Imperial Rule Assistance Association poster, "Let's celebrate, energetically and cheerfully!" (Japan, 1940)
Black-and-white poster: a large paper lantern marked with a rising-sun disc and the characters for 'reverent celebration', above bold diagonal lettering, over a band naming the Imperial Rule Assistance Association. Top right, 'Eternal 2,600 years' and a line saying it is good to have been born in Japan. The tell: the message is an order to feel, 'Celebrate! Energetically and cheerfully', issued by a new national mobilisation body, so festivity itself is made a duty of the home front.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1940
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei Yokusankai)
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Theme, Event, Source, Rights
- Region
- East Asia
- Country
- Empire of Japan
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Party
- Regime
- Showa Japan
- Leader
- Fumimaro Konoe
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Theme
- Home front
- Event
- Kigen 2600 Celebrations
- Leader
- Fumimaro Konoe
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved October 11, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (Commons licence field 'Public domain', no Restrictions flag; anonymous 1940 Japanese poster)
Imperial Rule Assistance Association poster, 1940, as reproduced in an Asahi Shimbun photo-history book; via Wikimedia Commons
Text on the object
Original (Japanese) · read from the image, not independently checked
悠久二千六百年 よくぞ日本に生れたる 奉祝 祝へ！元気に朗かに 大政翼賛會
Eternal 2,600 years How good that you were born in Japan Reverent celebration Celebrate! Energetically and cheerfully Imperial Rule Assistance Association
Read from the 264 px rendering; the top-right vertical line is small, so its reading is less certain than the large lettering. Translation is a literal machine translation by Claude, not checked by a fluent reader.
