Public Patriotism, Silent Dissent: Women and the Making of Senninbari in Wartime Japan

Authors

Mariko Nagai, Temple University JapanFollow

Date of this Version

2024

Document Type

Presentation

Citation

Textile Society of America 2024 Symposium

Shifts & Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles, November 12-17, 2024, a virtual event

Comments

Published by the Textiles Society of America

Copyright 2024, the author. Used by permission

Abstract

During the early years of the so-called “Fifteen Year War” (1931–1945), Japanese women and girls created senninbari when men received draft notices to serve. Often worn around soldiers’ waists underneath their uniforms, these sash-shaped talisman were embroidered with 1,000 red knots, each knot made by a woman. In a time when the Japanese government censored dissenting voices against its militaristic and nationalistic foreign and domestic policies, this government-encouraged gesture of stitching senninbari became one of the few ways in which women could voice their personal protests within patriarchal gender expressions (良妻賢母 “good wife, wise mother”). Senninbari’s design evolved with regional- and national-level superstitions in its construction.

Women born in the Year of the Tiger were encouraged to stitch as many as how old they were; no scissors could be used to cut the threads. Instead, they had to be cut off with teeth; some had a five-sen (go-sen) coin sewn in based on a wordplay that by wearing the coin, wearers could safely cross shisen, or death. Some had talismans from local shrines sewn in to ward off bullets. In this presentation, I will share how, in a time when soldiers were expected to die honorably rather than to live a life of shame, making senninbari embodied a paradox. Working with the public visual discourse of patriotism, it also contained the silent voice of dissent.