Propaganda performed
This will be the first scholarly book in English (and the most complete in any language) on kamishibai ("paper theater"), 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.
