Constructing a New Cultural History of Prewar Japan

Abstract

In January 1925, the Osaka Asahi newspaper organized a spectacle. This gathering of close to one hundred children, whose names contained the Chinese ideogram "Sho" of the imperial, Taisho reign, is preserved in a photograph in the pictorial magazine Asahi Gurafu. The newspaper publisher was commemorating the new newspaper comic strip serial The Adventures of Shochan, and children wore knitted "Shochan" hats topped with pom-poms to that end. But more than the mass-produced apparel was being advertised. As the cultural historian Tsurumi Shunsuke has pointed out, the discerning consumer of the photograph was at once made aware of the comic strip, the hat company that had donated the uniform attire, the newspaper company, and the imperial reign for which both the children and