No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Heavenly Soldiers and Industrial Warriors: Paratroopers and Japan's Wartime Silk Industry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
This essay explores new aspects of wartime Japan's industrial mobilization by analyzing how the country's struggling silk industry persistently exploited the emerging myth of Japan's paratroopers. With the outbreak of the Pacific War, Japan's silk manufacturers suffered from a ban on luxury goods and the collapse of the U.S. export market. After several spectacular Japanese airborne operations, the Dainippon Silk Foundation successfully campaigned for the large-scale production of parachutes. Silk now was a material for military consumption, and silk weaving companies became designated munitions factories that publicly compared the self-sacrifice of their young female workers with that of the death-defying paratroopers.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Creative Commons
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 2020
References
Notes
1 One noteworthy exception is the production of balloon bombs, a small fraction of which was made from rubberized silk. See Robert C. Mikesh, Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1973), pp. 61-63; and Ross Coen, Fu-go: The Curious History of Japan's Balloon Bomb Attack on America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), pp. 31-33.
2 Patricia Tsurumi, Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); and David G. Wittner, Technology and the Culture of Progress in Meiji Japan (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 43-71.
3 Between 1898 and 1900 overall revenues from silk export amounted to over 90 per cent of Japan's expenditure on the imports of warships, weapons, machinery, iron, oil, and steamships. See Nakamura Masanori. Nihon no rekishi dai 29 kan Rōdōsha to nōmin [Japanese history vol. 29: Workers and peasants] (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1976), p. 89.
4 Hooks and Jussaume show in their case studies of Japan's aluminum and aircraft industries how, during the war, “the Japanese state became less intrusive and ultimately more civilianized; the U.S. became more interventionist and militarized.” Gregory Hooks and Raymond A. Jussaume, “Warmaking and the Transformation of the State: Japan and the U.S. in World War II,” in Yamanouchi Yasushi, J. Victor Koschmann, and Narita Ryūichi, eds., Total War and ‘Modernization‘ (Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1998), pp. 61-94.
5 Barak Kushner, The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006); and Benjamin Uchiyama, Japan's Carnival War: Mass Culture on the Home Front, 1937–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 67-104.
6 Williamson Murray and Allan Reed Millett, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
7 Tanaka Kenichi, Aa junpaku no hanaoite: rikugun rakkasan butai senki [Pure white flowers adorning their shoulders: An account of the battles of the army paratrooper units] (Tokyo: Gakuyō Shobō, 1972), pp. 1-13.
8 Bōeichō bōeikenshūjo senshishitsu, Rikugun kōkū no gunbi to un'yō 2 [The army's aerial armament and operations 2] (Tokyo: Asagumoshinbunsha, 1974), p. 309.
9 Tanaka, Aa junpaku no hanaoite, pp. 12-13.
10 The Battle of Crete (20 May–1 June 1941) received considerable day-to-day coverage in Japanese newspapers, beginning with “Chichūkai no eijūyōkichi doku, kureetashima wo kōgeki seieibutai wo taikyōkūyu” [Main British bases in the Mediterranean, German attack on Crete, massive airborne operation of elite troops], Tokyo Asahi Shinbun, May 21, 1941.
11 Bōeichō bōeikenshūjo senshishitsu. Rikugun kōkū no gunbi to un'yō 2, p. 309-10.
12 Ministry of War, “Daiichi teishinshūdan” [The first Attack Group], October 1941, Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (hereafter JACAR) Ref. C12121031900.
13 Nihon Kaigun Kōkūshi Hensan Iinkai. Nihon Kaigun kōkūshi 2 Gunbi hen [The history of Japanese naval aviation 2 (armaments)] (Tokyo: Jiji Tsūshinsha, 1969), p. 929.
14 Ibid., p. 931.
15 For details see Nihon Kaigun Kōkūshi Hensan Iinkai. Nihon Kaigun kōkūshi 2 Gunbi hen, p. 935.
16 For a full account see Okamoto Takeyoshi and Horikawa Tatsumi, Nanpō shinkō rikugun kōkū sakusen [The Army's air strategy during the southern advance] (Tokyo: Asagumo Shinbunsha, 1970), pp. 490-505; Gordon L. Rottman and Takizawa Akira, Japanese Paratroop Forces of World War II (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2005), pp. 27-44.
17 Minoru Nomura, “The Petroleum Question” in Akira Iriye, ed., Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War: A Brief History with Documents and Essays (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999), pp. 145-46. More on the strategic importance of oil can be found in Miwa Munehiro, Taiheiyō Sensō to sekiyu: senryaku busshi no gunji to keizai [The Pacific War and oil: Military affairs and the economy of strategic goods] (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyōronsha, 2004).
18 Ishii Masamichi, Rikugun nenryōshō Taiheiyō Sensō sasaeta sekiyu gijutsushatachi no tadakai [The Army's fuel arsenal: The fight of the fuel technical experts that supported the Pacific War] (Tokyo: Kōjinsha, 2002), pp. 106-12.
19 Ogura Akira, “Parenban sekiyu butai no tsuisō [The reminiscence of the Palembang oil corps],” in Heiwa kinen jigyō tokubetsu kikin, ed., Gunjin gunzoku tanki zaishokusha ga kataritsugu rōku dai yon kan (heishi hen) [The pain of soldiers and of people who served as temporary civilian employees of the military: Volume 4 (soldiers)], (Tokyo: Heiwa kinen jigyō tokubetsu kikin, 1994), pp. 175-85.
20 Ibid., p. 176.
21 Ishii, Rikugun nenryōshō, p. 196.
22 Nomura, “The Petroleum Question,” p. 146.
23 For details see Gregory James Kasza, The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 1918-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 200-206.
24 Nippon news #88, released on February 9, 1942.
25 Already in May 1941 the German newsreel Wochenschau used the “Ride of the Valkyries” as background music for their coverage of the airborne invasion of Crete.
26 Nippon news #93, released on March 17, 1942.
27 The lyrics can be found in Kitajima Noboru, ed., Shōwa ryūkōkashi [A history of popular songs of the Shōwa era] (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1977), p. 137.
28 According to Nihon kokugo daijiten [Comprehensive Japanese dictionary] (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2006) the term shinpei appeared already in Keikokushū, an 827 CE collection of Chinese poetry.
29 For the text of both songs see Fujikura Kōgyō KK. Rakkasan o tsukuru kokoro [The spirit of making parachutes] (Tokyo: Fujikura Kōgyō KK, 1943), p. 1. In striking contrast to these morale boosters, one of the most popular songs sung by WWII U.S. paratroopers, “Blood on the Risers,” tells the gloomy story of a “rookie trooper” who forgot to hook his static line and falls to his death.
30 For more details on how Japanese movie makers followed the censor's standards of the kokusaku films see Peter B. High, The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years' War 1931-1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp. 376-81.
31 Shashin Shūhō, January 20, 1943, pp.10-11.
32 There is an interesting parallel: The German painter Wilhelm Baitz submitted a similar monumental painting “Die Fallschirmjäger” (The paratroopers) to the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung that was held in Munich in 1942 under the auspices of Adolf Hitler.
33 Niizeki Kennosuke, Sora no chūtai [The squadron in the sky] (Tokyo: Nakamura shoten, 1943), quote taken from the book's preface by Major Nishihara Masaru.
34 Taira Satoru and Matoda Sei, Shōkokumin no tameno rakkasan monogatari [A story about parachutes for young citizens] (Tokyo: Kin no hoshi sha, 1943), pp. 162-67.
35 For a detailed account of Japan's prewar silk industry see Ishii Kanji, Nihon sanshigyōshi bunseki [An analysis of Japan's sericulture industry] (Tokyo: Tōkyō daigaku shuppankai, 1972).
36 In 1905 the British company Courtaulds Fibres produced the first commercial viscose rayon. The Japanese firm Teikoku Jinzokenshi (Tejin) took up rayon production in 1927.
37 It should be noted that many Japanese companies implemented this policy. Notable examples are the producer of nitrogenous fertilizer Nichitsu branching out into explosives or the piano maker Nihon Gakki converting its production into the making of aircraft propellers. See Barbara Molony, Technology and Investment: The Prewar Japanese Chemical Industry (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1990), pp. 216-26; and United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Aircraft Division, Japan Musical Instrument Manufacturing Company (Nippon Gakki Seizo KK) (Washington, DC: USSBS, 1946), pp. 1-12.
38 Silk, with its unique qualities, would eventually be challenged by synthetic fiber. In summer 1942 the U.S. military began testing nylon parachutes—ironically as a response to the dwindling stock of imported Japanese silk. During the Pacific War, Japan's artificial fiber industry produced its own version of nylon called “nylon 6,” but Japan never engaged in large-scale nylon production.
39 Nihon Sangyō Keizai Shinbun, December 19 and December 20, 1942.
40 Tanaka Kenichi, Oozora no hana: Kūteibutai zenshi [Flowers in the wide open sky: A complete history of paratroopers] (Tokyo: Fuyō Shobō 1984), pp. 267-68.
41 Tokyo Asahi Shinbun, April 20, 1941.
42 Osaka Mainichi Shinbun, March 1–March 9, 1941.
43 Osaka Mainichi Shinbun, August 24, 1941.
44 Chalmers A. Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), p. 153; and Mark R. Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji and Japan's Confrontation with the West (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 219.
45 In addition to Fukui weavers in other prefectures such as Ishikawa, Yamagata, and Yamanashi took up the production of parachute fabric as well.
46 Edward Pratt, Japan's Protoindustrial Elite: The Economic Foundations of the Gōnō (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), p. 34.
47 Hataya kinenkan yumeōre Katsuyama, Orimono no machi, Kiryū to Katsuyama [The textile towns Kiryū and Katsuyama] (Katsuyama: Hataya kinenkan yumeōre Katsuyama, 2012), p. 10.
48 Matsumura Akira, Katsuyama no kigyō [The textile industry in Katsuyama] (Katsuyama: Katsuyama kyōiku iinkai, 1981), p. 2.
49 Arai Yoshiyasu, president of Kaytay Texinno Inc., in 2011, quoted in Hataya kinenkan, Orimono no machi, p. 40.
50 Fujikura Industry Co., Ltd, “Fujikurakōgyō Kabushikigaisha” [Fujikura Industry, Inc.], January 30, 1936, JACAR Ref. C05035280400.
51 Tanaka. Oozora no hana, p. 251.
52 Ibid., p. 269.
53 Tanaka gives the following numbers in Oozora no hana, p. 270: 1939: 4,500; 1940: 5,000; 1941: 12,000; 1942: 68,000; 1943: 94,000; 1944: 105,000.
54 See Fujikura Kōsō OB-kai website. (accessed March 30, 2020).
55 A total of about 1,400 paratroopers were deployed during the 1942 campaign in the Dutch East Indies. About one thousand airborne infantrymen saw action in the Philippines in late 1944.
56 Janet Hunter argues that already in prewar Japan the demand for cheap labor together with rapid advances in industrialization resulted in a predominantly female textile workforce. Janet Hunter, “Gendering the Labor Market: Evidence from the Interwar Textile Industry.” In Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno, eds., Gendering Modern Japanese History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), pp. 359-92.
57 Poem composed by Oki Tsuruma in Fujikura kōgyō, Rakkasan o tsukuru kokoro [The spirit of making parachutes] (Tokyo: Fujikura kōgyō KK, 1943), pp. 205-6.
58 Taira, Shōkokumin no tameno rakkasan monogatari, pp. 154-60.
59 See Regine Mathias, “Women and the War Economy in Japan” in Erich Pauer, ed., Japan's War Economy (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 65-84; and Yoshiko Miyake, “Doubling Expectations: Motherhood and Women's Factory Work Under State Management in Japan in the 1930s and 1940s,” in Gail Bernstein, ed., Recreating Japanese women, 1600-1945, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 267-95, 268.
60 Thomas R. H. Havens, Valley of Darkness: The Japanese People and World War Two (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986), p. 92.
61 Ministry of Munitions, “Joshiteishintaiseido kyōka hōsakuyōkō” [Policy outline to strengthen the system of the corps of women volunteer workers], March 18, 1944, JACAR Ref. A14101249000.
62 Japan Employment Security Association, (accessed March 30, 2020).
63 Ministry of Education, “Kessen kyōiku sochiyōkō” [Outline of education measures for the decisive battle], March 17, 1945, JACAR Ref. A14101334400.
64 The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Civilian, Manpower, Food and Civilian Supplies Division, Japanese Wartime Standard of Living and Utilization of Manpower (Washington, DC: USSBS, 1947), pp. 13, 73.
65 See the Munitions Ministry's pamphlet that aims to bring the kamikaze ideology into Japan's factories. Gunjushō kōkūheiki sōkyoku, Kamikaze (Tokyo: Gunjushō kōkūheiki sōkyoku, 1945), pp. 23-25. For the “kamikazefication of the home front,” see David C. Earhart, Certain Victory: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2008), pp. 409-59.
66 Source: Matsumura Akira, Katsuyama no kigyō [The textile industry in Katsuyama] (Katsuyama: Katsuyama kyōiku iinkai, 1981), p. 45.
67 Ibid., p. 45.
68 The Navy became painfully aware of this dilemma during the capture of the Koepang air base in Western Timor (see figure 2) on February 20 and 21, 1942. Based on the Manado experience, where enemy fire had killed many parachutists even before touchdown, the designated drop zone was about twelve kilometers northeast of the airfield. Yet, when the first paratroopers finally arrived at the airfield it had already been taken by Japanese ground forces.
69 Yamabe Masao, Kaigun rakkasan butai: Eikō to kutō no senreki [Naval paratroopers: War records of glory and hard struggle] (Tokyo: Kyō no wadaisha, 1994), pp. 253-54.
70 I am obliged to David Earhart for pointing out this illustration in Certain Victory, p. 438.
71 Yasushi Masuko, “‘Saikan Houkoku’ and War Art Exhibitions,” Nihondaigaku daigakuin sōgō shakai jōhōkenkyūka kiyō, No. 7 (2006), pp. 515-26.
72 For more details on the Giretsu Kūteitai see Akimoto Minoru, Rakkasan butai: Tekichū ni kōka suru “Sora no shinpei” no tatakai [Paratroopers: The fight of the “heavenly soldiers” who dropped into the middle of the enemy] (Tokyo: Kōjinsha, 2009), pp. 317-28.
You have
Access
Open access