Propaganda Art

The title reads “the angry one hundred million will defeat America and England.”

Watching Persepolis made me think of propaganda art. The movie isn’t really propaganda itself but as it deals with a revolution I’m sure there was propaganda art used during that time. After all, propaganda art is used for pretty much everything.  Propaganda art is used to influence the viewer by making them feel a certain way. Often this art is very selective in what it presents and is very biased and one sided though that is really to be expected since the goal is to get the viewer to agree with the art’s point of view.  As it is fresh in my mind from my timeline I’ll start with some propaganda manga that was used during WWII. During WWII the Japanese government created the Shin Nippon Mangaka Kyokai, The New Cartoonists Association of Japan, to create manga that painted the Japanese war effort in a positive light. The manga depicted such things as glorifying the Japanese soldiers and demonizing the enemy as well as making humorous comics on the inventiveness of the Japanese civilians to create useful things out of junk as a way to deal with the shortages. The Japanese also made comics specifically for the Allied Nations. They made manga showing the Japanese destroying the Allies and telling them to give up the fight because it was hopeless. This all was a tactic to undermine the morale of the Allied Nations.

Funnily enough, the Allies used manga as propaganda as well. Taro Yashima was a Japanese citizen who disagreed with the war and so he left Japan and moved to the US where he started to produce propaganda manga for the Allies.  Most notably is his comic Unganaizo which depicted the story of a peasant that became a soldier and died fighting for corrupt leaders. This comic was found rather often on the bodies of Japanese soldiers which shows the power it had to affect people. This comic had enough influence on the Japanese that they found it important enough to hold on to if they got a copy. If the story did not strike a cord in the hearts of the Japanese soldiers they would have simply thrown the comic away if they got a hold of it and because it did strike a cord with many of them it undermined their morale which was the point of this piece of propaganda art. I was going to discuss a few more pieces of propaganda art but as I’m way over the word count already I guess I should stop.