Gendering Fascism: Visual Propaganda in Wartime Japan

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This empirical and theoretical inquiry probes the gendered aesthetics of propaganda in Japanese illustrated magazines that targeted overseas and domestic audiences during the Fifteen-Year War (1931–1945). Propaganda magazines contributed to the making of a fascist imaginary while also sharing in the transcultural trajectories of modernist aesthetics of the time. This project traces the gendered and transcultural iconographies of cutting-edge photographic propaganda magazines and relates them to their contemporary European, Soviet and US-American models and counterparts. Theory-driven research into the gendered and sexualized fantasies of European fascisms and their mediated visual constructions call for corresponding investigations into the gendering of fascism in the Japanese case. The chosen samples for this investigation are the overseas magazines NIPPON, FRONT and Manshū Gurafu, and the domestic magazines Shashin Shūhō and Hōdō Shashin. Some had particularly high circulation and close government ties while others can be seen as trailblazing modern propaganda methods. The analysis of these magazines revolves around the ways in which visual presentations of gender in particular, but also of race, ethnicity, culture and other categories of differentiation were employed to 'write' a multi-faceted and sometimes contradictory fascist 'script'. Drawing on theories and research both in Japanese and European histories of fascisms, this qualitative media analysis links the relations of a) fascism and modernity, and b) propaganda and visuality, to the ways in which ideologies were visually constructed and transmitted through intersecting categories of differentiation (gender, race, culture).This project aims to:1) identify media and communication strategies in visual propaganda;2) theorize gendered representations in the course of the escalating war; and3) provide an intersectional discussion of the findings in conjunction with theories of fascism, race, visuality and gender. This project entails the creation of a digital database of illustrated magazines. It serves as an anchor for two PhD dissertations that map the print mediascape (Appadurai 2008) of Japanese wartime propaganda. In addition, each dissertation provides an in-depth analysis of one magazine, extracting and distilling the prevalent and recurring visual tropes. These may include gendered depictions of the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' or cultural and scientific racisms that carry fascist ideologies. Investigators will also pay close attention to the invisibilities produced in magazines, such as the relative visual absence of the Emperor in war propaganda.Co-operators in the project are invited to contribute to methods and student workshops, to one symposium, and to a planned collection of essays on the topic of ‘Gendering Fascism’. Towards the end of the project, an exhibition of visual propaganda will be curated as a form of community outreach.