Propaganda Performed: Kamishibai in Japan's Fifteen-Year War

Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-90-04-24882-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 13, 368 Seiten, Format (B × H): 198 mm x 254 mm, Gewicht: 1406 g

Reihe: Japanese Visual Culture

This will be the first scholarly book in English (and the most complete in any language) on kamishibai (“paper theater”), a performance/visual/textual art form that was popular on the streets of Japan from 1930-1970, at times eclipsing even the popularity of movies or manga. After providing an introduction to the form and a history of its development in the 1930s, the study turns to an in-depth exploration of the way kamishibai was used for propaganda purposes by governmental and quasi-governmental agencies during Japan’s Fifteen Year War, 1931 to 1945.
Three chapters analyze a number of wartime kamishibai plays, divided by the demographic segment to which their specific propaganda messages were addressed: very young children, older boys from poor neighborhoods, rural girls, farmers, male urban shopkeepers, widows, etc. Then the findings from those analyses are incorporated into a consideration of the phenomenology and neurobiology of propaganda: how this particular medium with its unique combination of text, image and performance, and its unique circumstances of consumption (always in a tightly-huddled group of friends, neighbors, schoolmates or workmates) functioned in helping to create the propaganda environment that permeated Japan during the Fifteen Year War.
Each “content” chapter is followed by the translation (with illustrations) of a propaganda kamishibai play. The plays for translation have been chosen to provide a broad sampling of representative illustration styles, narrative types, and target demographics.

Zielgruppe

Scholars and students in the fields of modern Japanese history and visual culture, theatre studies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Orbaugh, Sharalyn

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunststile Asiatische Kunst
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Militärgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Politische Propaganda & Kampagnen, Politik & Medien
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Installations-, Aktions-, Computer- und Videokunst

Über Autor(innen)

Sharalyn Orbaugh is professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her publications address issues of corporality and visuality in the fiction and other narrative forms of modern Japan. She is the author of Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation (Brill, 2007).