What you’re looking at above are six issues of the Japanese World War II-era propaganda magazine Shashin Shuho, aka Pictorial Weekly, published by Japan’s Naikaku Johobu, or Information Department of the Cabinet. The interiors are a mix of military and lifestyle stories, which is to say, in addition to glorifications of the armed forces, you might encounter pieces as diverse as a profile on a swim team or a photo essay of a fishing trawler hauling in a catch. Whatever the specific subject matter, all the content projects the image of an industrious nation on the upswing.

When Shashin Shuho launched in February 1937, Japan was headed for war. By July of that year (with economic help from Germany, the Soviet Union and the U.S.) it would be fighting China. When that conflict folded into World War II (and sides were swapped so that the U.S. was now an enemy of Japan) Shashin Shuho continued to publish. As the war turned against Japan the patriotic tone of the magazine remained consistent, and it only closed its doors in July 1945, when it was clear to the entire population that the Allies would win.

The U.S. hit the Japanese mainland with two atomic bombs a month later. We can easily identify Shashin Shuho as propaganda, but of course, we’re outside observers with more than half a century of hindsight on our side. What’s perhaps a bit more difficult—but is a worthwhile exercise for those inclined—is to spot propaganda being pushed at you, in your own culture, today. We have more Shashin Shuho, which we’ll share down the line. 

Above is an unusual war-themed cover of The National Police Gazette from May 1953. In addition to stoking up a little Soviet fear with an A-bomb photo illustration, editors play the Hitler card, telling us at upper right that Der Führer is still alive. They made this claim scores of times after the end of World War II, and it never seemed to get old (we documented that phenomenon here). And since the U.S. was embroiled in a proxy war against China in Korea when this issue appeared, that conflict gets a mention too, in the banner at the bottom of the cover. All in all it's three enemies for the price of one—and a small insight into the nuclear fears that shaped the post-war generation. Do you ever wonder what fears shape us that they'll study in the future? We could take a guess, but then we might get real scared, so let's not think about it.

Is it pulp? We’ll let you decide, but it certainly is entertaining. In Changchun, China, a police raid on a brothel sent prostitutes and johns fleeing pell-mell along a rooftop. Across the street a surprised high school student caught most of the fiasco on his camera phone, and shot a sequence of one panicked man scuttling down a rusty drainpipe totally naked. The desperate fugitive probably thought he was the unluckiest person on the planet right about then, but because he had to face inward while descending, he unwittingly managed to avoid having his face photographed, giving him the most precious gift of all where cops are involved: total deniability. And even though today our intrepid free climber probably needs a tetanus shot in his wang, we suggest that’s a small price to pay, considering the alternative. Suggestion to police: start your search for this guy by questioning all citizens with giant, clanking, brass balls, because that's what it took to make an escape like this. 

So check this out. This is a... well it's a kind of... more or less a photo novel based on a Chinese film from the 1950s. It was published in Singapore, and tells the riveting story of this dashing military officer who's sent on a secret mission to... er, we don't know because we don't read Chinese. But hey, lets not dwell on the story. Stories are overrated. We found it, thought it was nice, and wanted to share it. After we get through those Mandarin classes we'll revisit this and tell you all about it.

Hush-Hush magazine goes for broke in this issue from August 1963, offering up a slate of tales narrated in their usual breathless style. First, they tell us how Roddy McDowall took nude photographs of Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra and tried to sell them, but was thwarted when she “erupted like Mount Vesuvius”. They then demonstrate the limits of their imaginations by telling us that Italian singer Silvana Blasi reacted like “an uncontrollable Mount Vesuvius” when an African-American dancer was hired at the Folies Bergère. Two volcano similes in one issue is bad enough, but the same mountain?

For investigative journalism, Hush-Hush shows us photographs of a dead Carole Landis and an unconscious Susan Hayward, and concludes that sleeping pills are bad. And finally, the magazine stokes the fires of paranoia with two stories: in the first, they explain how Fidel Castro plans to conquer America with heroin, which he’s growing with the help of two-thousand Chinese advisors; in the second, they reveal that the second wife of Dr. Sam Sheppard is a Nazi who plans to revive the Third Reich, and that she’s being helped by—you guessed it—Fidel Castro, who is somehow a communist and a Nazi. Neat trick that.

As we’ve mentioned before, though these stories are laughable, people actually believed them, and believed them by the millions, as evidenced by Hush-Hush’s sales figures. The lesson is clear: the choice between popularity and truth is really no choice at all.

Above are the cover and several interior pages from Spain’s Triunfo, with Swiss actress Ursula Andress, who according to the magazine was the most beautiful woman in the world. Andress was starring opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in the French action adventure Les tribulations d’une Chinois in Chine, based on Jules Verne’s Tribulations of a Chinaman in China, and released in the U.S. as Up to His Ears. The article discusses among other things how Andress injured herself during the first week of the physically demanding shoot, and you can see a scab on her knee and calf, as well as a bandage on her thigh. While she perhaps didn’t have a gazelle’s grace, she did seem to possess a siren’s allure—her rumored affair with Belmondo supposedly ruined her marriage to John Derek, and this may not have been her first affair. However, it seems possible that the marriage failed for reasons other than fidelity, since John Derek did not seem to be a possessive husband (if his willingness to share his fourth wife Bo is any indication). Anyway, not be overlooked is Pamela Tiffin, who appears in the centerfold. We’ll have more on Tiffin later. 

Photo of the mushroom cloud generated by China’s first full-yield multi-stage thermonuclear test, and its sixth nuclear test total, detonated today, 1967. 

Photo of Chinese space capsule Shenzhou, aka Divine Vessel or Divine Land, after returning from space to a successful touchdown in Mongolia via parachute. The Chinese program progressed, with substantial Russian help, from unmanned flights, to missions carrying animals and manequins, until finally, on October 15, 2003, a Chinese astronaut was sent into space. We found this image and others at a French website here.

If sex sells, sex can sell philosophy. The Chinese Aunt, which you see above, is a compendium of ancient fables from Lao-Tsi (aka Lao Tse, Lao Tsu, Laosi, and so forth), the man known as the father of Chinese Daoism. This pulp-style 1960s collection has a bit more visual oomph than those crinkly parchments from the sixth century B.C., and rightly so, because the thing must be just filled with sex. We haven’t read it yet, but we have it right here, and, skipping ahead to where the sexy parts must be, we come to a quote from the Master that says, let’s see, “You know who you are and you know what you want.” True enough—we want some Daoist sex action. Explosions too, if we can get them. After all, the Chinese did invent gunpowder. Skipping ahead again, we find another quote, which goes, “You cannot reflect in streaming water.” Very instructive. We’ll ponder that later. Skipping to the end, because that’s where the climax with all the sex and gunfire and explosions must be, we find another saying from the Master: “When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” Okay, clearly this could take a while. We’ll get back to you after the weekend.