The Home Front Battle: Tuberculosis Prevention Campaigns in Wartime Japan

Abstract High death rates from tuberculosis in late 1930s Japan threatened the physical health of conscripts, which led to wartime tuberculosis prevention campaigns. As part of the mobilisation for the Asia-Pacific War (1937–1945), public health experts forged an alliance with military physicians using the resources of the newly established Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Japan Anti-Tuberculosis Association to create legislation and media campaigns. I analyse how experts employed paper theatre plays (kamishibai) in these campaigns, and examine the visualisation of germs and the gendered mobilisation along class lines in tuberculosis prevention. I argue that public health experts transformed tuberculosis into the common enemy of the nation and, with the help of women’s associations, sought to mobilise housewives and nurses for a home front battle. Utilising modern medicine, mothers were to fight the disease in the home and to protect their children, who were the future of the nation.