Street slogan "Stop the permanent wave" (Japan, 1940)
Black-and-white photograph of words painted in black katakana down a street, a man in a white hat bending to read them. The lettering reads 'Let's stop permanents'. The tell: a hairstyle becomes the subject of a collective 'let's' addressed to passers-by, turning a personal choice into shared wartime conduct without giving a reason on the spot.
Propaganda techniques used in this photograph
- Date
- 1940
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Japanese wartime home-front campaign (poster; issuer not named in the Commons record)
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Themes, Event, Source, Rights
- Region
- East Asia
- Country
- Empire of Japan
- Medium
- Photograph
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Showa Japan
- Leader
- Fumimaro Konoe
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- Home front, Gender and suffrage
- Event
- Second Sino Japanese War
- Leader
- Fumimaro Konoe
- Source
- Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved October 11, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (Commons licence field 'Public domain', no Restrictions flag; anonymous 1940 Japanese photograph)
Anonymous Japanese photograph, 1940, 'Stop the Permanent wave'; via Wikimedia Commons
Text on the object
Original (Japanese) · read from the image, not independently checked
パーマネントハヤメマセウ
Let's stop permanents
Read from the 250 px rendering; the lettering is large and clear, in historical kana usage (ませう). Translation is a literal machine translation by Claude, not checked by a fluent reader.
