Paper short abstract:

By focusing on unconventional imagery of the Russo-Japanese War and the role of chief editor Kunikida Doppo in The Wartime Graphic, a widely popular pictorial war magazine in Japan, this paper uncovers an art of publishing critical materials under the difficult circumstances of modern total war.

Paper long abstract:

Examining unconventional war imagery and the role played by the renowned literary writer Kunikida Doppo (1871-1908), who was then chief editor, in the widely popular pictorial Japanese war magazine The Wartime Graphic (Senji gahō), this paper uncovers an art of publishing critical materials under the difficult circumstances of modern total war. The magazine's contents and the activities of the people involved in it suggest that it was a 'masquerading' media, an autonomous space of cultural expressions in the disguise of the war-promoting press. The magazine's critical stance on the state and war was camouflaged by subtle and nuanced expressions and was skilfully interspersed amid conventional contents. By this means, The Wartime Graphic was able to elude censorship. Yet a further corollary of this approach is that its message has hitherto escaped the attention of historians.

This paper critically challenges the antagonistic, dichotomous division of wartime Japanese media and society, and the domination of the pro-war voice over the other in the existing historiography. It draws attention to the less obvious expressions in between, and in doing so, it will shed light on considerable yet hitherto overlooked dimensions of wartime Japanese press, and by extension, Japanese society at large.