Performing the Nation: Magazine Images of Women and Girls in the Illustrations of Takabatake Kasho, 1925-1937

This article examines the complex ways in which popular visual culture can operate subtly and obliquely to encourage the citizens of the nation state to perform the gender norms stipulated by the authorities wielding power in that state while also eliciting a sense of freedom in the viewing subject. The materials examined are visual images of girls and women featured in magazine illustrations produced between 1925 and 1937 by one of pre-war Japan’s most prominent and popular illustrators, Takabatake Kashō (1888–1966). Although Kashō was also a prolific artist of representations of men and boys, this discussion will concern only his feminine images and the powerful and seductive set of gender norms this material presented for many viewing women and girls.