Abstract
Sabine Frühstück’s compelling book on the relationship between concepts of childhood and children and militarization in contemporary Japan is a welcome contribution to the emerging field of the history of emotions. Drawing on a rich corpus of propaganda narratives, children’s books, magazines, pictorial maps, paper games, and advertising posters, Frühstück charts how authorities in the processes of militarism and pacification in modern Japan have used children’s emotions. The author’s original concept of “emotional capital” refers to the emotions attributed to children along with the emotions that adults are expected to have in response to children (p. 114). Such “emotional capital” played a decisive role in Japan’s victorious wars in 1894–1895 and 1904–1905, the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–1952), and Japan’s contemporary participation in global peacemaking missions.
Frühstück has organized her primary sources in a sophisticated argument structured in two sections entitled “Playing War” and “Picturing War,” which allows the author to develop the thesis that militarism in the first half of the 20th century drew on concepts of childhood innocence and vulnerability to militarize the nation. The author demonstrates how the concept of militarism grounded in notions of childhood and children is key in the histories of militarism and pacifism and peace in Japan.
The first section, “Playing War,” introduces how children’s organized war games concerned with empire were used in the emotional training of children along with the debates about children’s war play. In the second section, “Picturing War,” the author traces the emergence of the ideology concerned with the “emotional capital” of children through the analysis of picture books and children’s books intended for young readers and women and men back home. By focusing on the iconographic and narrative figures of the 1930s and 1940s, the author shows the underpinnings of the emotional education of gratitude and friendship in print media. Publishers, educators, and policymakers increasingly turned to the malleable “emotional capital” of children as they trained them for the expansion of the Japanese empire (p. 164). In the second section, the author also shows the use of children in propaganda following World War II in Japan’s armed Self-Defense Forces with the defeat of the nation in 1945.
In the context of the postwar transition from a nation at arms to a nation committed to peace and pacifism against the tide of Asian communism, Frühstück draws on the analysis of recruitment posters and the esthetics of manga, anime, and video games. Making use of this corpus, the author argues for the survival of the pre-1945 print media ideology of the “emotional capital” of children. Japan’s recent humanitarian missions and ongoing interventions by Japan’s armed forces have used imagery and rhetoric emphasizing the emotional training of children. In contrast to the militarism manifested in pre-1945 print media, the author highlights the increasing sexualization of children and pornification of child-like female bodies in contemporary Japanese culture (p. 210).
Although scholars in the field of the history of emotions have focused on children’s emotional development in Asia, North America, and Europe, we lack an understanding of how emotions attributed to children have intersected with the expansion of empire and the creation of the unusual case of a non-war-making military in Asia. Frühstück’s book on the development of Japan’s militarism and pacifism following Japan’s postwar constitution within the context of influx notions of childhood is a much-welcomed contribution to the emergent field devoted to the experience of emotions.
Frühstück shows how throughout the 20th century authorities—with the help of educators and publishers—drew on representations of childhood in war-making and empire-building. The author’s emphasis on the emotions of children in war and in the process of pacification provides a model for scholars interested in further researching children’s visual and textual culture outside Asia. The study of childhood and militarism in South America offers potentially productive cases to compare with the case of Japan’s postwar non-traditional military. In Argentina, for example, historian Valeria Manzano has shown how the imposition of the military junta in 1976 resulted in an increased focus on the “young victim” in the Argentine public sphere; however, we lack studies on how evolving notions of childhood and children shaped the experiences of militarism in the 7-year Dirty War (1976–1883) and how these understandings impacted the democratization process and economic adjustment in Argentina during the 1980s. Future studies on childhood in the Americas might elucidate how notions of childhood innocence and vulnerability explored by Frühstück informed the origins and composition of Latin America’s New Right.
Ultimately, a comparative perspective with other regions outside Asia might elucidate the extent to which the linkages of war and childhood reflected in children’s images were manifested not only in Argentina, but also in Chile and Uruguay during the 1970s as these neighboring countries also experienced militarism and democratization processes in the 1980s. While Japan’s militarism expressed in war stories and play became increasingly stigmatized and dissociated from World War II, Japan’s armed forces have relied on imagery and rhetoric that appeal to the emotions of children. Playing War is indispensable for understanding Japan’s history of children’s war play and depictions of war and children. This book should certainly become a reference for students and scholars interested in further researching the role of children’s emotions in the building of modern militarism and pacifism in the 20th century and its repercussions in global humanitarian aid interventions.
