Propaganda performed: Kamishibai in Japan's fifteen year war

This will be the first scholarly book in English (and the most complete in any language) on kamishibai, a performance/visual/textual art form that was popular on the streets of Japan from 1930-1970, at times eclipsing even the popularity of movies or manga. After providing an introduction to the for...

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Bibliographic Details
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Leiden Brill 2015
Series:Japanese visual culture 13
Subjects:
Summary:This will be the first scholarly book in English (and the most complete in any language) on kamishibai, a performance/visual/textual art form that was popular on the streets of Japan from 1930-1970, at times eclipsing even the popularity of movies or manga. After providing an introduction to the form and a history of its development in the 1930s, the study turns to an in-depth exploration of the way kamishibai was used for propaganda purposes by governmental and quasi-governmental agencies during Japan’s Fifteen Year War, 1931 to 1945.Three chapters analyze a number of wartime kamishibai plays, divided by the demographic segment to which their specific propaganda messages were addressed: very young children, older boys from poor neighborhoods, rural girls, farmers, male urban shopkeepers, widows, etc. Then the findings from those analyses are incorporated into a consideration of the phenomenology and neurobiology of propaganda: how this particular medium with its unique combination of text, image and performance, and its unique circumstances of consumption (always in a tightly-huddled group of friends, neighbors, schoolmates or workmates) functioned in helping to create the propaganda environment that permeated Japan during the Fifteen Year War
Physical Description:XI, 365 S. zahlr. Ill.
ISBN:9789004248823

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