Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo is Annika Culver’s first monograph and winner of the 2014 Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies Book Prize. Culver’s book represents an exemplary yet approachable blend of current theoretical and historiographical trends in academia. On the surface level, Culver’s work introduces the reader to a number of famous modernist and avant-garde artists of the early Showa Era Japanese empire as these leftist intellectuals paradoxically came to support the fascist imperial project in Manchukuo. 

Each of her chapters contextualizes the wartime work of artists—such as Ai Mitsu, Fukuzawa Ichiro, Yamada Seizaburo, and many others—within the philosophical (and physical) journey they undertook to achieve their envisioned utopia of Manchuria. But beneath the biographies of these individuals lies a sophisticated message about the fabrication of the state, the creation of the “Other,” a mythologized frontier, alternatives to modernity, and discussions on complicating the resistance/collaboration dichotomy through the guise of cultural production and “unofficial” propaganda.

Like most of the Great Power empires, Japanese “unofficial propaganda” helped to develop an “empire of images,” a popular historiographical trend among imperial scholars. This colonial gaze transformed the colonies into loci of power for the metropole as part of the civilizing mission while simultaneously portraying the colonized as backwards and lazy, their land “virgin” and ready for development (p. 7). Artwork, literature, and pictures created a romanticized vision that “showcased Manchukuo to both Japanese and Western audiences, advertising its legitimacy both at home and abroad” and as such provided key support for continued effort to expand imperial control (p. 42).

Simultaneously, historical forces of modernity and its aspirants, such as fascism, communism, and liberalism, layered on the consciousness of individuals around the world. It is within this context that Culver situates her artists turned recently converted political prisoners. Many of these previously “proletarian” and avant-garde artists found themselves on state-sponsored sabbaticals to Manchukuo. There, they became subsumed into and champions of the Japanese imperial project of “utopia” in Asia. Many became blinded by their desire to rehabilitate themselves in the context of imperial Japan and their personal conviction that Manchuria provided an outlet for their dreams of utopia no longer possible in “developed” Japan, allowing them to overlook their support of fascism. These individual travelers’ tales are well worth the read, and enlightening for academics who wish to interrogate similar questions of imperial space.

Culver convincingly argues how fragile individualism is when subjected to larger historical forces. Overall, Glorify the Empire provides a complicated narrative that upsets monocausal or diametric portrayals of the state and its relation to individuals. Culver ultimately concludes by inviting the reader to expand upon these ideas, commenting on how there is a noticeable absence of colonial voices. As with all histories of intellectuals, it is difficult to situate their overall impact and reach upon broader sections of society. What percentage of everyday Japanese, let alone colonial populations, consumed this unofficial propaganda? Questions like these are useful to all cultural historians and students of empire making Glorify the Empire a helpful read for a broad spectrum of scholars.