The Mountain Village Assembly

(A National Policy Kamishibai)

Summary of the Story

Sanpei, a 12 or 13 year old boy, living in a house deep in the mountains, decides he must become a youth worker (shōnen kō) to aid the war effort. He has just graduated from elementary school (kokumin gakkō - National Citizen's School) with honors and despondent over being too young to soldier, asks his teacher to allow him work in the factory building airplanes. 

The night before he is to leave for the factory, a young monkey awakens him to take him to a celebration in his honor put on by the forest animals. They arrive at a cave deep in the forest where he is greeted by a bear, the leader of the Mountain Neighborhood Association, and many other animals. Thanking him for his decision to build airplanes to support the Greater East Asia War (Pacific War) which has now entered its "decisive stage," he is urged on by them and given various tokens to keep him strong. As dawn arises, Sanpei takes his leave, reminding the young monkey to protect the forest as airplanes are now being made of wood. Facing the rising sun, he shouts to all the young people in Japan, "I will absolutely become Japan's top young craftsman and build airplanes. You all must study hard too, so you won’t lose to the children of the enemy, the Americans and British."

The Context

By early 1944, the Japanese leadership faced an unwinnable war, and life on the home front grew increasingly harsh under the strain of shortages, mobilization, and air raids. Despite these challenges, the government maintained a narrative of resilience and ultimate victory, urging citizens to make sacrifices for the emperor and the nation. The combination of military defeats abroad and worsening conditions at home foreshadowed Japan’s eventual surrender in 1945. 

Shōnen kō (youth workers), who are young protagonist, Senpei, so desperately wanted to be, were aged 12 to 16. Many were recent graduates of elementary schools or students pulled from their schooling. The aviation industry was a major focus for youth labor, as the production of military aircraft became increasingly urgent. 

In the later stages of the Pacific War, Japan faced a critical shortage of metals and other materials necessary for aircraft production due to Allied blockades, resource constraints, and the bombing of industrial centers. This forced the Japanese to increasingly rely on alternative materials, including wood, for building aircraft. Plywood and laminated wood were used extensively in the construction of wings, fuselages, and propellers. Resin adhesives and varnishes were employed to improve the strength and durability of wooden parts, although these materials were also in short supply. Japanese forests became a crucial source of materials, with significant reliance on woods like hinoki (Japanese cypress), cedar, and beech, which were valued for their strength and lightness. 

The Greater Japan Village Youth Associations (Dai Nihon seishōnendan), one of which the forest animals were so proud to be members of, resulted from a consolidation of semi-governmental nation-wide village youth associations (seinendan) in 1941. The youth associations included virtually all young men between their early teens and late twenties who had completed elementary school. In rural areas they were "deeply rooted in village communal life" providing organized farm labor, organizing seasonal festivals and volunteer work. "The state depended on village seinendan to discipline youth, who were often labeled as impressionable and immature, and create ideal Japanese subjects. Through the political and economic upheavals of the 1930s, seinendan members carried the heavy burden of agricultural production increases, unpaid infrastructure maintenance, and military service, and with devotion they lived up to the reputation as the bastion of nationalistic ideology. The influence of the seinendan in rural life was so widely recognized that they even challenged the centrality of academic instruction provided by the school system."*

*Source: "Nation-Empire, Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies," by Sayaka Chatani, Cornell University Press, 2018, p. 21-22. 

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