Fanning the Flames

Overview

Japan's Meiji Restoration brought swift changes through Japanese adoption of Western-style modernization and imperial expansion. Fanning the Flames brings together a range of scholarly essays and collected materials from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives detailing how Japanese propaganda played an active role in fostering national identity and mobilizing grassroots participation in the country's transformation and wartime activities, starting with the First Sino-Japanese War to the end of World War II.

Reviews

"Beautifully illustrated, a most valuable contribution to our understanding of political culture in modern East Asia." —Matthew H. Sommer, professor of Chinese history, Stanford University

"Illuminates the vital roles that mass media have played . . . in the creation of militant imperial Japanese subjects." —Yuma Totani, professor of history, University of Hawaii

"Retells the history of Japan's modern warfare as driven and shaped by the power of spectacle . . . in a compelling dialectic of propaganda and social control." —Jun Uchida, associate professor of history, Stanford University

"Poised at the juncture of political history, art history, and visual culture studies, this readable and highly informative volume [is] richly illustrated and enlightening." —Sharalyn Orbaugh, professor of modern Japanese literature and popular culture, University of British Columbia; author of Propaganda Performed: Kamishibai in Japan's Fifteen Year War

"Lavishly illustrated . . . provides scholars and students alike with a striking new way to visualize modern Japanese history." —Tristan R. Grunow, visiting assistant professor of history, Pacific University, and digital media editor, Critical Asian Studies

"The book collects nine scholarly essays that flesh out the nature of Japanese propaganda from the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894 to the end of World War Two in 1945. . . . Obviously this is an ambitious book. . . . Fortunately, it's exceptionally well-done. —Omar Willey, Seattle Star

Author Biography

Kaoru "Kay" Ueda is the curator of the Japanese Diaspora Collection at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives and the editor of On a Collision Course: The Dawn of Japanese Migration in the Nineteenth Century.