Review: Wearing Propaganda

How Clothes Help Make The War

By GRACE GLUECK

In the years leading up to and including World War II - long before T-shirts
became a medium for messages - wartime propaganda was printed on textiles
designed for more formal clothes. The legend "England expects that every man
will do his duty," echoing Nelson's famous message at the Battle of Trafalgar,
appeared on rayon fabric used for scarves and dresses in the early 1940's, and a
Japanese woman's silk kimono of the same period sports Nazi and Japanese flags
in a subtle design that acknowledges the Axis alignment.

These and more than 125 other examples of war-themed textiles used in clothing
and accessories - mostly from Japan - are on view in "Wearing Propaganda:
Textiles on the Home Front in Japan, Britain and the United States" at the Bard
Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design and Culture.
Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, the show
explores how graphic design on cloth was used to rev up wartime sentiments, from
relatively quiet Allied warnings about keeping lips buttoned to Japanese crowing
over victories (like a 1937 baby's kimono printed with illustrations lauding
Japan's invasion of Nanking, China).

This voluminous spread, organized by Jacqueline M. Atkins, curator of textiles
at the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania, and editor of the show's exhaustive
catalog, is a rarity in that extensive studies embracing propaganda and its
outlets have mostly left out the vehicle of textiles. With gusto and commendable
diligence, "Wearing Propaganda" sets out to remedy that neglect.
It singles out 10 often overlapping themes that more or less dominated wartime
textile designs, among them modernity, empire, patriotism, heroes and enemies,
sacrifice and victory. Modernity, Ms. Atkins suggests, was particularly
important to the Japanese. The country saw itself as competitively "modern" in
its ability to build subways and department stores, make planes and weapons and
wage war. Its progress in war-making skills was glorified in the national
consciousness, finding echoes in the work of - among others - textile designers.
But in Britain and the United States, modernism had for so long been a fact of
life that it did not need assertion by way of war motifs, so textiles referring
to war had more souvenir than propaganda value.

In Japan, a smart-looking woman's haori, a short outer jacket worn over a
kimono, was produced in the late 1920's and early 30's of meisen, a lower-grade,
more affordable silk. The vivid cerise ground is imprinted with a playful design
of warplanes flying over the sinuous curves of silvery rivers. The fabric and
design were aimed at the young women of the Taisho period (1912-26) and the
ensuing Showa era, known as "modern girls," for their more adventurous dress and
style of life. The colors and stylized simplicity of this haori design give it a
lively graphic punch.

The global significance of Japan is also arrestingly declared on a stunning
man's silk nagajuban, a long undergarment worn under a kimono. From the 1930's,
it depicts a city skyline - presumably Tokyo's - with planes flying over it
against a bold sweep of Eastern Hemisphere. In the United States, a tamer
reminder of the country's might is seen in a woman's scarf of printed rayon from
the 1940's, with a scattering of naval fighting ships, a tiny formation of plane
silhouettes and a compass - all in red, white and blue.

Militarism, manifest in symbols of strength, power and bravery, loomed large as
a design theme during the wartime era, and many of the Japanese textiles geared
to men (and women with sons) bear macho military images in the form of weapons,
tanks, planes, warships, marching soldiers and the like. The Japanese designs
were far more literal than those of the British or Americans, but the more
hair-raising brutalities of war, shockingly exposed in posters, films and
newspapers, were more or less kept from the rarefied realm of textiles in all
three cultures.

A selection of women's scarves and dress fabrics from the United States in the
early 1940's takes up the military theme. One scarf, of bright red printed
rayon, is unusual in that it depicts soldiers of various divisions and ranks
ranged around the Great Seal of the United States. Another, more playful, is
adorned with planes and military insignia, accompanied by the pet names its
pilots gave to their flying machines.

But the Japanese went all out, producing garments like the silk omiyamairi (a
wrap for a newborn child making its first shrine visit) titled "Soldiers at War"
(circa 1940). It shows soldiers preparing to dash through a field of exploding
shells as children on the garment's sleeves wave flags that proclaim the
mission's success. Presumably, this imagery symbolized a wish that the child
would possess the bravery and fortitude of the soldiers.

A man's nagajuban of wool muslin, from the 1930's, has an all-over design of
boy-soldiers waving swords and tattered flags in triumphal poses. They are
apparently celebrating a battle victory, yet fiery explosions still rage around
them. Even women wore clothes with militaristic themes (although rarely), as can
be seen by an obi, the outer kimono sash, on view here. Printed and embroidered
on artificial silk are rows of soldiers marching in tidy formation, although the
restraint of the design plays down its militaristic emphasis.

A scanty but entertaining category is the one devoted to leaders, heroes and
enemies. On the hero front, the Japanese held back. Reflecting the cultural
belief in the subservience of the individual to the state, Ms. Atkins points
out, they tended to refer to the military generically rather than single out
stars. (The Showa emperor, Hirohito, was acknowledged in designs only by
chrysanthemums or children bowing.)

One exception was Adm. Heihachiro Togo, regarded as a gunshin, or military god,
for his victory over the Russian Navy in the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War. A kimono
fabric of printed muslin from 1935 commemorates the admiral's death the year
before with a portrait of him in full regalia, his flagship, Mikasa, in the
background, bars of music from the "Gunkan Machi" ("Battleship March") and a
shrine indicating his godhood.

But neither East nor West stinted at blasting the enemy. Racism raised its head
in American characterizations; an American cloth for a card table in the 1940's
depicted Japanese figures with buck teeth and slanted eyes, while Hitler and
Mussolini, though mocked, were not depicted in ethnic terms.
On the Japanese side, although Roosevelt and Churchill were caricatured
regularly in the Japanese press, a rarity here is the double caricature of the
two seated on top of a globe. It is an elaborate the early 40's design, made
with metallic threads on black silk for the interior decoration of a man's
jacket. (The figures do look more Asian than Western.)

Although the sheer plenitude of this overachieving show may cause your eyes to
glaze over, it is a one-of-a-kind experience for anyone interested in the
evolution of Japanese popular design.

For further information, please call 212-501-3000 or e-mail generalinfo@bgc.bard.edu.

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