Protest fashion from the Vietnam War years is widely familiar, but today few are aware that dramatic fashion and textile designs served as patriotic propaganda for the Japanese, British, and Americans during the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945). This fabulously illustrated book presents hundreds of examples of how fashion was employed by those on all sides of the conflict to boost morale and fan patriotism.From a kimono lined with images of U.S. planes blowing up to a British scarf emblazoned with hopeful anti-rationing slogans, Wearing Propaganda documents the development of the role of fashion as propaganda first in Japan and soon thereafter in Britain and the United States. The book discusses traditional and contemporary Japanese styles and what they revealed about Japanese domestic attitudes to war, and it shows how these attitudes echoed or contrasted with British and American fashions that were virulently anti-Japanese in some instances, humorously upbeat about wartime deprivations in others. With insights into style and design, fashion history, material culture, and the social history of Japan, the United States, and Britain, this book offers unexpected riches for every reader.
Jacqueline Atkins is Kate Fowler Merle-Smith Curator of Textiles at Allentown Art Museum and curator of the Bard Graduate Center Wearing Propaganda exhibition.
Susan Weber Soros
Foreword
Jacqueline M. Atkins
Introduction
Jacqueline M. Atkins
Maps
Time Line 1895-45
The Asia-Pacific War and it Precedents 1895-45
Yumiko Yamamori
Part I. Setting the Context
Chapter 1. Setting the Context
Jacqueline M. Atkins
Chapter 2. Propaganda on the Home Fronts: Clothing and Textiles as Message
Jacqueline M. Atkins
Chapter 3. Propaganda Precedents: Pre-1930 Propaganda Textiles
Jacqueline M. Atkins and Miyuki Otaka
Part II. The Visual Culture of War
Chapter 4. Japan’s Beautiful Modern War
John W. Dower
Chapter 5. Potatoes are Protective, Too: Cultural Icons of Britain at War
Antonia Lant
Chapter 6. An American Vision: Propaganda on the Home Front during World War II
Marianne Lamonaca
Part III. Wearing Propaganda: Fashion, Textiles, and Morale on the Home Front
Chapter 7. “Extravagance is the Enemy” Fashion and Textiles in Wartime Japan
Jacqueline M. Atkins
Chapter 8. Design and War: Kimono as “Parlor-Performance” Propaganda
Kashiwagi Hiroshi
Chapter 9. War-Promoting Kimono (1931-45)
Wakakuwa Midori
Chapter 10. Keep Up Home Front Morale: “Beauty and Duty” in Wartime Britain
Pat Kirkham
Chapter 11. London Squares: The Scarves of Wartime Britain
Paul Rennie
Chapter 12. Showing the Colors: America
Beverly Gordon
Part IV. The Propaganda Textile Motifs of the Asia-Pacific War
Chapter 13. The Arsenal of Design: Themes, Motifs, and Metaphors in Propaganda Textiles
Jacqueline M. Atkins
Glossary
Bibliography
Checklist of the Exhibition
