Introduction

Stories have power. Telling stories can be a political act. Sharing stories can spread awareness and knowledge, can highlight or champion social meanings and political sentiments, and can generate empathy and understanding. They touch on such powerful emotions as love, revival, and connectedness, or fear, danger, and foreboding. More importantly, stories shape our understanding of the world and our place in it. As philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt argues, storytelling is an action pregnant with political meaning and a vital process through which people create and reify their public world. Action (human activity) alone creates the “condition for remembrance, that is, for history” (Arendt Reference Arendt2018: 8–9). But without storytelling, and without the historian, collective memory remains an impossibility—and will ultimately fade into the ether. For Arendt, the reason storytelling is such a powerful tool in creating history has to do with its evocative nature. “Storytelling reveals meaning without the error of defining it.” Without stories to assign meaning, the past “would remain an unbearable sequence of sheer happenings” (Arendt Reference Arendt1995: 104–105).

As historians, both popular and academic, we often speak of storytelling through our roles as storytellers—we see storytelling as “central to the writing of history,” critical to our teaching, and the root of our discipline (Scott Reference Scott2011; Cronon Reference Cronon2013). Over the past few decades, however, historians have shown how stories not only embody our public world, as Arendt suggests, but also critique the status quo, highlight hopes and fears, and generate political or social outcomes. Historians have shifted their focus to “narrativity” in history, or the context, the production, and the meanings of stories in and of themselves. This trend, as Sarah Maza (Reference Maza1996) shows, became visible with the cultural turn in the 1980s. She identifies the turn to historical writing on stories as a striking convergence of different influences: cultural anthropology, feminist methods and the insights they provide into the links between public and private lives, and literary studies’ emphasis on intertextuality and reception. Whether in studying cat massacres as a form of workers protest or in narratives of murder to spotlight social tensions, scholars use stories to highlight their political meanings, their appeal, and to show their very real historical effects.Footnote ¹ Historians are thus part of a vast interdisciplinary scholarship on the political and persuasive uses of storytelling, as well as the emotional ways that stories can help people or groups deal with trauma and devastating loss (Polletta Reference Polletta2006; Stewart Reference Stewart2012; Leslie Reference Leslie2015; Jackson Reference Jackson2013). On both macro and micro levels, storytelling is an inherently political act.

The primary reason behind this is perhaps social-psychological: storytelling taps into emotion—whether negative feelings of anger, fear, and anxiety, or positive ones of joy, love, and hope. Emotions, in turn, are central to our political and social lives. They “fuel and direct our political energies and inform our rational decision-making” (Wahl-Jorgensen Reference Wahl-Jorgensen2019: 172). Negative emotions have traditionally been seen as the essential mobilizing emotions in political life. The emotional politics of anger have become the major theme of political debate and a means of shaping political behavior in today’s United States, if not across much of the developed world. Making voters angry, after all, helps politicians win votes (Webster Reference Webster2020). Anger fuels contemporary populism and, combined with fanning fear of domestic dissent, has contributed to the divisiveness of contemporary political discourse. We are, one journalist maintains, living in an “age of rage” (Porter Reference Porter2024).

It is my contention, however, that stories of hope have been used in attempts to mobilize the imaginary, particularly during times of crisis and war. Hope has no politics, yet it remains a powerful concept easily harnessed for political and personal ends. Its power lies in the fact that it is future oriented. Hope reminds communities that better days await if they can work through the difficulties of the present. This article thus explores the connection between storytelling and messages of hope by focusing on a different era of crisis—World War II-era Japan. I spotlight efforts to create an emotional politics of hope through narrative and propagandistic biographical stories about Tōjō Hideki.

Why Tōjō? Tōjō Hideki was the Imperial Japanese Army general who became prime minister in October 1941, on the eve of the outbreak of the Pacific War. He presided over the height of army influence in Japanese politics and oversaw Japan’s fateful decision to launch war against the United States and Great Britain in December 1941. Since the end of World War II, Tōjō has been reviled as a tyrant, a dictator, a fascist, a militarist, and a war criminal who mobilized Japanese subjects for total war and pressed for an increasing array of controls over state and society. He became the face of the worst aspects of Japan’s brutal war abroad and oppression at home. Tōjō is thus remembered (alongside Hirohito, the Shōwa Emperor) as one of the two most notorious figures of Japan’s twentieth-century history, and a central player in Japan’s national ruin.

From late October 1941 through early 1943, however, public storytelling about Tōjō turned the new prime minister into a media sensation. Tōjō was the topic of praise, from news articles to magazine features and biographies.Footnote ² Writers, journalists, publishers, and the press took to covering him in ways that highlighted him not only as a decisive military leader, but also a warmhearted human being with rich childhood and familial experiences. They used stories about his past, writing a history of his life that underlined how he was the person best suited to secure Japan’s future. The attention paid to him in the first one-and-a-half years of his premiership offers a fascinating window into political storytelling and the politics of hope in wartime Japan.

Among Japan’s wartime leaders, only Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro—the dashing scion of an aristocratic lineage and Japan’s most popular prewar leader—was even more beloved by the media. Konoe’s premiership in 1937 generated an unprecedented level of interest, leading one historian to provocatively call him Japan’s first populist leader (Tsutsui Reference Tsutsui2009).Footnote ³ Konoe was indeed popular—but not for his politics. Men appreciated him because he was young, a man of letters, and a charismatic yet non-traditional nobleman. Women liked him because he was different from the “smug, bearded generals of the past” and because he was not “a depraved old so-called politician” (Furukawa Reference Furukawa2015: 100–101). He gained popularity by writing in general-interest magazines, cultivating an image as someone closer to the masses than other political leaders (Tsutsui Reference Tsutsui2009): 181–183). Yet, whereas the public clamored for Konoe the charismatic individual, the image presented of Tōjō was that of the leader the country needed in its time of total war. For a brief period, Tōjō was promoted as the paragon of hope for the future.

Given Tōjō’s outsized presence in the political history of World War II-era Japan, historians have most often focused on him as a “dictator,” a symbol of Japan’s “military dictatorship,” or a formidable military bureaucrat (Butow Reference Butow1961; Furukawa Reference Furukawa2009; Takeda 2018; Tobe Reference Tobe2019; Tobe Reference Tobe2024).Footnote ⁴ A new English-language biography continues this trend, focusing on Tōjō in military and political context—describing him as an effective political operator and Japan’s “apex political predator” (Mauch Reference Mauch2026). Tōjō, however, is much less often viewed at the intersections between political history and the cultural politics. The lone exception is a biography written by historian Ichinose Toshiya (Reference Ichinose2020) that describes Tōjō as a professional soldier who recognized the necessity of mobilizing popular support for future total wars. This led Tōjō, Ichinose argues, to perform the role of a “charismatic leader,” one who used the media to steer public opinion in favor of the military, especially through reporting of his public “performances.” His public inspections of relocation centers, his greetings to bereaved families, or even his strange act of sifting through garbage bins were widely reported in ways that sought “to suppress popular discontent with Japan’s total war system.”Footnote ⁵ This article departs from Ichinose’s scholarship by shifting the focus to how the image of Tōjō operated in the propagandistic storytelling of the time. It shows how storytelling about his early life constituted an effort to present the taciturn, methodical, and stern soldier as the necessary man to lead Japan in its time of total war.

Tōjō was celebrated as a “warmhearted prime minister” (ninjō saishō), the “blitzkrieg prime minister” (dengeki saishō), a “man of steel” (tetsu no hito), and a “great man” (ijin). Children’s books, women’s magazines, biographies, magazines, journals, and other venues compared Tōjō to such important historical figures as Napoleon (in terms of work ethic), famous sixteenth-century unifier Toyotomi Hideyoshi, or, more pointedly, Hōjō Tokimune, the regent who presided over Japan when it repelled the thirteenth-century invasion by the Mongol Empire. Journalists, biographers, and other authors recounted story after story of Tōjō’s past and family life—stories of his childhood, of his penchant for fighting, and of his ability to solve knotty problems.

This article explores four such stories about his past to show their political meanings in the context of wartime Japan. None of these stories was overtly political—most were taken from events in his life and had at least a kernel of truth. But storytellers took liberties to convey a clear political message. The flurry of publications and stories of his life should not, as one historian has suggested, be taken as evidence of “the development of a Japanese-style personality cult” (Wetzler Reference Wetzler2020, 92).Footnote ⁶ Such stories certainly were Japanese wartime propaganda, but they were never part of an effort to build personal loyalty, to overshadow the emperor, or to rule as a dictator. More importantly, the use of stories to reify Tōjō’s past and the messages they hoped to spread make them important objects of historical study. As I will show, the stories of Tōjō’s past appear akin to fables: by “revealing meaning” without being ham-handed or clumsy, they served as vehicles for a central message of hope. Championing an emotional politics of hope, in turn, was a central part of efforts to unite the public behind Japan’s leadership and wartime policies. The glorification of Tōjō’s past was thus part of the emotional politics of the present. Lionizing Tōjō represented a cry of hope that a strong, compassionate, responsible, and dutiful leader could help Japan escape its wartime crisis unscathed.

Storytelling and propaganda

Public storytelling to a mass audience in Japan emerged alongside the rise of a “mass reading public.” It had deep roots in the dramatic growth of print media, radio, and film in the 1920s, and the development of a highly literate consumer public. There were two main midwives of this mass reading public: women’s magazines and popular general-interest magazines like Kingu. On the one hand, women’s magazines helped create a vast reading public. They were such an important phenomenon that by the 1920s, the reading public equated “mass” culture with women (Sato Reference Sato2003). But Kingu had an even greater influence. Aimed at urbanites, Kingu was an affordable and thick magazine that transcended gender and class lines and catered to all demographics. It aimed to sell “one copy per household” and was one of the very few prewar magazines to reach a paid circulation of over one million copies. In the 1920s and early 1930s, Kingu served as an alternative for those who could not afford big-ticket items like radios. When radio purchases expanded dramatically in the 1930s, Kingu morphed into a general-interest magazine that was central to Japan’s mass reading public, and what media historian Satō Takumi (Reference Satō2002, Reference Satō2018) sees as a “fascist” public sphere during a time of total war.Footnote ⁷ Thus, by the late 1930s, stories told in the media reached a vastly larger audience than at any time in the past.

This creation of a mass audience was accelerated by war and military action abroad. War was extraordinarily popular. The entertainment and publishing world took advantage of the Manchurian Incident (1931–1933) to sell newspapers and, in the process, generated a media-driven war craze on the home front. Newspapers, journals, pulp magazines, newsreels, radio, and film acted as a “cheering gallery” for the Kwantung Army’s actions, turning the incident into a public spectacle that was in part defined by an outpouring of heroic bidan, or moral storytelling celebrating good deeds. As Louise Young (Reference Young1998: 113) shows, these “tales of heroism” were highly gendered: male bidan centered on sacrificial death on the battlefield, whereas female bidan often focused on acts of great personal sacrifice on the home front. These stories, Young notes, were one “symptom of the imperial jingoism that helped transform both the form and content of Japanese popular culture in the early 1930s.”

A perfect example of this imperial jingoism was the story of the Three Human Bullets, three combat engineers during the Shanghai Incident of 1932 who died while detonating a Bangalore torpedo to clear battlefield obstacles. Though likely a battlefield accident, romanticized accounts of the incident swept the entertainment world. The story of the Three Human Bullets became a media event in which reporters extolled the soldiers’ loyalty, courage, and sacrifice, creating a cultural sensation in Japan. They were celebrated with statues and became the objects of mass consumption—in movies, theater, radio dramas, songs, woodblock prints, textbooks, kitchenware, toys, clothing, and more. The “Three Human Bullets” media fad did not last long, but it showed how accidental battlefield deaths could be transformed by the media to mobilize support for imperial expansion (Young Reference Young1998: 77–78; Kramer and Kramer Reference Kramer and Kramer2019).

By the late 1930s, this imperial jingoism fed into a propaganda network that, as Barak Kushner (Reference Kushner2006) argues, “pushed the nation to mobilize during World War II to an extent that far surpassed many of the fascist states to which Japan was frequently compared.” Japan, notably, did not have a ministry of propaganda like Nazi Germany—but this was the source of its vast success. As Kushner demonstrates, Japanese propaganda was effective precisely because the “entire propaganda structure was grounded outside of the government.” Writers, intellectuals, stage performers, police officers, comedians, and the broader public worked in a close relationship with government and business, fueling a “war fever” and generating support for imperialist adventures abroad (Kushner Reference Kushner2006; Yellen Reference Yellen, Bailey and Farber2019; Kishi Reference Kishi2020). This was supported by the widespread advance of radio, which, as in other nations, served as a “new vehicle of nationalism” and a powerful tool to shape the views of mass audiences (Hilmes Reference Hilmes, Auerbach and Castronovo2013). Far from the government exercising total control over the mass media and public discourse, the national public sphere itself was central to building support for Japan’s imperial project (Kim Reference Kim and Kim2013; Kishi Reference Kishi2020).

Propaganda was effective in part because it was framed in ways that inspired not just solidarity or need, but joy and pleasure.Footnote ⁸ The words “pleasure,” “fun,” and “laughter,” in fact, were common tropes in early wartime Japanese propaganda. One powerful message promoted was that pleasure was not simple escapism. Far from it, people could “happily” overcome everyday economic controls, even if responding to difficult economic circumstances required some “emotional tightening.” “Fun” was even proposed as critical for wartime national policy. For instance, a “Laugh and Harmony Campaign” was announced in April 1941 to encourage all citizens to keep smiling in their daily lives. Photo magazines like the Shashin shūhō portrayed people making comfort bags with a smile, waiting in line at the post office to buy government bonds to support the war with a smile, and working with their tonarigumi (neighborhood association) to exchange unwanted goods with a smile (Ōtsuka Reference Ōtsuka2021). Wartime Japan has been characterized as a “dark valley” or a “dour” or gloomy time of state oppression and socioeconomic controls over public life, but visual media in the early wartime period presented it as a bright valley illuminated by ubiquitous smiles.Footnote ⁹

The reception of propaganda in wartime Japan is difficult to gauge and is not the primary focus of this article. Rather than analyzing public sentiment, this article explores what historian Sandra Wilson (Reference Wilson2002: 69) has called “messages that were disseminated, not messages that were received.” That said, historians of Japan have shown that the broader public by the 1940s was remarkably receptive to public messaging in wartime Japan. This was achieved through more than simple nationalist exhortations for loyalty and patriotism. First, the state instituted public moments of ritual silence in the months following Japan’s invasion of China in July 1937. On the emperor’s birthday and other important national holidays, all Japanese subjects faced the imperial palace and bowed in silence for one minute. Second, by 1940, all subjects were physically mobilized at the municipal level through community councils (chōnaikai), and at the neighborhood level through neighborhood associations (tonarigumi). These organizations served as “the chief channels for disseminating government communications.” Third, propaganda was also successful because of a culture of arrests, fear, and threats that silenced opposition leaders (Ruoff Reference Ruoff2014; Yamashita Reference Yamashita2015; Yamashita Reference Yamashita2023).

The other side of this propaganda network was a multifaceted and complicated system of censorship. Although the system originally centered on the home ministry, it also involved the army, navy, foreign, and communication ministries, and during wartime the Cabinet Intelligence Bureau (Naikaku jōhōkyoku). Formal censorship vastly expanded after the 1928 revisions to the Peace Preservation Law, and censors exercised broad authority to determine permissible expression. But a chronic shortage of censors in Imperial Japan led officials to use informal means to do their work. Censors communicated with publishers, editors, and public figures, and in the process trained them to self-censor their own works. Authors and publishers learned to anticipate the censors’ preferences and “read between the lines,” which dramatically decreased the financial costs of censorship. This “reading between the lines” or “reading the atmosphere” is what one author calls an “atmosphere of censorship” (kūki no ken’etsu) in Imperial Japan (Tsujita Reference Tsujita2018).Footnote ¹⁰

Former army press department officer Hiragushi Takashi, who dealt with censoring magazines, noted in his postwar memoirs the effectiveness of this atmosphere of censorship. “Veterans of each company,” he recalled, “were already informed of what the military was thinking, what the military wanted, and even the preferences of the press department, so there was no room for objection.” Publishers often took the lead and asked the army minister or the press department to write a prologue or short statement. Upon reflection, he stated that this was little more than “self-censorship,” and that the media acted as “government newspapers or government magazines” (Hiragushi Reference Hiragushi1980: 72–73).

By the time Tōjō became prime minister in October 1941, a sophisticated regime of propaganda and censorship had fostered a mass public that was receptive to public messaging. The Japanese public had been long exposed to crisis narratives in international politics. Propaganda in the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident in 1931 highlighted the sense of Japan as isolated in a hostile and unforgiving world. From 1932 onward, army propaganda and journalists alike popularized the phrase “time of crisis” or “state of emergency” (hijōji), the usage of which peaked in 1937, to highlight the necessity of preparation for emergency actions at home and abroad (Ueno Reference Ueno2016). From this point, even aggressive actions abroad—from undeclared war in China from 1937 to the occupation of French Indochina in 1940 and 1941—only deepened a sense that Japan was a victim of the international system. The United States responded from 1940 with a “moral embargo” and the gradual implementation of economic sanctions. When the United States froze Japanese assets and began a full embargo in August 1941, it appeared indisputably true to political observers that Japan was being threatened with economic ruin. The media portrayed Japan as the victim of an “ABCD encirclement,” noting that it was fenced in by America, Britain, China, and the Dutch (Iwakuro 2015: 327; Yellen Reference Yellen, Bailey and Farber2019). By the time of the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, crisis narratives felt all too real.

Stories of hope

This was the context within which stories of hope were told of Prime Minister Tōjō. A wide variety of authors took up the brush to write stories about Tōjō’s past. Not all the authors are identifiable—some perhaps used pen names. But they included journalists, children’s literature authors, critics, and biographers. The best-known author was Mutō Teiichi, a journalist and critic who served as chief editor of the Hōchi Shimbun. During the war, Mutō published widely for youth and adult audiences on current affairs, Japanese swords, famous generals, traditional figures like Yoshida Shōin, and the values that defined Japan’s mission in Asia. Other authors included biographer and children’s book author Itō Shun’ichirō; Shintenchi (New Land) journalist Nakayama Ichirō; Shufu no tomo (The Housewife’s Companion) writer Sasamura Yūzō; and poet, Osaka Jiji Shimbun editorial writer, and children’s literature author Ozeki Iwaji, among many others. Stories about him were told in a range of venues, from nonfiction books to general interest journals, economic and business monthlies to newspapers, and women’s magazines to children’s books. Collectively, authors highlighted four stories about Tōjō’s early and familial life. They presented him as dutiful, caring, forthright, hardworking, and unyielding and decisive—just the character traits needed to help Japan navigate the stormy waters of great power confrontation.

Story 1: The Weeding Story . One morning, around the time of the Sino–Japanese War (1894–1895), Hideki’s father, Hidenori, ordered him to pull up the weeds in the garden when he got back home from school. Ever the dutiful young boy, Hideki promptly agreed. But by the time he returned home, the task had completely slipped his mind and he spent the afternoon at play outdoors. It was only at dinnertime, when he at last entered his household, that he was reminded of his long-forgotten promise.

From this point, the weeding story diverges in ways designed to appeal to the intended audience. Authors targeting a younger audience, like Ozeki Iwaji in the children’s book Sūjiku no ijin (Great Men of the Axis) or Namiki Shigeru’s writing in the monthly economic affairs magazine Jitsugyō no sekai (The World of Business), foreground Hideki’s inner turmoil at having failed to live up to his promise. They paint a picture of Hideki as a perceptive, dutiful boy who feels distressed and atones for his mistake. A typical example of such storytelling goes as follows: upon his arrival at home, Hideki notices that his father is in a foul mood. A glance at his father’s face jogs his memory. The promise! Hideki promptly apologizes, turns around, and goes out into the yard to pull the weeds until well after nightfall. After he finishes his task, he sits down with the family to dinner, all the while suppressing the tears that well up in his eyes. As he listens to the pleasant hum of his family dinner gathering, he remains tortured by the fact that he had failed his father and failed to live up to his duty (Ozeki Reference Ozeki1942; Namiki Reference Namiki1941).

Other storytellers focus on parental guidance. Most highlight his father’s role. In these tales, Hidenori “sternly admonished” the young Hideki and did not allow him to eat dinner until he had completed his task (Mutō 1942: 155; Itō 1942: 19). Authors in women’s monthlies like Shufu no tomo (The Housewife’s Friend), conversely, tell a story of a young boy who needed his mother’s firm intervention. In this version, it was Hideki’s mother, Chitose, who reminded the young boy of his promise. Only after Hideki spends an hour outside weeding does his mother get out his rice bowl and softly says, “Come in, you must be hungry.” Chitose then imparts a lesson to the young Hideki that he will heed for the rest of his life. “People,” she says, “place a high value on doing their duty… on responsibility, and the most important thing is always being sure to follow through. Your father earnestly cares that you become someone who values responsibility.” His mother’s words “pierced the core of his heart,” and the young Hideki nodded in agreement again and again (Sasamura Reference Sasamura1941: 52).

Story 2: “Fighting Tōjō.” These stories emphasize young Hideki’s early hatred of studying—he was a rowdy and reckless young boy known among his classmates as “Fighting Tōjō,” or kenka Tōjō. These stories paint a picture of Hideki as an unruly boy and a naturally gifted fighter. From a young age, he had become adept at the sword dance and a skillful practitioner of Shintōryū swordsmanship. Tōjō also loved to participate in sumo and contests of strength against other children. “The boy was also wild and completely uncontrollable,” writes Takamura Tōyō in a 1942 biography, “and not a single day went by without him getting into a fight” (Takamura 1942: 34; Iwasa 1943: 10). Tōjō was thus painted as one who enjoyed the pleasures of a rough-and-tumble childhood. So rough was his childhood that Mutō Teiichi, writing in the children’s book Rikukaigun meishōden (Biographies of Famous Generals and Admirals) compared his penchant for fighting and his refusal to back down with that of Mussolini. Mutō’s book repeated common tropes that circulated the globe about the Italian leader, noting that Mussolini often fought as a young boy, but “never returned home a loser.” Although Mutō and other authors admitted the same could not be said about the young Tōjō, they stressed his similarities with his Fascist Italian counterpart. Like Mussolini, Tōjō was known for his strength of personality, his wild nature as a young boy, and the fact that he was “the boss of his group of childhood friends” (Mutō 1942: 153-54; Itō 1942: 19).

Tōjō hated to lose. As former classmate Oku Yasuo recalled, “Tōjō’s hatred of defeat was especially acute. He was skillful at kendo, but whenever he lost to his opponent he would look down, become silent, turn bright red, and feel mortified. We would always tell each other that there is no point in getting that frustrated, but even today I can still vividly recall that face” (Sasamura Reference Sasamura1941: 54). Other authors noted that this hatred of losing translated into a dogged refusal to concede defeat, even when he had clearly lost in contests of strength. “No matter how many times he was held down, he would never surrender. Fed up with his amazing obstinacy, [his opponent] would let go. Upon looking at his face when he was held down, he was always wildly out of sorts (hidoku kushagaru) gritting his teeth and his eyes full of tears. When I close my eyes like this, I can vividly recall his face from back then” (Takamura 1942: 33–34). So unyielding was Tōjō’s spirit that he readily outlasted even those much stronger than he. Even when he lost, he won. This penchant for fighting, at both Gakushūin and the military preparatory school, irked one of his school principals so much that he is said to have intimated to Tōjō that someone like him “is better off quitting school” (Itō 1942: 22–23).

It was a fight that purportedly changed young Hideki’s ways. One day while he was in the central military preparatory school in Tokyo, he came to blows with seven or eight of his classmates. Tōjō did not stand a chance and was soundly defeated. From this point, once again, the stories diverge. Most authors focus on young Hideki’s thought process, portraying a tearful Tōjō as he realizes that brute force could only take a person so far. One man can only win against one adversary. This led him to turn over a new leaf, and to find a more flexible way to win. “To win against many,” he concluded, “it has to be through one’s studies” (Itō 1942: 27). This much is no doubt true. “Brute force alone is no good,” he later told his private secretary, Col. Akamatsu Sadao. According to Akamatsu (Reference Iinkai1982), Tōjō stated that from this point he stopped going out on Sundays and devoted himself to reviewing his basic studies from his regional preparatory school. Tōjō, Akamatsu notes, was ranked third from last in his class before the fight, but with his newfound dedication he graduated with “average grades.”

But authors took great liberties in telling this story. The Shufu no tomo retelling foregrounded his mother’s wisdom. According to this version, Tōjō thought in vain about how one man alone could overcome seven enemies. Unable to find an answer on his own, he confided in his mother. She replied, “Your basic mistake is to think you can win through brute force. There is no way one person can win against seven. Your path to victory lies elsewhere. Win in your studies. Win through your grades. This way, you can win over seven or even one hundred people.” Her reply impressed Tōjō deeply, and from this point he became a “fiercely diligent student” (mōretsu na benkyōka). If his peers studied for ten hours, he would study for fifteen. His mother’s advice and his hatred of losing thus contributed toward his rapid rise in the school rankings, allowing him to become No. 7 in his class. Notably, he won academically over each of the seven people who had beaten him up (Sasamura Reference Sasamura1941: 54–55).

Not all stories focused on this physical confrontation. “Fighting Tōjō,” after all, also implied mental fortitude and a hatred of losing at anything. One particularly detailed story, written for a children’s audience, emphasized Tōjō being mocked by his fellow students at Shirokita Middle School. He stuffed his bare feet into a pair of tattered military shoes, tightened his pants with a heko obi (a soft waistband), and carried a packed lunch of cold rice balls. “Look, hey look at Hideki’s worn-out shoes!” they would say. “Look at Tōjō, with his left shoulder sticking out. How can he put on airs like that?” In this story, his desire to best those who mocked him awakened his inner strength. “As if I would lose to them!” Tōjō would think. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” he decided, and it was here that his “never-give-up attitude” (ganbarizumu) awakened (Ozeki Reference Ozeki1942: 5–7).

Whether this awakening came from a physical confrontation or childish bullying, Tōjō’s strengthened resolve garnered the respect of teachers and peers alike.Footnote ¹¹ His classmates later remarked, “I have never seen anyone who studies that much.” And his former principal at military preparatory school, the respected educator Fukai Kan’ichirō, noted such effort as something that prepared him for his stewardship of state. “Tōjō,” Fukai said, “was something of a rough kid. His grades were not among the elite class of our best or second best [group of students], but in any case, he was a hard worker, and among those who hated to lose, he was most definitely Number 1. This unyielding spirit is what is needed most in today’s state of affairs” (Itō 1942: 23).

Story 3: First Lieutenant Tōjō’s Compassionate Leadership. Other authors emphasized his strong moral compass, his compassionate leadership, and his ability to inspire loyalty. Two stories illustrated this—both during his time as a first lieutenant. The first anecdote, told in a widely circulated biography by Itō Shun’ichirō, deals with Tōjō’s response to hazing. One evening, two veteran soldiers purportedly called a fresh recruit to their bedside and hazed him excessively. Tōjō, who happened to be the lieutenant on duty that evening, called over the two veterans. Knowing his reputation as a stern and strict officer, the veterans realized they might be in deep trouble—yet far from reprimanding them for bullying, Tōjō was gentle and considerate. He lightly cautioned them that they were taking their hazing too far and urged them to reflect on their actions. Had Tōjō lost his temper or severely scolded the two, they might have taken out their anger on the recruit in different ways. His lenience helped them change their ways—from that day on, the two soldiers never bullied another recruit (Itō 1942: 50–51).

The other anecdote dealt with his compassionate response to theft within his company. Normally, lieutenants would conduct a strict investigation until the culprit was identified or confessed. But First Lieutenant Tōjō rejected such harsh military discipline. Instead, he gathered the squad together and quietly talked to them of soldierly spirit and the importance of loyalty within the army.

“Anyone can lose their way,” Tōjō told his soldiers. “If anyone present here unexpectedly lost their way and made tonight’s terrible blunder, then at some point tonight, place it out somewhere. Anywhere is fine. Do it discreetly so that you are not seen by anyone else” (Itō 1942: 51–52). The following morning, the stolen item would invariably be “found,” whether in the corner of a hallway or at the entrance to the toilets (Sasamura Reference Sasamura1941: 56). This method reinforced discipline and prevented the imprisonment and career ruination of soldiers who had momentarily “lost their way.” To the authors who recounted this story, this offered more evidence of Tōjō’s compassion and thoughtfulness. Even more, it showed his ability to take decisive action to resolve thorny problems in a thoughtful way.

Story 4: Family Lineage. Stories of Tōjō’s life blended with those of his father’s life as well. In fact, some authors purposefully linked them together. “To talk about Tōjō Hideki, one must discuss his father, Tōjō Hidenori,” opined one author. Of course, many writers admitted that father and son were not the same. Hidenori was well known throughout military circles to be a “great strategist” and tactician, whereas Hideki was instead “seen as more of an administrator” or a military bureaucrat (Hyūga 1941: 23). Nonetheless, writers waxed eloquent about Hidenori, suggesting the unique and elite pedigree from which Hideki came. Most focused on Hidenori’s purported relationship with Jakob Meckel, the Prussian major who served as an advisor to the Meiji government and famously noted Korea as a “dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.” Popular historian Hosaka Masayasu (2005: 27–28) writes that Hidenori and Meckel met in 1885 at the Army War College, and that Hidenori peppered the Prussian major with questions of warfare and strategy. For our purposes, however, whether they met is less important than how that meeting was reimagined when Japan’s crisis came to a head. From 1941, pundits excited at Tōjō’s premiership began to write in flights of fancy that his father was Meckel’s “beloved pupil” (manadeshi), his “favorite apprentice,” and that Hidenori “towered over his fellow students” (Itō 1942: 9, 18; Sasamura Reference Sasamura1941: 52; Takamura 1942: 30; Namiki Reference Namiki1941: 152).

It was stories of Hidenori’s personal character, however, that took center stage. One such anecdote dealt with Hidenori’s well-known frustrations with the Chōshū clique in the army. Leaders who hailed from the former domain of Chōshū, Yamaguchi Prefecture, were dominant within the army during the Meiji era (1868–1912).Footnote ¹² They imposed tight controls, giving preference in appointments and promotions to younger soldiers who had roots in the former Chōshū domain. The Chōshū clique was thus the source of great resentment among competent soldiers like Hidenori who came from different domains (the Tōjō family originally hailed from Nanbu domain, or present-day Iwate Prefecture). “Hidenori,” it was told, “could not swallow being bossed around by men from Chōshū” (Nakayama 1941: 40). This resentment boiled over in a public quarrel with Hasegawa Yoshimichi, one of the “four great Chōshū generals” of the Meiji era who later went on to serve as general staff chief and Governor-General of Korea.

The quarrel occurred after the end of the Russo–Japanese War in Seoul, where Hidenori briefly served as commander of the 30th infantry brigade. According to the most detailed of these stories, recounted by author Nakayama Ichirō in Dalian-based general-interest monthly Shintenchi (New Horizon)—Hidenori took an instant dislike to General Hasegawa, then commander-in-chief of Japanese armies in Korea.Footnote ¹³ He found Hasegawa an intolerable man who sullied the honor of the Japanese army and had no right to serve in a position of influence. Hasegawa, the story goes, was known for his dissolute lifestyle. He “indulged in alcohol and women” and in “gluttonous debauchery” (bōin bōshoku). Making matters worse, his subordinates emulated his dissolute behavior.

Hidenori wanted to reprimand the general, and his chance to do so finally arrived at a farewell party held just before Hidenori’s brigade returned to Japan. Hasegawa was also in attendance and purportedly brought along his “favorite geisha” and her “ravishing friends.” As they took their seats, Hidenori stood up, gave his thanks for holding the send-off party, and promptly rebuked his commanding officer (in the form of counsel).

Hasegawa rose in anger and yelled at him to stop, stating that giving unsolicited counsel to superiors was “extremely rude” and flouted military regulations. But Hidenori would not yield. He retorted that he was giving counsel not as a brigade commander, but as an individual, so this had nothing to do with military discipline. Hasegawa snapped back, ordering his subordinate once more to be quiet. If Hidenori continued to speak, then Hasegawa would punish him for flouting military regulations. Silenced but not cowed, Hidenori took his seat.

Hidenori’s decision to rebuke his commander owed to his sense that Hasegawa and those around him had built a dissolute culture in the Imperial Japanese Army. He wanted Hasegawa to recognize the weight of his responsibilities and to reflect upon his actions as a representative of the nation. This was why the author in Shintenchi praised Hidenori as “the lone brigade commander who had the strong backbone to speak freely and directly to his superior (omote o okashite), the strong General of the Chōshū clique. Who can show such bravery?” (Nakayama 1941: 40–41). In recounting this story in Shintenchi, the author highlighted Hidenori as a man of principle, and implied that the apple had not fallen far from the tree. Hidenori’s son, Tōjō Hideki, was every bit as principled, with just as clear a moral compass: a point that other storytellers stressed as well (Iwasa 1943: 10; Itō 1942: 21; Sasamura Reference Sasamura1941). Like father, like son.

Meanings

Historian Ichinose Toshiya (Reference Ichinose2020: 216–217) believes that some of these stories were published at Tōjō’s behest. Tōjō, Ichinose states, could not win the people’s trust by flaunting his authority and dignity alone, so he had his subordinates make efforts to portray his “warmhearted” and “friendly” nature in children’s books. One such book, edited by Hiragushi Takashi, writer Tominaga Kengo, and critic and journalist Mutō Teiichi, included the following passage:

Ichinose implies that such books were part and parcel of Tōjō’s performance of a charismatic leader and a “warmhearted” and “blitzkrieg” prime minister. I have found little evidence that Tōjō or his subordinates pushed publishers to spread such narratives, and the only evidence Ichinose offers is that of the abovementioned book edited by Hiragushi (an army man and member of Imperial General Headquarters Press Section). While plausible, this interpretation overlooks that these stories were told in a much wider variety of venues than children’s books, and by a broader set of authors. For our purposes, however, what is more relevant is the nature of storytelling about Tōjō in the propaganda and media landscape of wartime Japan. Collectively, these efforts were part and parcel of efforts to spread a message of hope in the early wartime years.

Each of these stories highlighted an aspect of his character useful for navigating Japan’s total war across the Asia-Pacific. The weeding story showed how even from a young age, Tōjō learned to be a man of duty and responsibility—a man who possessed a firm and clear moral compass. Whether he became this way owing to his strict upbringing, parental intervention, or his unique sense of self, the focus on his commitment to duty implied that he was one to whom critical jobs could be entrusted. The “Fighting Tōjō” stories showed him to be a man of unyielding spirit who refused to lose, and a man who could even turn certain defeat into unconditional victory. Anecdotes about Tōjō as a first lieutenant not only highlighted his tolerance and thoughtfulness but also showed an ability to find unconventional solutions to difficult problems. And the anecdote about Tōjō’s father hinted that the son, too, had a strong moral fiber and would not sacrifice his principles. Dutiful, responsible, decisive, unyielding, compassionate, and resilient—were these not the qualities of an ideal leader amid a global crisis?

Although assessing the popular reception of these stories is challenging, Tōjō clearly enjoyed extraordinary popularity in the media early in his premiership. One essayist in November 1941 called Tōjō “the hope of the military” and a prime minister to whom people could pin their hopes in a time of troubled internal and external affairs (Kikuchi 1941: 33–35). Prominent philosopher, political commentator, and conservative intellectual Miyake Yūjirō—and regular contributor to Jitsugyō no sekai —stated in December 1941 that having General Tōjō as prime minister “is just what we need,” and that since party cabinets are unsuited to Japan’s emergency situation, “abandoning them is tantamount to throwing away a pair of worn-out shoes” (Miyake 1941, 12). Moreover, conservative journalist Oyamada Kennan argued in the February 1942 edition of nationalist magazine Nihon oyobi Nihonjin (Japan and the Japanese), “There is not one person who opposes [the Tōjō Cabinet]. This in large part owes to Prime Minister Tōjō’s roaring popularity.” It was Tōjō, after all, who was able to make the difficult but correct decision to wage war, and it was Tōjō whose decision making could no doubt cut the Gordian knot of Japan’s international difficulties. “Why does the General hold this trust and this prestige?” Oyamada continued. “It is because that man is an unselfish and praiseworthy idealist (seishinka)” (Oyamada 1942, 69). Such statements, like the abovementioned stories told about Tōjō, conveyed a message of hope that Tōjō was the man needed to deal with Japan’s national crisis. They were part and parcel of a broader propaganda that advocated for Tōjō as a charismatic leader who could stand alongside other global leaders and help lay a path to a brighter future.

These stories about Tōjō’s life held sway for a fleeting moment in time. The fall of Saipan in July 1944 was an “extraordinary shock” to the masses and engendered deep concerns about the prospects for the war (Yoshimi Reference Yoshimi2015: 220–228).Footnote ¹⁴ Tōjō, by this time, was hated by large sections of Japan’s conservative ruling elite, which finally ousted him from power on July 22, 1944. Strikingly, however, on the very same day the Tōjō cabinet fell, liberal commentator Kiyosawa Kiyoshi (Reference Kiyosawa1995, 381–382) noted in his diary that “Tōjō is popular among the general public.” “It would be good for him,” Kiyosawa joked, “to go out to town, Mito Kōmon style.”Footnote ¹⁵ This popularity, too, was fleeting. By early 1945, when the war situation took a greater toll on everyday lives, any admiration for his character had all but vanished, and Tōjō became the object of public wariness (Ichinose Reference Ichinose2020: 319–321). Hope turned to despair, trust to suspicion, and mass storytelling about political leadership was no longer used as a vehicle of hope for a brighter future.

Conclusion

The use of storytelling to craft a message of hope was not unique to Tōjō or to Japan, or even to the war. One could find it among other political leaders of the day on either side of World War II. Hitler and Mussolini were idolized by many who remained deeply ambivalent about their parties. Mussolini was seen as the “man that many longed for in order to revitalize a nation that was experiencing a deep crisis of political representation.” He was presented as “the man,” “the one the Nation had been waiting for,” or even a “man of Providence” (Falasca-Zamponi Reference Falasca-Zamponi1997: 50, 86). Hitler was subject to similar adulation. Historian Ian Kershaw (Reference Kershaw1987) notes the emergence from the 1930s of a “Hitler myth,” a propaganda triumph in which Hitler epitomized all that was necessary and good for German society. He was framed as the personification of the nation, the defender of German strength, a military genius, a representative of popular justice and law and order, and a true “charismatic” leader. This was not solely an Axis or “fascist” phenomenon, either. Radio broadcasts and apocalyptic narratives in the wake of defeat at Dunkirk in 1940 similarly reshaped British Prime Minister Winston Churchill into a fountainhead of hope. Churchill became, in the words of Isaiah Berlin (Reference Berlin1949: 90), “the savior of his country, a mythical hero who belongs to legend as much as to reality.”

In the case of all these wartime leaders, stories were mobilized as part of an emotional politics of hope to present them as necessary to create a brighter future. The stories told about them, in turn, had both political meaning and the potential to impact the popular psyche—especially in wartime Japan, where the populace was largely receptive to public messaging. Sarah Maza (Reference Maza1996: 1508), in highlighting the influence of stories in history, perceptively notes that “the power of political ideology is in great measure dependent on its ability to mobilize the imaginary.” Hope, as this essay has argued, represented one such way authors sought to mobilize the imaginary. Hope’s power is precisely that it is future oriented. It reminds us that we can overcome contemporary difficulties. As David Leheny (Reference Leheny2018: 183) argues in his study of emotions in contemporary Japanese political life, hope works politically in times of perceived crisis or decline because it is “natural for what states already encourage us to do: to think of ourselves as a part of a larger community whose best days lie before us.”

Storytelling in the wartime period did precisely this. Recounting Tōjō’s past was therefore not a simple reflection of battlefield successes or public fascination with the leader. It was an act of emotional politics that attempted to ground the national community in a hopeful vision of the future. This offers a powerful reminder of a somewhat banal yet meaningful truth. The stories we tell—however innocuous they may seem—are never neutral mirrors of reality. As Hannah Arendt suggests, they are vital tools through which we reify our public world and assign meanings to the otherwise “sheer happenings” of our collective past. Stories are thus invitations to view the world not as it is, but as it could be. And a compelling narrative blurs the boundaries of what we are and what we might become.