Sabine Frühstück on “The Currency of Innocence: Children’s ‘Emotional Capital’ in the Japanese Empire”

“In early twentieth-century Japan, a large body of pictures and narratives connected children with soldiers and war-making, producing a multi-sensory emotional register. An operationalized ‘emotional capital’ was employed primarily through the unapologetic insinuation of sentiments, such as Japanese children’s admiration for and affinity with soldiers, those children’s empathy for other children in Japanese-occupied territory, and “occupied” children’s gratitude for the protection soldiers supposedly provided. Altogether, children’s supposed vulnerability and innocence were enlisted, until 1945, to legitimize Japan’s imperialist war— offering a sense of redemption in the wake of extreme mass violence; and, after the defeat, to embody peace as ‘icons of humanitarianism.’”