war not merely
as an external geo-ideological conflict, but also as a war occurring in each individual imperial sub-
ject’s thoughts. And under the rubrics of thought “renovation” (kōshin) and “national thought
defense” (shisō kokubō), the message conveyed to attendees was that they needed to reflect upon
their thoughts and fortify their national spirit for ideological struggle. Following this logic, the
thought war began (and concluded) with the imperial subject.60 And the exemplars of this process
of intellectual purification were, ironically, Japanese ex-communist converts, or tenkōsha.
Tenkōsha as the Vanguard of National Thought Rehabilitation

Early in the Exhibition’s itinerary, a display called “The Vicissitudes of Political Thought in Our
Nation” (Waga kuni ni okeru seiji shisō no shōchō) introverted the global thought war into the
Japanese Empire, portraying what were called ex–thought criminals (shisōhan, i.e., ex-commu-
nists) who had “ideologically converted” (tenkō shita) as the model for each individual Japanese
to emulate (Figure 8).61 The process of ideological conversion had been refined and codified in
the Thought Criminals Protection and Supervision Centers (Shisōhan hogokansatsusho) estab-
lished in 1936. These centers were charged with reintegrating ex–thought criminals back into
the national polity after they had expunged their thought of dangerous foreign elements.62
58
See Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 71–78.
59
In the sequence of the Exhibition’s commemorative guidebook, a discussion of the Chinese Red Army and
its poster campaigns follows the Soviet posters, thus implying that these were one and the same ideological
threat. See ibid., 78–82.
60
Along these lines, refer to the argument of CID head Yokomizo Mitsuteru (noted above) that each imperial
subject was a soldier in the thought war.
61
During the planning stage, this display had used the term “political thought crime” (seiji shisōhan) rather
than just “political thought.” Though subtle, this edit implies that the danger was not thought crime (e.g.,
communism), but political thought in general. See ibid., 2.
62
For more on these centers, see Ogino, ed. 1996, vol. 3, and kaisetsu in vol. 4; Ward 2011, chaps. 2 and 4.
430 M. Ward
Figure 8. Poster: “The vicissitudes of political thought in our nation” (Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 31).
Here self-reflection was presented as the necessary process through which one could fortify
national thought and join the “war for national thought defense” (shisō kokubōsen).63 To represent
this message, a silhouette of a Japanese soldier in the corner of the display carried the caption “the
critical situation domestically and abroad demands the introspective self-reflection of the entire
nation, thus inaugurating a crucial turning point in the nation’s thought” (Figure 9).64 Ideological
conversion was not to be limited to ex-communists; it was to be carried out by each and every
subject of the Japanese empire, including the middle-class Takashimaya Department Store
shopper.
Furthermore, national thought defense was said to extend beyond the Japanese metropole. For
instance, in the poster “The Vicissitudes of Political Thought in Our Nation” mentioned above
(see Figure 8), was an image of a reformed Korean colonial subject agitating in support of
Japan’s military efforts in China. Captioned “Activities in the Home Front by Ideological Con-
verts from the Peninsula” (Hantō tenkōsha no jūgo katsudō) this image showed a colonial
subject collecting war donations. In the center of the poster was an image of a Japanese and a
representative of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China shaking hands, apparently
cooperating for the ideological defense of East Asia. In this representation, ideological conversion
was given as the basis for realizing the colonial policy of “Japan and Korea as one” (naisen ittai).
Surrounding these posters on tenkō were posters with statistics about the number of incarcer-
ated thought criminals who had performed tenkō and the supposed reasons for their conversion.65
Whereas in 1932 only 70 percent of parolees had begun the tenkō process, by 1936 184 out of 200
parolees, or 90 percent, had reportedly started the conversion process. A pie chart broke down the
63
64
Ibid., 31.
65
See ibid. 32. Following the publicized critique of the Comintern and JCP written by two incarcerated
leaders of the Japanese Communist Party, Sano Manabu and Nabeyama Sadachika, in June 1933, hundreds
of other incarcerated communists followed suit. On the mass tenkō of 1933–34, see Itō 1995; Steinhoff 1969;
and Ward 2011.
motivations for effecting tenkō,

including family reasons (37.5
percent), a return to national
self-awareness (25 percent), a
theoretical rejection of Marxism
(13.9 percent), and arriving at
some newfound (religious) faith
(10.4 percent).66
Displays about ideological
conversion presented a new
image of tenkōsha to the public:
no longer did ex-communists
embody the infiltration of
foreign ideology into Japan’s
national polity (kokutai) as they
once had; now they were transfig-

ured into the vanguard of Japan’s
intellectual purification and spiri-
tual awakening. Tenkōsha
became exemplars of the poten-
tial for intellectual reflection and
mobilization. Simultaneously,
the Thought Crime Protection
and Supervision Centers trans-
formed the image of the imperial
state as a repressive apparatus
staunchly defending against
dangerous foreign thought into a
benevolent guide for recuperat-
ing one’s imperial subjectivity. Figure 9. Poster: Soldier of the Thought War (Naikaku jōhōbu
1938a, 31).
Spaces of National Thought Rehabilitation

The next installation piece, entitled “In Accordance with Imperial Benevolence: The Birth of the
Protection and Supervision System, Unlike Any in the World” (Ōmikokoro o honshite, sekai ni
hirui naki, hogokansatsusho seido ikiru), featured a map showing the location of the twenty-
two Thought Criminal Protection and Supervision Centers across the country, photographs of
the centers’ activities, and a flowchart that explained the rehabilitation process. The flowchart
delineated the steps in the rehabilitation process, beginning with the indictment of the thought
criminal (shisōhan). It explained how the criminals were then assigned to a Protection and Super-
vision Center and how, through “securing livelihood” (seikatsu no kakuritsu) and “thought gui-
dance” (shisō no hodō), they learned to “[grasp] the Japanese spirit” (nihon seishin no haaku).67
In this way their thought was recalibrated to Japan’s national essence.68
66
On the categories used to record the supposed motivations for tenkō, see Steinhoff 1969, chaps. 4 and 5.
67
68
In addition to the twenty-two centers established throughout the Japanese archipelago, seventeen centers
were located in the Korean peninsula. See Ogino, ed. 1996, vol. 3, 51–53; and Suzuki 1989, 181–183.
432 M. Ward
The effort to reform national thought was presented as extending beyond the Protection and
Supervision Centers out into Japanese society as well. Posters created by tenkōsha parolees
depicted how the thought war was being fought in villages, factories, and schools – sites that
became spaces of ideological rehabilitation and national renewal. Interestingly, each of these
latter posters could have been interpreted as revealing the social conditions of poverty and dislo-
cation that presumably drove the ex–thought criminals to join the communist movement in the
first place. This social dislocation was masked, however, by the attribution of social discord
not to the inequality and crisis endemic to capitalism, but to the influence of dangerous foreign
ideologies. Tellingly, each narrative of ideological conversion concluded with the convert mani-
festing their imperial spirit by increasing production for the nation.
One four-part diorama, for example, entitled “A Re-Awakened Communized Village” (Yomi-
gaetta sekka mura) described the political reform of a village. In “A Red Village” (sekka no
mura), the first scene, a dark figure was shown riling up school children who are waving red
flags. Captioned “disorder breaks out throughout the village,” the display explained that the vil-
lage’s “beautiful customs and land” had been sacrificed not to capitalist dislocation but to com-
munist notions of class struggle.69 In the second scene, “Vow of Renovation,” the agitator was
apprehended and villagers – “feeling a deep shame” – decided “to work for a renovation move-
ment,” which was illustrated in the third scene, “Toward the Model of a Renovated Village.” Here
villagers who had pledged “to form a labor group” at their village shrine promised their ancestors
that they would establish “a renovated model village within three years.” The last scene showed
villagers working collectively and “advancing in harmony” to open up new communal lands that
later bore 6000 plum trees. Absent from the display was any mention of issues such as rural
tenancy, absentee landlordism, or high rents that involved exorbitant interest rates on loans. Ulti-
mately, the ideological renovation of the village was measured by the villager’s ability to increase
agricultural production.
Alongside this diorama was a poster of the thought war taking place among faculty in Japan’s
educational system, exemplified in the experiences of a converted “red teacher” from Eimei
Village in Nagano Prefecture. The poster explained that because “poverty had increasingly
gotten worse” in the village, many “adults without work and with troubled spirits, joined the pro-
letarian parties.” An estimated 80 percent of the instructors at the red teacher’s middle school were
said to be “communists.” The rehabilitated teacher noted that the school’s instructors “had forgot-
ten to carry out their responsibilities” and “had failed in their duties” as imperial educators by
becoming involved in the communist movement. After completing a rehabilitation program
designed specifically for educators and having “sensed the imperial blessing,” the converted
teacher reportedly “cried endlessly” in atonement during a visit to Meiji Jingu.70
Two more posters described how students and workers had ideologically converted and
returned to their respective social stations. In the first poster, students were depicted agitating
at their school, manipulated like puppets by a political organizer dressed in black as their
parents looked on from a distant rice field. The students are then portrayed as black angels
with school caps, flying through the Protection and Supervision Centers and eventually emerging
as pure white students. The rehabilitated students were then shown returning to school with books
69
Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 35. This section of the Exhibition is another example of the imperial state’s attempt
to attribute social friction to the ideological influence of communism, rather than to the very real class div-
isions that are inherent to capitalist society. The ideological significance of this association, then, is in its
veiling of how capitalist forms had already reordered the purported harmony and “beautiful customs” of
the village.
70
Ibid., 36.
in hand.71 The second poster described the industrial skills training program run by a Tokyo-based
tenkōsha support group, the Imperial Renovation Society (Teikoku kōshinkai).72 Here the Exhi-
bition attendee learned that many tenkōsha workers lacked skills and were shunned by employers
upon their return to society. But after receiving training at “guidance centers” (hodōsho) such as
the Imperial Renovation Society, they gained new confidence and thus embodied “the skills for
the nation” (gijutsu hōkoku).73 Each of these narratives – whether located in a village, school, or
factory – concluded with a tenkōsha returning to his/her place of work or study. Furthermore,
these posters measured each respective spiritual conversion through productive labor for the
nation, including educating youth to be loyal imperial subjects, retraining workers to engage in
industrial labor, and encouraging villagers to take over new land to increase agricultural output.
The array of tenkō experiences on exhibit aimed to make attendees reflect upon their own
stations within Japanese society and consider how their productive activities might better serve
national thought defense.
The Technology of Espionage and National Spirit Mobilization

The next section showcased the newest media technologies Japan was deploying in its thought
war, the most exciting of which was radio technology. Maps graphed Japan’s efforts to broadcast
its message to Europe, America, and China, as well as within the nation itself, while other posters
charted the growth of radio broadcasting in other countries. Similar to Takashimaya Department
Store displaying the newest commodities in glass cases, the Exhibition’s “News Propaganda and
the Thought War” (Nyūsu senden to shisōsen) section featured radios, transmitters, listening
devices, telegraph machines, printing presses, and telephones, along with explanations of how
they worked. Modern means of technology – the “blinking electronic gadgets” of espionage –
were also on exhibit in a section called “The Ways of Counterespionage” (Bōchō no kokoroe):
invisible ink pens, small transmitters, secret code tables, hidden cameras, and explosives
hidden in everyday wares.74 This section resembled the spectacle of a department store display
where observers would marvel at the newest espionage technology and have a fear of ubiquitous
espionage instilled in them. As Shibuya Shigemitsu has argued, the warnings about foreign espio-
nage in Japan were intended to create a “consciousness of fear” (obie ishiki) that turned individ-
uals into proactive agents of surveillance and manipulation.75 A four-panel diorama, for example,
cautioned attendees that “Spies are everywhere!” (Supai ha doko ni demo iru!), including in dan-
cehalls under surveillance and railway cars in which conversations were monitored. Spies report-
edly rummaged through trash outside of government offices, gauged the level of fighting spirit at
train stations where troops were being sent to the frontline, and measured productivity in fac-
tories.76 To spatially render this fear of surveillance, one poster depicted a gigantic eye overlook-
ing the Japanese archipelago. Graphed over the breadth of Honshū, Japan’s main island, were the
increasing quantities of foreign intelligence on Japan’s military capacity (Figure 10).77
71
This poster included statistics concerning students involved in “thought incidents”: out of a total of 1128
arrested, 148 students were indicted, 598 were given suspension of indictments (kiso yūyo), and 381 were
placed in reserved indictments (kiso ryūho). Ibid., 36.
72
On the Imperial Renovation Society, see Kobayashi 1987; and Ward 2011, chap. 4.
73
74
Ibid., 15.
75
See Shibuya 1991, particularly chap. 2.
76
Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 113–114.
77
The poster is entitled “Foreign Intelligence about Our Nation’s Military” (gaikokujin no kōnin no shudan ni
okeru waga gunkoku jōhō). Ibid., 114.
434 M. Ward
The Exhibition closed with

a display of materials from the
newly organized National
Spirit Mobilization Movement
(Kokumin seishin sōdōin undō,
NSM),78 the hallmark of Prime
Minister Konoe Fumimaro and
the renovationist bureaucrats
(kakushin kanryō).79 Included
was a warning from the NSM’s
Central Committee that
because the thought war was
ever present in every domain
of national life, “each and
every Japanese, everyone, to
some extent is participating in

the thought war.”80 NSM
slogans in one poster explained
how Japanese could fortify the
Japanese spirit in their everyday
practices: “Even if the battle is
won, do not succumb to
luxury”; “Exclude wastefulness,
cultivate national strength”; “An
unwavering spirit endures hard-
ship”; and “Overcome the chal-
lenges of the times, unite as
one.”81
At the Exhibition’s exit a
Figure 10. “Foreign intelligence about our nation’s military” simulated street corner
(Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 114). diorama was covered with
even more NSM posters,
reading “The Japanese spirit! The fight begins here!” (Nihon seishin! Tatakai ha kore kara
da!) and urging departing visitors to purchase war bonds and fly the national flag at home on
holidays (Figure 11). Ironically, immediately after the NSM slogans exhorting thriftiness and
sacrifice was the Exhibition’s gift shop, which sold items such as NSM memorabilia, CID–pub-
lished magazines such as Shashin shūhō (Pictorial weekly bulletin), and phonographic records
of patriotic marching songs. The purchase of such items guaranteed that the message of thought
war was brought back home and served to transition the attendee back into shopping in the
department store. Apparently, one’s sacrifice for national thought defense was able to accommo-
date shopping.
78
For information on this movement, see Berger 1988; and Havens 1978, chap. 2.
79
For information on Konoe, see Oka 1983. On the renovationist bureacrats, see footnote 18 above.
80
See the essay that accompanied the display, “Each and Every Japanese Can Be a Soldier in the Thought
War,” in Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 119.
81
Ibid., 121.
5. Conclusion: The
Ideological Significance of
the 1938 Exhibition
The 1938 Thought War Exhibi-
tion was one example of how
the Japanese imperial state (the
CID) and consumer capitalism
(Takashimaya) collaborated to
mobilize the population for
war in the late 1930s. This col-
laboration problematizes the
conventional argument that in
the 1930s the imperial state
increasingly dominated, cur-
tailed, and colonized the

arenas of mass culture that had
flourished earlier in the 1920s.
The state did indeed suppress
movements that envisioned the
“masses” as a revolutionary
subject to be mobilized and
“culture” as an important
domain of critical praxis. A
review of the proletarian litera-
ture and arts movement in inter-
war Japan shows clearly how
the state silenced activists who
were working in the realm of Figure 11. Simulated street corner with National Spirit Mobilization
culture.82 But these radical posters (Naikaku jōhōbu 1938a, 121).
movements must not be con-
fused with the culture of capitalist consumption itself. Examining the cultural history of urban
Japan in the1930s – a culture of shopping, spectacle, and leisure mediated by new forms of
media, advertising, and department stores – reveals no explicit confrontation between the imperial
state and the institutions of urban consumption. Instead we see a borrowing if not outright collab-
oration between the two. As the Thought War Exhibition shows, department stores welcomed the
well-advertised Exhibition since it brought tens of thousands of people through their doors. Visi-
tors could sample the Exhibition’s assortment of neon signs, gadget-filled display cases, dioramas,
and modernist poster collages, and then return to shopping, after, of course, picking up thought
war memorabilia from the Exhibition’s gift shop. The transition from mobilizing imperial
loyalty back into shopping was seamless.
While the Exhibition shows how the state utilized exhibitionary practices refined by depart-
ment stores, it also reveals that the urgency of the state’s message was tempered by these exhibi-
tionary forms. At the most general level, despite the national emergency that thought war
supposedly represented – requiring all people to purge their thoughts of foreign influences and
mobilize for national thought defense – thought war became just another entertaining spectacle
82
For overviews of the proletarian literature movement in Japan, see Bowen-Struyk 2001; Keene 1976; and
Shockey 2012.
436 M. Ward
for the urban middle-class shopper to marvel at: Your thoughts may be under attack by foreign
ideology, but be sure to continue shopping.83 In other words, the culture of consumption in inter-
war urban Japan and its constitutive practices and forms – shopping, print media, and advertising,
as well as the corporate connections between tourism, entertainment, and department stores – had
become such a part of the normal urban experience that an explicit display of state propaganda
could be experienced as mere entertaining spectacle. The unsuspecting Takashimaya shopper
could wander into the Exhibition and observe the explicit propaganda on display, as if window
shopping. Here, the spectacles encoded as “modern life” in 1920s Japan were easily re-
encoded with the image of “thought war.”
Furthermore, the insertion of imperial ideology into the exhibitionary modes of interwar
consumer capitalism also meant that the radiant and timeless Japanese spirit on display was
reduced to a few assorted spectacles to capture the attention of the department store shoppers
(see Figure 4). This, I have argued, reveals one of the underlying contradictions of the Exhi-
bition, and, by extension, a tension that underwrote the formation of fascism in Japan as well.
In the analysis I have outlined above, the crisis that was revealed in the Exhibition had less to
do with any alleged foreign ideological threat against Japan and more to do with the inability
to re-present the Japanese spirit without relying on reified forms.84 This was evident in the
fact that the CID was not so bold as to include an image of Hirohito (the Shōwa Emperor)
in any of the displays – lest his august radiance be diminished. This was also suggested in
the cartographic representations of the Japanese spirit cleansing East Asia of dangerous
foreign influences, e.g., in the depiction of the ideology assailing East Asia mentioned
earlier (see Figure 5), areas Japan controlled were rendered clear white, absent of ideology
if not also thought itself.
Finally, the degree to which an ex-communist converted into a loyal imperial subject (tenkō)
was measured through industrial, agricultural, and intellectual production. In other words, a con-
version manifesting a timeless and transcendent spirit was indexed through the commidified
forms of capitalist production. Ultimately, for a spirit or essence that transcended politics, that
could alleviate the social dislocations caused by the global crisis of interwar capitalism, and
that was to liberate East Asia and inform the creation of a New Order in East Asia (Tōa shintaisei),
it seems curious that the Japanese spirit could be captured in a few simple display cases or neon
signs. And yet this is what was required, if urban middle-class shoppers were going to be drawn to
the Exhibition. And this is why the 1938 Thought War Exhibition, along with many other public
events held in late 1930s’ Japan, calls us to rethink the relationship between consumer capitalism
and state power and the ways in which fascism can be articulated through the modes of modern
mass culture.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the following people for offering helpful feedback on this essay: Catherine Ash-
craft, Margaret Clinton, Mark Driscoll, Tom Fenton, Jamie McCallum, Viren Murthy, Alexis Peri, and four
anonymous reviewers.
83
One is reminded of the “America: Open for Business” campaign that followed the September 11 attacks in
the United States, replete with Craig Frazier’s artwork of an American flag as a shopping bag.
84
We should also not forget that at the time the Exhibition was touring the empire, the Ministry of Education
was engaged in a concerted effort to articulate, once and for all, Japan’s unique imperial kokutai in the realm
of philosophy, culminating in the infamously abstruse text Kokutai no hongi (The Essence of the National
Polity) and its many subsequent commentaries. The Exhibition expressed the same dilemma but in exhibi-
tionary form. On The Essence of the National Polity, see Monbushō 1937; and Tansman 2009, chap. 4.
Funding
Research for this essay was supported by a Fulbright Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship
and Middlebury Faculty Professional Development Funds. No potential conflict of interest was
reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Max Ward is Assistant Professor of Japanese History at Middlebury College in Vermont. His research inter-
ests include state power, Japanese fascism, postcolonial theory, and Japanese film.
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Displaying the Worldview of Japanese Fascism:

Middlebury College, Department of History, Middlebury, VT, USA

formed Cabinet Information Division (Naikaku jōhōbu) and held in Takashimaya

1. Introduction: Exhibiting Ideology and Exhibition as Ideology

© 2015 BCAS, Inc.

Figure 1. Neon sign at the entrance to the Tokyo Thought War

homewares, gadgets, and imported commodities illuminated in Takashimaya Department Store’s

rather than through cultural differences.

2. Displaying the Thought War: Preparation and Explication

aims of propaganda, namely, to mobilize one’s

[kokka ishi]” and thus develop a thought war

3. The Exhibitionary Narrative of Thought War

and a scroll painted by Okakura

that was so glorious as to be

Anti-Imperialism and the Comintern

Figure 7. Diorama: “The China Incident and the Thought War. We

4. Everyday Life as Thought War

Tenkōsha as the Vanguard of National Thought Rehabilitation

motivations for effecting tenkō,

once had; now they were transﬁg-

Spaces of National Thought Rehabilitation

The Technology of Espionage and National Spirit Mobilization

The Exhibition closed with

some extent is participating in

tailed, and colonized the

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