Historical Memory, Warrior Identities and the Young Child in the Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Picture Magazine Children’s Illustrated

In late nineteenth-century Japan, creative and entrepreneurial minds contributed to a new cause: the creation of a sense of nation among ‘young citizens’. They found proof of the nation’s existence, and a safeguard for its continuation into the future, in martial history and a new literary genre for children. In studies on the modern cultural history of childhood in Japan, early twentieth-century children’s literature represents a more democratic, ‘child-centred’ and aesthetically focused interlude before the newfound sensibilities would be appropriated in wartime (1930–1945) propaganda. However, the best-selling and influential picture magazine Children’s Illustrated (1906–1935) aimed at the new category of yōnen, or early and beginning readers, tells a different story. Drawing upon Pierre Nora’s concept of ‘sites of memory’, this article investigates how Children’s Illustrated paints a national past for a young audience by making inventive use of warrior iconographies from early modern (1603–1868) print culture and fuses the theme with new tropes surrounding the cuteness and innate martiality of young children. It shows how experienced co-observers are invited to engage in memory acts and critically analyses how the magazine’s interpretations of history, childhood, gender, and family interact. Epitomising in the child’s embodiment of the ‘site of memory’ (the emulation of the hero in his iconic moment), the magazine equals history and young boys to combatant samurai, strongly conveying the message that fulfilment of this role as a modern soldier is at the root of society.