Remapping Japanese militarism: provincial society at war 1904–1905.

In order to reassess the dominant images of popular militarism or stoic suffering in wartime Japan, this paper takes a street-level view of provincial society during the major conflict with Russia, 1904–1905. It focuses on three main sites of wartime contact between the community and the military: the rail station, the cinema, and the cemetery. By mining local press reports and especially letters to the press from local people, it exposes the diversity of public attitudes towards the war, the military and those in authority; these attitudes include a healthy cynicism and satire towards elites or propaganda, as well as a readiness to express discontent rather than suffer in silence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]