Shonen Kurabu and the Japanese Attitude Toward War

Abstract

The Japanese people’s understanding of the Fifteen Years War (1931–1945) is still problematic. The problem of the war was commonly solved by transferring responsibility for the war to an obscure subject called the State, and by offering financial compensation to those who were directly affected. However, there has been no in-depth discussion of how the Japanese public’s understanding of the war in the period before defeat was modified in the post-war period. This article is a study of the children’s magazine Shonen Kurabu, which gained wide popularity by featuring articles related to war during the early modern era of Japan, including the wartime period, and continued to be published until 1962. By focusing on Shonen Kurabu, this paper explores the close relationship between the mass media and the public attitude toward war, and the handling of the theme of war by both the media and the public.