'Zeitaku wa teki da!' (Luxury Is the Enemy!) street sign, Tokyo
A street-side standing sign reading 'ぜいたくは敵だ!' ('Luxury is the enemy!'), with a 'Kōa Hōkō' ('serve the rise of Asia') banner beside it. The word 'enemy', normally kept for the opposing army, is stretched to cover silk, jewellery and restaurant meals, so a shopping choice becomes a side taken in the war. The campaign followed the 7 July 1940 ban on making and selling luxury goods.
- Date
- August 1, 1940
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- National Spiritual Mobilization Movement headquarters (Kokumin Seishin Sōdōin Honbu), Tokyo
- Region
- East Asia
- Country
- Empire of Japan
- Medium
- Signs and banners
- Issuer type
- Movement
- Regime
- Showa Japan
- Leader
- Fumimaro Konoe
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Mobilize or secure compliance
- Themes
- Home front, Economy and finance, War and the military
- Event
- Second Sino Japanese War
- Techniques
- Semantic hijackingIdentity fusion
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved September 27, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (PD-Japan-oldphoto; also PD in the U.S.)
Unknown photographer, 1940; scan uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Abasaa.
Text on the object
ぜいたくは敵だ! 興亞奉公 [illegible — additional small text below the main sign and on the banner, cropped by the photograph's edge or too low-resolution to read]
Luxury is the enemy! Serve the Rise of Asia [illegible]
The banner reading '興亞奉公' (Kōa Hōkō) is a separate sign to the left of the main 'Luxury is the enemy!' standing sign; both are visible in the same street-corner photograph. Small print beneath the main sign is cut off by the bottom of the frame.
