Matchbox label, Japanese wartime propaganda in Malay: "Tentoe dapat kemenangan" (Victory will surely be won), No. 3 (c. 1943)
A cardboard matchbox printed in Malay with Japanese wartime propaganda. Caricatured figures, read by the museum as an American (marked by trousers) and a British man (marked by a Union Jack waistcoat), tumble away from a Japanese bomb marked with the character for victory, over a globe ringed with factories, under the slogan "Tentoe dapat kemenangan".
- Date
- 1943
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Japanese propaganda department in the occupied Dutch East Indies (per the museum description; printer or maker not identified)
- Region
- Southeast Asia
- Country
- Empire of Japan
- Medium
- Object
- Issuer type
- Military
- Regime
- Showa Japan
- Leader
- Hideki Tojo
- Audience
- Foreign public
- Purpose
- Reassure
- Themes
- War and the military, Empire and colonialism
- Event
- World War II
- Techniques
- Name-calling
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (photograph by Tropenmuseum, part of the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam), retrieved September 29, 2026
- Rights
- CC BY-SA 3.0 (photograph, Tropenmuseum / Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, via Wikimedia Commons)
Tropenmuseum, part of the Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, matchbox with propaganda inscription of the Japanese, TM-3934-56a, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Text on the object
TENTOE DAPAT KEMENANGAN HIMPOENLAH KERTAS APIAPI NO. 3 勝
Victory will surely be won Collect the "kertas apiapi" (matchbox papers, sense inferred) No. 3 Victory (the character 勝, kachi/sho)
Read from the 500-pixel image; the word DAPAT is partly hidden by the figures and is reconstructed from the slogan's sense, and the Japanese character on the shell may be preceded by a further partly hidden character. The translation is machine-made and not checked by a fluent reader of Malay.
