The Oath of the Japanese Print Service Society:

We swear that we will sway the hearts of our countrymen with the beauty and spirit of the print, we encourage them, and together with them we resolve to ‘fight on.’

The war years 1937-1945, with their escalating nationalism, military aggression and social oppression were difficult times for personal creativity. As the war ground on, growing shortages of materials, the allocation of which was under government control, led to a general decline in artistic production. However, art in service of the state and the war, "war art", was encouraged and for many artists the war years were a productive period. While the best-known war art was in the form of paintings, most of which were quite overt in glorifying the military, the ancient art of woodblock prints also played its part in the war effort, though mostly through "soft propaganda."  Even the most innocent looking prints were billed as being in the “Yamato tradition” - having the “Yamato spirit”. 

Unlike painters, print artists were not commissioned per se by the military.  However, they and print publishers were encouraged to promote the national polity in their work and print-making supplies were allocated to them accordingly.  While most woodblock prints did not depict soldiers at war, the message contained in their “soft-propaganda” was clear, as in this print depicting Hakkō Ichiu (Eight Corners of the World Under One Roof), a monument in the city of Miyazaki built in 1940 to glorify Imperial Japan’s occupation of Asian nations and to commemorate the 2,600 years since the accession of Emperor Jimmu. By cropping the monument, the artist suggests that the tower, like the rays of the sun, transcends the space of Japan whose “divine mission” is to bring all races and nations of the world under “one roof.” Dower tells us “whereas racism in the West was markedly characterized by denigration of others, the Japanese were preoccupied far more exclusively with elevating themselves… wrestling with… what it really meant to be ‘Japanese’…”  This self-elevation and reinforcement of the uniqueness of the Japanese people was, I believe, the goal of print artists and their publishers during the war.

Download the full presentation in pdf format.

Prints of the War Years Presentation Online