Tokyo Metropolitan poster, "Please cooperate in the evacuation" (Tokyo, 1944)
Black-and-white poster headed in large brush characters 'Please cooperate in the evacuation', signed by the Governor of Tokyo, Odachi Shigeo. Below, a line drawing shows a train and files of people with bundles and cases, some waving, under a cog-shaped city emblem. The tell: an official request in a polite register, not an order, with a crowd drawn as cheerful and orderly, which says nothing about why people must leave or where to.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1944
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Tokyo Metropolitan authorities (poster as titled 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
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Showa Japan
- Leader
- Kuniaki Koiso
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Mobilize or secure compliance
- Themes
- Home front, Security and surveillance
- Event
- World War II
- 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 1944 Japanese government poster)
Tokyo Metropolitan poster, 1944, 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
疎開に 御協力を願ひます 東京都長官 大達茂雄
Please cooperate with the evacuation Governor of the Tokyo Metropolis, Odachi Shigeo
Read from the 198 px rendering; the large brush lettering is clear and the signature line is small but legible. Translation is a literal machine translation by Claude, not checked by a fluent reader.
