Photo/Illutration Wartime posters are displayed at a museum in Nagoya on July 27. (Risako Miyake)

NAGOYA--A war and peace museum here is exhibiting propaganda items that encouraged the home-front population to contribute to the Japanese war effort about 80 to 90 years ago.

Children’s clothing was designed with warplanes, a matchbox was labeled with the phrase “Don’t let spies escape” and the wrapping paper for a train bento lunch box was calling for “all-out war.”

"Even familiar items, such as bills and magazines, tell that the people were united in wanting war at that time," said a woman in her 40s living in Owariasahi in Aichi Prefecture, who visited the Peace Aichi museum with her high school daughter. "It gave me a chance to think about the war.”

Some 200 items are on display in the exhibition "War Propaganda--Advertising that directed a nation to war."

“Japan once misled the public into war," said Daisuke Miyahara, 69, head of the museum. "I hope that propaganda in the past will be used to help visitors think about the war and its history so that it will never happen again.”

The exhibit shows posters and daily goods that the Japanese government and other bodies used as propaganda to bolster domestic support for the war.

Kohei Hara, who was the mayor of Ochi village (now Aichi village) in Nagano Prefecture, stored 41 propaganda posters that encouraged people to raise funds for the war and praised the service members who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Such propaganda was seen everywhere in Japan following the 1931 Manchurian Incident, in which the Imperial Japanese Army blew up a railway line and accused China of the act as a pretext to invade northeastern China.

The government continuing to pour its resources into the war effort as it dragged on.

The war efforts were further strengthened after the National Mobilization Law, which enabled the government to utilize everything from people to products, was enacted in 1938.

The organizers have been preparing for the exhibition from last year.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February, nearly five months before its opening, which makes the exhibition timely, as Moscow is said to be utilizing propaganda.

The exhibition will continue through Sept. 17. The museum is closed on Sundays and Mondays.

The admission fee is 300 yen ($2.23) for adults and 100 yen for elementary, junior high and high school students.

Related News