{"product_id":"gas-mask-nation-visualizing-civil-air-defense-in-wartime-japan-9780226816449","title":"Gas Mask Nation: Visualizing Civil Air Defense in Wartime Japan","description":"\u003cb\u003eA fascinating look at the anxious pleasures of Japanese visual culture during World War II.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Airplanes, gas masks, and bombs were common images in wartime Japan. Yet amid these emblems of anxiety, tasty caramels were offered to children with paper gas masks as promotional giveaways, and magazines featured everything from attractive models in the latest civil defense fashion to futuristic weapons. \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Gas Mask Nation \u003c\/i\u003eexplores the multilayered construction of an anxious yet perversely pleasurable visual culture of Japanese civil air defense--or \u003ci\u003ebōkū\u003c\/i\u003e--through a diverse range of artworks, photographs, films and newsreels, magazine illustrations, postcards, cartoons, advertising, fashion, everyday goods, government posters, and state propaganda. Gennifer Weisenfeld reveals the immersive aspects of this culture, in which Japan's imperial subjects were mobilized to regularly perform highly orchestrated civil air defense drills throughout the country. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e The war years in Japan are often portrayed as a landscape of privation and suppression under the censorship of the war machine. But alongside the horrors, pleasure, desire, wonder, creativity, and humor were all still abundantly present in a period before air raids went from being a fearful specter to a deadly reality. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGennifer Weisenfeld\u003c\/b\u003e is the Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eMavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931\u003c\/i\u003e and\u003ci\u003e Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan's Great Earthquake of 1923\u003c\/i\u003e as well as a core contributing author on MIT's award-winning website Visualizing Cultures. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50388508705042,"sku":"9780226816449","price":59.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_dbd0be5d-a465-4358-a2bf-d23f64b16d09.jpg?v=1728901813","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/gas-mask-nation-visualizing-civil-air-defense-in-wartime-japan-9780226816449","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}