Imperial Japan at Its Zenith: The Wartime Celebration of the Empire's 2,600th Anniversary

By Kenneth J. Ruoff

In 1940, Japan was into its third year of war with China, and relations with the United States were deteriorating, but it was a heady time for the Japanese nonetheless. That year, the Japanese commemorated the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of the Empire of Japan. According to the imperial myth-history, Emperor Jimmu, descended from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, established the "unbroken imperial line" in 660 BCE. In carefully choreographed ceremonies throughout the empire, through new public monuments, with visual culture, and through heritage tourism, the Japanese celebrated the extension of imperial rule under the 124th emperor, Hirohito.

These celebrations, the climactic moment for the ideology that was central to modern Japan's identity until the imperial cult's legitimacy was bruised by defeat in 1945, are little known outside Japan. Imperial Japan at Its Zenith, the first book in English about the 2,600th anniversary, examines the themes of the celebration and what they tell us about Japan at mid-century. Kenneth J. Ruoff emphasizes that wartime Japan did not reject modernity in favor of nativist traditionalism. Instead, like Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, it embraced reactionary modernism. Ruoff also highlights the role played by the Japanese people in endorsing and promoting imperial ideology and expansion, documenting the significant grassroots support for the cult of the emperor and for militarism.

Ruoff uses the anniversary celebrations to examine Japan's invention of a national history; the complex relationship between the homeland and the colonies; the significance of Imperial Japan's challenge to Euro-American claims of racial and cultural superiority; the role of heritage tourism in inspiring national pride; Japan's wartime fascist modernity; and, with a chapter about overseas Japanese, the boundaries of the Japanese nation. Packed with intriguing anecdotes, incisive analysis, and revelatory illustrations, Imperial Japan at Its Zenith is a major contribution to our understanding of wartime Japan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Release date: Sep 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9780801471810

Book preview

IMPERIAL

JAPAN

AT ITS ZENITH

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The Wartime Celebration

of the Empire’s 2,600th Anniversary

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KENNETH J. RUOFF

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

Ithaca & London

For Jean,

and Patrick, Megan, and Carolyn

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The National History Boom

2. Mass Participation and Mass Consumption

3. Imperial Heritage Tourism

4. Touring Korea

5. Touring Manchuria’s Sacred Sites

6. Overseas Japanese and the Fatherland

Conclusion

Notes

Color insert

ILLUSTRATIONS

Black and White Images

1. Serving the throne

2. The Imperial Army on the march

3. Stone monument commemorating National Foundation Labor Service Brigades

4. Shōgetsuan pastry shop advertisement plugging its imperial pastries

5. Postcards showing the Fatherland Hyūga and the Rapidly Progressing Hyūga

6. Map showing Emperor Jimmu’s ocean voyage

7. Peasant girl in Takachiho

8. Postcard of National Foundation Labor Service Brigades

9. Advertisement for mementos of visits to sacred imperial sites

10. The 2,600th anniversary commemorative imperial tomb chart

11. Government-General Building, Keijō (Seoul), Korea

12. The Gyeonghoeru (in Japanese, Keikairō) Palace Hall

13. Korean residential area in colonial-era Keijō (Seoul)

14. Chart of Imperial Japan’s commercial air routes, 1940

15. Chart for Sightseeing Korea from the Train Window

16. Glass greenhouse in Keijō (Seoul)

17. Racist cartoon from time of Russo-Japanese War

18. Postcard commemorating Pilgrimage to Port Arthur’s Sacred Battle Sites

19. The Dairen (Dalian) airport, circa 1940

20. Coolies at work at the port of Dairen (Dalian)

21. Shinkyō shrine

22. The Kanjōshi battle site memorial

23. Palace of Emperor Pu Yi

24. The Seishin Mosque in Shinkyō

25. The Nanryō battle site memorial

26. Kenkoku chūreibyō, Shinkyō

27. Cartoon from Sakamoto Gajō’s The Three Periods of Pioneering: Asia for Asians

28. Cartoon from Sakamoto Gajō’s The Three Periods of Pioneering: Celebrating the end of Western imperialism

29. Congress of Overseas Brethren flag

Color Images

1. Map of Empire of Japan, 1940

2. The golden kite

3. The yatagarasu guiding the direction of Japan’s modern imperium

4. The amalgamation of Japan and Korea

5. Seminal moments in Emperor Jimmu’s life

6. Japan’s alliance with the Reformed Government of China and with Manchukuo

7. The National Foundation Labor Service Brigades flag

8. Record jacket and recording of the People’s 2,600th Anniversary Celebration Song

9. Advertisement for National Foundation scroll

10. Jacket cover of postcard set about the Our Ancestors exhibition

11. Brochure advertising Kagoshima Prefecture, Sacred Place in the Origin of the Fatherland

12. The Ametsuchi Tower

13. Postcard set commemorating visit to Kashihara Shrine and Mt. Unebi

14. Advertisement by Daitetsu Railways touting its service to sacred imperial sites

15. Commemorative stamp from the Bukkokuji (Pulguksa) Temple Station

16. Commemorative postcard set of Port Arthur battle sites

17. Imperial-era tourist map of Hōten (Mukden or Shenyang)

18. Postcard showing an Authentic Native Street in Dairen (Dalian)

19. Shinkyō Memorial Tower

20. Postcard sent by father visiting Manchuria to his family in Tokyo

21. Guide to the Congress of Overseas Brethren in Celebration of the 2,600th Anniversary of the Empire of Japan

22. Congress of Overseas Brethren publicity poster

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book originated with a research trip to Japan made in the summer of 2000 in order to finish my study of the monarchy in postwar Japan, which was subsequently published in late 2001. As I thumbed through some of the countless documents that survive about the 2,600th anniversary celebrations, its scope intrigued me. In the process of researching and writing this book, many of the same people on both sides of the Pacific who had helped me with my first book again gave generously of their time and ideas. I also encountered new friends and colleagues whose assistance was critical.

At an impromptu breakfast at the International House of Japan in November 2001, Carol Gluck suggested that among the possibilities that I outlined for the next book project, the 2,600th anniversary celebrations option seemed the most promising. She supported the project from the beginning, and arranged for it to be published in Columbia University’s Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute monograph series. Madge Huntington and Daniel Rivero of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, working with Carol Gluck, arranged for an especially thorough initial review of the manuscript. I am grateful to that anonymous reviewer, who offered many suggestions for improvement that were incorporated into the final version.

A Fulbright grant supported fieldwork in Japan in 2004, and additional fieldwork in Japan as well as research trips to South Korea and China in the summer of 2005. For this generous support, I am grateful. Takagi Hiroshi kindly sponsored me as a visiting research scholar at the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyōto University during my term as a Fulbright scholar. Not only did he navigate the bureaucratic side of arranging for and facilitating my research stay, but he also was a source of advice in every imaginable area throughout my fieldwork. Mizuno Naoki, a specialist in modern Korean history, also offered important advice when I began researching Japanese tourism to Korea. The library staff at Kyōto University, especially at the Interlibrary Loan Department, enabled my research and located obscure documents held by libraries throughout the archipelago. Ogawa Yoshihisa, his family, and his staff at the Nana Pacific Corporation were instrumental in arranging various aspects of my family’s stay in Kyoto, including lodging, and for their assistance we are grateful.

Takami Katsutoshi took time off from his busy schedule to assist me in locating obscure documents and, in a broader sense, supported the project from the moment he learned of it. During the course of the project, Hara Takeshi emerged as a friend and source of advice for understanding and researching the history of modern Japan. He read an unpolished version of the manuscript in English, offering not only advice on how to improve it but also suggesting to publishing companies the value of a Japanese version. The Asahi Newspaper Publishing Company will publish the Japanese version at approximately the same time as the English version appears from Cornell University Press (and in the Weatherhead East Asian Institute monograph series). It is a pleasure to work with such skillful editors at the Asahi as Shimamoto Shūji and Oka Eri. Kimura Takahisa, retired from Kyōdō News, will render my English prose into elegant Japanese, as he has done so skillfully over and over these past years.

Takahashi Hiroshi, retired from Kyōdō News, used his unparalleled network and his extensive knowledge of imperial history to facilitate my research, as he did many times when I was researching the earlier book on the postwar monarchy. Among many examples of his assistance, he put me in touch with Tsunoda Mitsuo, chief of Kyōdō News’ Sendai office in 2004. Tsunoda graciously located documents that helped me better understand the background to and also to confirm the survival of the 2,600th Anniversary Culture Dome.

Richard Samuels read an early version of the manuscript and offered pertinent suggestions, and then later read the nearly final version of the introduction, again offering valuable advice. He also introduced me to Roger Haydon, his longtime editor at Cornell University Press, whose guidance I have now enjoyed in the later stages of completing this project. Roger Haydon commissioned the second anonymous review, which became a guide for better developing the thematic side of the book. I hope my expression of thanks to both of the anonymous reviewers is clear in the form of the adoption, in the final version, of their thoughtful suggestions.

Todd Henry read the manuscript in its entirety and made valuable suggestions. He also generously shared documents and directed me to relevant secondary materials. Andrew Bernstein offered advice about the section on tourism when it constituted only one chapter (he promptly advised me to divide it). Eiichiro Azuma read chapter 6 on Overseas Japanese and the Fatherland and made several suggestions that were incorporated into the final version. Carter Eckert directed me to sources that allowed for incorporation of aspects of the Korean side of the story of tourism during the colonial era, and Yongsuk Song translated from Korean into Japanese a pertinent essay on Korean heritage tourism during the 1920s and 1930s. Enid Ruoff tirelessly read successive versions of the manuscript to weed out typos and stylistic inelegancies.

Walter Edwards arranged for me to be hosted, during a research trip to Miyazaki Prefecture, by a group of mostly elderly but all courageous members of the Association to Examine the Facts of the Peace Tower. This citizens group is committed to exposing the underside of Japan’s wartime history. Sugio Norichika, Kodama Takeo, Saita Keiichirō, and other members of this association helped me to complete within days research on wartime tourism to Miyazaki that otherwise might have taken weeks.

Hwang Sun-Ik, then a graduate student in modern Korean history at Kookmin University, helped guide me to locations in Seoul that corresponded to sites featured on the bus tour of that city popular among Japanese tourists during the colonial era. Later, he periodically offered advice about other aspects of the project. Richard Smethurst directed my attention to scholarship about the state of Japan’s economy, within the global context, in 1940.

Laurence Kominz, director of the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State University (PSU) during the time the book was written, was a supporter of the project from beginning to end. Linda Walton, chair of the History Department at PSU during the same period, was equally unfailing in her support. Victoria Belco identified readings about Fascist Italy that provided me with a comparative framework. Friedrich Schuler read sections of the manuscript and shared his own research with me. Chia Yin Hsu also read portions of the manuscript and helped me better understand how the Soviet Union did and did not fit into the midtwentieth-century Euro-American world order. Student members of seminars on Japan in 1940 and Japan in World History read the manuscript as part of their assigned readings and, collectively, offered suggestions that improved the final version.

Marvin Kaiser, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at PSU, has been a supporter of Japanese studies and of my own research. A special thanks is due to the many generous donors to our Center for Japanese Studies who make it a vibrant intellectual entity on campus and in the Portland metropolitan area at a time of declining state support for higher education. Their donations have helped support many valuable programs and research projects. Bruce and Cindy Brenn, Sho and Loen Dozono, Adolf and Gabriele Hertrich, Yoshio and Nikki Kurosaki, Bob and Sharon Lewis, Tim and Martha McGinnis, and Sam Naito represent the wide circle of community supporters of the Center for Japanese Studies.

Suwako Watanabe politely responded to what must have become a tedious series of requests for help in identifying the most likely reading for Japanese names. The Interlibrary Loan Office at PSU, over a period of nearly ten years, procured for me a surprising range of sources, mostly otherwise forgotten items that I identified in electronic databases while sitting at my office computer. Toward the end of the project, Uchida Shin’ya and Takako Wolf provided crucial research assistance.

In addition to the comprehensive research support provided by the Fulbright Program, this project was financially underwritten at crucial junctures by other organizations. These include the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies as well as PSU’s Center for Japanese Studies, Friends of History, Faculty Development Committee, and the Department of History.

Thanks are due to family on both sides of the Pacific. Hidenori Suzuki, Yoko Suzuki, and Akiko Suzuki have been family ever since they hosted me as a foreign exchange student in 1987. During the subsequent two decades they have remained a source of friendship and support even as I have watched them move through different stages of their lives, providing important insights about ever-evolving Japan.

In Portland, Oregon, Jean and our children Carolyn, Megan, and Patrick are no doubt glad that the book is finished. Its impact on their lives has been significant. Our stay in Kyoto for my research, while broadening, was nonetheless disruptive of Jean’s career and also of the children’s schooling and friendships. For their personal sacrifices made then and since in the name of the book, I have transported home many packages of Yokumoku cookies and of authentic Hi Chew candies during subsequent trips to Japan, and the flow of these prized items shall continue.

Below are explanations of stylistic issues. Asian personal names appear with the surname (family name) first except in the cases of Asian Americans or Asian scholars based in the United States who publish in English with their family name appearing after the given name. The place of publication of all Japanese books and other sources is Tokyo unless otherwise indicated. Japanese terms commonly spelled without the designations of long vowels have been included in the common, recognizable way (e.g., Tokyo instead of Tōkyō) except when such terms appear in the names of companies and organizations as well as in titles of books. Designations of long vowels are also omitted from citations when the original source did not include them. This represents a stylistic mix, but it seems utilitarian, especially for readers who are not specialists. Along the same lines, there are a few exceptions to the form of romanization otherwise used in the book. For example, the name of the first (mythical) emperor appears as Jimmu, which is more commonly recognized than Jinmu, which would have been in line with the manner in which almost all other Japanese terms have been rendered into romaji. For English translations of the titles of Japanese publications, I included quotation marks in cases where no standard translation exists, and omitted quotation marks in instances when an acceptable, standard translation exists.

A word about place-names is also required. Although it may expose me to erroneous charges of seeking to reinforce the imperialistic order, I have chosen to employ Japanese names for various places in Korea and Northeast China. The reasons for this are twofold. First, during the period that this study covers, Japanese tourists thought of, for example, Seoul by the name that the colonial authorities had given it: Keijō. Use of this contemporary term gives a better sense of how Japanese experienced the city as tourists. Second, I would argue that far from legitimizing the imperialistic order, drawing attention to the fact that colonial authorities appropriated to themselves the right to rename places provides the reader with a better sense of the gap in power between the imperialists and their subjects.

Finally, permit me an explanation of the decision to omit a bibliography. For anyone interested in examining the sources cited in this book, full references are provided in the notes. Listing the many additional books and essays that contributed to my thought processes during these past years would have required extra pages at a cost that did not seem to justify the return.

INTRODUCTION

In 1940, individuals inside and outside of government in Japan staged one of the most comprehensive and grandiose national commemorations ever, the 2,600th anniversary celebrations of the Empire of Japan. The Japanese defined themselves, their country, and their empire through these anniversary celebrations of Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement in 660 BC. The celebrations represented the climactic moment for the unbroken imperial line (bansei ikkei) ideology that was central to modern Japan’s identity until the imperial cult’s legitimacy was bruised by defeat in 1945. These celebrations provide a window through which to examine Imperial Japan (1890–1945) at its zenith.¹

It is not uncommon for the contrivance of a founding moment to be part of the process of creating and maintaining a sense of nation, as was the case with Japan (Emperor Jimmu never existed). For example, according to the historian Christopher Hughes, the propagation of a Swiss sense of nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also involved something of a contrivance of a founding moment even if the event chosen in Switzerland’s case was, unlike Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement, an actual historical event: The year 1891 was the year of the great jubilee of the foundation of the Confederacy in 1291, that is to say in this year that date was finally and irrevocably declared to have been the instant of time when Switzerland was founded. The sense of nationality and the pathos of history were given their modern form, although the full fruition of the new patriotism came later.²

Japan’s twenty-sixth centennial could be compared to many national commemorations, but one that resembles it both in terms of the outrageous extent of historical continuity attributed to what was a modern nation-state and also in the crediting of the monarchy for this lengthy continuity and unity was the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire staged by Iran in 1971. It was presided over by their imperial majesties the Shahanshah Aryamehr and Shahbanou Farah Pahlavi. The book Land of Kings was one of several English-language publications issued on the occasion of Iran’s 2,500th anniversary that transmitted the official storyline of these gala celebrations, a narrative broadly similar to the official message of Japan’s earlier 2,600th anniversary celebrations: The title ‘Land of Kings’ reflects that monarchy was—and still is—the main factor in the survival of Iranian nationhood. The secret of Iran’s unique ability to withstand the devastating forces of 2,500 years of history lies in the guidance from the throne.³

Contrived or otherwise, foundational moments tend to loom large in many national histories. The anniversaries of such events provide useful opportunities for commemorations. Memory is central to identity, and national memories shape national identities. National commemorations, which reinforce the collective memory that is so important to maintaining a sense of national community, inform us about definitions of national identity.

Organizers of Japan’s 2,600th anniversary celebrations did not contend with the sort of festering wounds and societal divisions directly linked to the foundational moment that have plagued, for example, commemorations of the 1789 Revolution in France.⁴ If anything, the ancient, not to mention mythical, nature of Japan’s foundational moment celebrated in 1940 conveniently rendered it almost entirely free of baggage. Although some scholarly tracts of the time questioned the veracity of the first thousand years of imperial history, on the positive side the mythical nature of the foundational moment meant that no faction of Japanese could still feel aggrieved by, say, Emperor Jimmu’s conquests.⁵

The reasons for the lack of contention derived not simply from the fantastic nature of the narrative of national foundation, according to which Emperor Jimmu, the great grandson of Ninigi, the first imperial ancestor to descend from heaven to the land below, carried out the directive of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu to extend the blessings of imperial rule to the remote regions by founding, at the conclusion of his six-year Eastward Expedition (gotōsei), the imperial dynasty in 660 BC. The widespread celebrations of the 2,600th anniversary of the establishment of the imperial dynasty did not take place in the context of a democratic society. Dissent against the imperial dynasty, the defining feature of Imperial Japan’s polity, was no more tolerated in 1940 than was dissent against the Nazi Party in Germany or criticism of the Fascist regime in Italy at that time.

Although by 1940 Japan shared much in common with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, there were also differences that were evidenced in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Japan never experienced a clear fascist break along the lines of Italy in 1922 or Germany in 1933, and this shaped the way that the past was commemorated. In 1932, with great fanfare, Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) opened the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution, which, according to the art historian Marla Stone, recreated, through a mélange of art, documentation, relics and historical simulations, the years 1914 to 1922, as interpreted by fascism after ten years in power.⁶ Although this exhibition, which proved tremendously popular, was similar to the 2,600th anniversary celebrations in the sense that it was designed to create a unifying sense of national identity, it was different from the 2,600th anniversary celebrations because it was also crafted to legitimize the new regime’s recent break with what preceded it.

Along the same lines, the Nazi Party rallies at Nuremberg over which Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) presided were clearly designed to create a supercharged sense of national identity, but the recent rupture with the past was not only unavoidable but celebrated. These Nazi Party rallies trumpeted the party’s contemporary policies and also commemorated the Nazi Party’s lonely and thus all the more heroic activities in the decade preceding the party’s victory in 1933. Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany might portray 1922 and 1933, respectively, as moments of national rebirth that constituted the beginning of a stage of national history that would end in utopia. But their repeated vilifications of the previous political system suggested that, as far as Nazi and Fascist officials were concerned, memories of the pre-Nazi and pre-Fascist years remained annoyingly fresh among Germans and Italians.

In contrast, Emperor Hirohito (1901–89) presided over commemorations of the twenty-sixth centennial of the Empire of Japan. The ancient nature and fundamental continuity of Japan’s polity, however imagined this narrative of the nation might have been, was the dominant theme in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. The notion of Japan’s unparalleled national polity (banpō muhi no kokutai) referenced not only the unbroken imperial bloodline, the structural center of Japan’s polity, but also a whole range of values said to be uniquely Japanese, virtuous, and primordial. Rarely defined with precision, the pervasive term kokutai implicitly referenced all that was good and unique about Imperial Japan.

The twenty-sixth centennial celebrations commemorated the organic inseparability of the imperial dynasty and the nation established simultaneously on 11 February 660 BC. This was said to be the precise date of Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement. Thus, Japan’s putative origin not only predated the country’s borrowing of (or corruption by) Chinese civilization by a millennium, but also trumped, in its ancientness, the Christian era by six centuries. Empirical evidence indicates that Japan’s imperial dynasty originated around the fifth century AD, making it an ancient, although not unbroken, imperial line even without the addition of one thousand–plus years of fictionalized history. However, a national origin that postdates the origin of Christian civilization and is chronologically parallel with Japan’s adoption of civilization from China undermines claims of superiority by virtue of ancientness and independent development, the storyline featured in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations.

This is not to claim that Japan’s celebration of an ancient national origin necessarily proved more powerful than similar celebrations of the nation in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but rather that Japan’s narrative differed in one important sense. Nonetheless, in Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy alike, purveyors of the past manipulated and in some cases even hallucinated history, especially ancient history, in order to legitimize the present. Some studies of Japan’s emperor system portray it as unique (for good or for bad), as though it existed outside of global trends, but as a form of nationalism it shares numerous commonalities with the experiences of many modern nation-states.

An Overview of the Book

This is a study of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations and, more broadly, of Japan in 1940. The book is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 examines how the 2,600th anniversary celebrations accelerated a boom in national history. National history at the time was largely imperial history (kōkokushi), that is, the history of the nation through the lens of the 2,600-year-old imperial dynasty. At the time of the anniversary celebrations, various vectors of memory, from children’s books to reenactments to museum exhibitions, were employed to transmit the basic narrative of national history, with particular stress on the moment of origin.

The 2,600th anniversary celebrations were designed not simply to shape memories of national history that are important to maintaining a collective sense of nationhood but also to codify various aspects of this history, especially details relating to the foundational moment. Chapter 1 also introduces what proved to be a messy spectacle of various parties (e.g., localities) making competing claims to chapters in the narrative of national foundation, and analyzes the corresponding official effort to provide clarity to events that supposedly had transpired twenty-six centuries previously.

Distinguished academicians, as members of governmental committees, helped render judgments about competing claims to the locations of what were eventually designated Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites. University professors of history as well as of other disciplines employed the trappings of empirical social science to authenticate a national history now widely held to be fictional. At the time, there was precious if any room for imperial history that did not serve the interests of the state, but the active cooperation of so many prominent academicians in legitimizing specious national myths is notable.

Many of these same scholars, in addition to serving the state by providing their academic stamp of authenticity to government reports, also capitalized on the national history boom by publishing national histories with commercial presses. Both the publishing houses and the academicians profited from this symbiotic relationship.⁷ Wartime nationalism intensified consumerism, which in turn hyped nationalism.

Three works of national history popular at the time of the 2,600th anniversary merit detailed analysis for their employment of historical paradigms important to understanding Japan in 1940. Okawa Shūmei’s (1886–1957) History of Japan through 2,600 Years and Fujitani Misao’s (1901–84) 2,600 Years of Nippon Empire each sold hundreds of thousands of copies. What makes these two bestsellers interesting is not simply their patriotic fervor but rather that they popularized interpretations of national history that were in vogue in Japan in 1940 but which have been largely displaced subsequently. These include the cult of the pioneer, which supported contemporary emigration policies, and the mixed-race (mixed-nation) theory of the Japanese nation, which provided a model for incorporating the many different races and ethnic groups comprising the Empire of Japan.

The third popular work of national history examined, Takamure Itsue’s History of Women through 2,600 Years, is also interesting for its embrace of the mixed-race theory, but more significantly it represents a rare example of the use of imperial history at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations to challenge aspects of the status quo rather than to glorify it. Takamure (1894–1964) did not dispute the centrality of the imperial house in Japan’s history, but she did highlight the role of women in the national history in order to challenge the patriarchy of the time. This female scholar cleverly employed imperial myths to call for returning the status of women to a level equal to men, as had been the case, according to Takamure, in Japan’s past. Chapter 1 concludes by comparing the manipulation of history in Imperial Japan with similar uses of history in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Chapter 2 examines phenomena that overlapped and frequently spurred on each other, participation in and consumption of the anniversary celebrations. Between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese government regularly called upon all imperial subjects to observe, en masse, precisely timed rituals celebrating the nation. These rituals required the 105 million imperial subjects dispersed throughout the wide expanses of the empire, including colonial subjects in places such as Korea, to participate, for a minute or so, in a mass commemoration of some aspect of the nation. In one newspaper ad, the Matsushita Wireless Company reminded readers that only owners of radios such as Matsushita’s own Nashonaru (National) R-4 M could be assured of performing such rituals at precisely the correct moment. During the 2,600th anniversary year, such precisely timed rituals were performed twelve times, an average of one ritual per month. The regularity with which these rituals, which employed simultaneous mass participation to reinforce the sense of nation, were carried out in wartime Japan may have no parallel in the experience of other nation-states.

Volunteer labor service brigades were another means by which Japanese participated, in this case literally with their hands, in the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. For example, in the two years leading up to the anniversary year, more than 1.2 million volunteers came to Nara Prefecture to expand and to beautify the topography of imperial sites in this prefecture that was home to many imperial tombs and important shrines. Although there was an economic side to this movement that provided millions of hours of volunteer if unskilled labor, the labor service movement was primarily a form of hands-on citizenship training.

What better way for Japanese to grasp the awesome significance attributed to the foundational moment than to improve the roads and paths leading to Emperor Jimmu’s Mausoleum? The fact that such voluntary labor served primarily spiritual rather than economic goals is evidenced by the fact that many of the volunteers took time off from their regular jobs to perform it. Many volunteers also combined their labor service at sacred heritage sites with visits to additional nearby national heritage sites popular on the tourist circuit at the time. Although this labor service was never institutionalized to anywhere near the same degree as was labor service in Nazi Germany through the Reich Labor Service and in the United States through the Civilian Conservation Corps, it was comparable to the Reich Labor Service in its pedagogical function.

Newspaper companies and department stores played leading roles in encouraging mass participation in and consumption of the 2,600th anniversary. By 1940, newspaper companies (and, in a more general sense, the print media) and department stores were two of the three most significant civil-society sponsors of the cultural events that were a feature of Japanese middle-class life at the time. The third sponsor of such events, private railway companies, played a role at the time of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations in fostering what I term imperial tourism—tourism to heritage sites in Japan proper that magnified the history of the imperial line, as well as the practice of Japanese from throughout the empire taking tours of colonies recently brought under the modernizing hand of imperial rule.⁸

Newspaper companies and department stores, although they remained private enterprises in 1940, operated under the watchful eye of the Japanese state by that year. Nonetheless, profit more than civic duty motivated them to function as promoters of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Newspapers and magazines had long employed contests to attract readers, and in conjunction with the 2,600th anniversary they sponsored many contests on themes relating to national history. Fujitani Misao’s bestseller 2,600 Years of Nippon Empire originated as the winning entry in a contest sponsored by a newspaper company, one of many examples of how contests encouraged both participation in and consumption of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations. Besides contests, newspapers employed many other means designed both to encourage mass commemoration of the 2,600th anniversary and to boost profits.

Department stores, which functioned as leisure sites as well as retail shops, served as important hosts for exhibitions designed to raise public consciousness about the foundational moment and the 2,600-year national history. The department stores’ staging of such exhibitions continued long-standing practices. Historians including Louise Young, Jordan Sand, and Kim Brandt have stressed the central role played by department stores in the 1920s and 1930s in defining modern consumer tastes through floor displays and lavish exhibitions.⁹

The historian Hatsuda Tōru has demonstrated that in comparison with their counterparts in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, and Milan, Japanese department stores featured exhibitions only indirectly related to the selling of products with unusual regularity.¹⁰ One point that has not been stressed enough, however, is that through these exhibitions department stores were cultural arbiters of all aspects of modernity, including its underside. In 1940, a year of growing sales, department stores hosted, in addition to the regular assortment of art shows, exhibitions on topics such as racial eugenics and numerous exhibitions glorifying the unbroken imperial line ideology employed at the time to justify Japan’s expansion by military means.¹¹ For department stores and newspaper companies alike, the focus was on how to capitalize on the anniversary celebrations by encouraging 2,600th anniversary consumption.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 examine another form of wartime