Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering (36 page)

	NE “No bedding or house to sleep in” ( neru ni ie nashi futon nashi ) Graphic: shivering mother, father, and child
	MU “Making trouble and losing rationality” ( muri o t ō shite d ō ri ni maketa ) Graphic: man holding a bamboo spear being hit on the helmet with a sledgehammer labeled “reason”
	KU “Militarists and bureaucrats—too late for regrets” ( kuitemo ottsukanu gunbatsu kanry ō ) Graphic: officer and top-hatted bureaucrat in handcuffs
	SA “Imperial Headquarters, which deceived all the way” ( sanza damashita Daihon'ei ) Graphic: wartime military officer broadcasting a speech

Probably because its 1946 New Year special appeared so soon after the defeat, at a time when the occupation's censorship operation was still cranking up, the
Ky
ō
ryoku shimbun
also included several direct references to the conquerors and, in some instances, transgressed the subsequent bounds of permissible expression. The conquerors entered the
iroha
tradition thusly:

	MA “General MacArthur, an understanding man” ( Ma gensui wa wakaru hito ) Graphic: the general's face, wearing his familiaar cap and sunglasses
	KE [KY Ō ] “The capital's dreams are defeat dreams” ( ky ō no yume wa haisen no yume ) Graphic: the Stars and Stripes flying over a Japanese building, and a small map of the archipelago with JAPAN written in English 15
	YA “Jeep on burned land” ( yaketsuchi ni jiipu ) Graphic: the ubiquitous American jeep driving through ruins
	TE “Hand signal—cigarette, how much?” ( temane—shigaretto hau maachi ) Graphic: Japanese man communicating with a GI
	E “The ties that bind are strange and wonderful” ( en wa ina mono aji na mono ) Graphic: a black GI and Japanese woman walking arm in arm 16

While the
Ky
ō
ryoku shimbun
was ushering in the first new year of the era of defeat with these indelicate observations, readers of another publication were offered a different but complementary set of
kana
associations in a “new edition syllable cards” cartoon sequence by Ogawa Takeshi titled “Voice of the People” (
Fig. 9-2
). Here, for example, the graphic for
me
depicted a T
ō
j
ō
-esque figure wearing dark glasses, with the simple caption “blind leader.” The holy war was trashed in the rendering for
se
, which depicted a military sword discarded in a garbage bin, accompanied by the caption “fed up with war.” A splendid little evocation of popular sentiment was conveyed in the rendering for
mo
, which portrayed a determined-looking peasant leaning on a hoe in a field. The caption read: “Not going to be deceived any more.”

	ME “Blind leader” ( mekura shid ō sha ) Graphic: Prime Minister T ō j ō as blind man giving a speech
	SE “Fed up with war” ( sens ō wa korikori ) Graphic: military sword in a trash bin
	MO “Not going to be deceived any more” ( m ō damasarenu ) Graphic: determined farmer leaning on a hoe