Children and the Founding of Manchukuo: The Young Girl Ambassadors as Promoters of Friendship

This chapter, by Koresawa Hiroaki, discusses how, in building domestic support for the foundation of Manchukuo and promoting international peace, nongovernmental groups such as the Concordia Society and newspapers appropriated the modern romantic view of children in which childhood is seen as a pure and unsullied and people who appreciate childlike innocence are themselves good people. Children were urged to console troops through visits and correspondence. Through a so-called child diplomacy, young girls and women—seen as particularly pure and innocent—were sent as ambassadors from Manchukuo to Japan. Their every move was featured in newspapers, and the younger the girl, the more attention she attracted. Their shock and awe at Japan’s modernity highlighted Japan’s sense of its own superiority and justified its mission of protecting the Manchurian people from the tyranny of Republican China.