Blake Singley: Good evening, and welcome to the National Library of Australia. My name is Blake Singley and I'm the director of Rights Management here at the Library. I'd like to begin by acknowledging Australia's First Nations peoples as the traditional owners and custodians of this land, and pay my respects to elders past and present, and through them to all Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples. Thank you for attending this event, coming to you from Ngunnawal and Ngambri country.  

This evening's presentation, "Grief in World War II Expressed in Art and Fashion", is by Dr Tets Kimura, a 2023 National Library of Australia Fellow in Japan Studies. The Library's fellowship program supports researchers to make intensive use of our rich collections through residencies of 12 weeks. National Library of Australia fellowships are made possible by generous philanthropic support, and Dr Kimura's fellowship has been supported by the Harold S. Williams Trust.  

Dr Tets Kimura is an interdisciplinary researcher based at Flinders University where he specialises in art history, cultural history, fashion, and Asian studies. He's currently engaged in two book length projects: an edited volume on Japanese war art with his New Zealander research partner, associate professor Richard Bullen from the University of Canterbury, and a monograph entitled "Fashion, Soft Power, and Cultural Diplomacy: A Case Study of Japanese Fashion in Australia", which is scheduled to be published by Bloomsbury in 2026.  

In this presentation this evening, Tets combines the research undertaking during his 2023 fellowship in which he examined the historical and cultural development of Japanese fashion and as well with the research undertaken at the National Library in 2021 as an Asian Studies Grant recipient. He's had two grants at this, it's great. Where he investigated war art made by both Japanese civilians and Japanese nationals interned in Australian camps during the Second World War. This combined research showcases how grief in war is identifiable in art and fashion. It aims to generate further discussion on how ordinary people experienced the war. So please join me in welcoming Dr Tets Kimura. 

Tets Kimura: Thank you for your kind introduction, Blake. I cannot thank the National Library which has provided me with two opportunities: an Asia Study Grant in 2021 and the fellowship that I started last year and I'm about to finish it next week. I would like to thank all the staff members at the Library and the colleagues I have met here, and also the Harold S. Williams Trust which supported both of my residencies.  

I'm giving this presentation in Canberra, the national capital of Australia. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and pay my respect to their elders past, present, and emerging. I would also like to pay my respect to Indigenous people outside Australia, including those in Okinawa and Taiwan where I conducted my research in the last few years.  

Hmm, I can't change the slide. Oops! Oh, no, it works. I'd like to begin my presentation by showing this map held at the Library's rather special map collection. The map was published in the Southern China Morning Post in March 1941, nine months before Japan joined the Second World War in December 1941. The small caption at the bottom of the map states the "Three stages of Japan's 'New Order' in Asia as shown by a map published in the New York Times.” According to which, quote, "This map is based on authorative though unofficial statements made by Japanese military spokesman," end quote. The map shows three stages of the Japanese expansion. The first stage, or the smallest circle, had already been completed by March 1941. The second stage ,which would be completed by March 1942, a year after the publication, includes the whole of Southeast Asia. The third stage include Australia, which was expected to come later. As the map suggests, Japan's invasion of Australia was expected. It was real. Thus, from the perspective of Australian government, We have to prepare for the enemy attack.  

I do not deny the fact that two nations, my country Australia and the country of my birth Japan, fought hard against each other. In history and even today, we, Australians, typically understand Japan as the other, especially in relation to the Second World War. Many Australian POWs were treated horribly by the Japanese. Autobiographic stories, such as those written by Aidan MacCarthy have been published in Australia, which can be read at the National Library as well as smaller public libraries throughout Australia. In the way 22,000 Australians were held in Japanese camps, there were approximately 5,000 Japanese people who were held in Australian camps during the war.  

As the most of us are probably aware, Japanese experiences in Australian camps are mostly remembered by the single event of the Cowra breakout. In the early hours of August 5th, 1944, over 1100 Japanese POWs attempted to escape from a POW camp near Cowra in New South Wales, which is about two and a half hours north from Canberra. Armed with improvised weapons such as baseball bats and kitchen knives, the Japanese stormed the fence suits and overcame the machine gun posts. Never likely to be successful, the breakout resorted in the deaths of 231 Japanese and four Australians. All the Japanese survivors who escaped were recaptured in the surrounding country sites in the days that followed. On 8th of September, 1944, the investigation report was read to the House of Representatives by Prime Minister John Curtin, according to which the attack was characterised by, quote, "a suicidal disregard of life", end of quote.  

Now here's a summary of the statement that was read by the Prime Minister back then. The statement read by the Prime Minister can easily make us recognise that there's a gap between us Australians and them Japanese.  

From Japan's viewpoint, Japanese POWs follow the Senjinkun military code, by which a soldier was expected not to survive, to surrender the dishonour of capture. It was difficult for Australians to understand the motives behind the fatal military decision to escape the camp where they had been treated humanely. So that is actually a photo image of a Senjinkun military code. And here is actually what we have in the Library. So you can pass it on. However, while all the capture the Japanese carrying thoughts formed by the Senjinkun that were beyond our comprehension, my answer is no.  

Shortly after the Japan entered the war in December '41, civilian Japanese living in Australia was seized and sent to enemy camps: 1,140 of them, or 97 to 98% of the total Japanese population in Australia, including 45 Australian-born Japanese who should have been recognised as a British subjects, three naturalised British subjects with a Japanese background, as well as hundreds of additional Japanese who lived in Australia for decades. In fact, I'm currently re-conducting a new studies with Dr Peter Prince, he's sitting over there, to argue how Australia treated these people illegally as Japanese, not as Australians or British subjects. The photo here was taken in South Australian camp where civilian Japanese were kept. They were previously identified as the POWs, however, the State Library of South Australia recently agreed to change the caption from Japanese prisoner of war camp to Japanese Civilian Internees. And I'm very thankful for them in making the right decision because they were not prisoners. They were not guilty of anything.  

The Geneva Convention for prisoners of the war signed by major nations in 1929 ensured that POWs and the civilian internees had the right to honour and respect, including a supply of quality and quantity of food and medical facilities. In the Australian camps, accordingly, those who were interned had access to basic needs as well as time for recreation activities. Many were engaged in creating art and craft works. My research partner from New Zealand, Associate Professor Richard Bullen, and I have published a paper on how feelings and emotions are expressed in war. And we are working on a book together at the moment, hoping it will be published next year.  

The painting shown on the screen, which Richard and I used in our journal article, was produced by a Japanese POW Tojuro Mochizuki, and this has been kept at Cowra Regional Art Gallery in New South Wales. In terms of quality, the painting that's not of the quality expected for an art museum collection. It looks like the work of a high school student at its best. An obvious example is that the object look two-dimensional. You can see that in lantern. However, in an era when it is getting difficult to collect oral history from the Second World War, art is a rich resource for understanding personal experiences which have been expressed and preserved. We can see that the woman, has a traditional Japanese hairstyle, is in the act of removing her kimono which falls from her shoulders and fully exposing one breast. Her sash that should hold her kimono falls to the floor and her expression is quiet and submissive. The kimono is in red, which is a colour often worn by prostitutes. Where the POW are kept in a male-only camp, they became hungry for Japan and hungry for sex.  

And the way the landscapes are depicted by the POWs, they almost uniformly featured Japanese scenes recognisable by car suites, pagodas, or Mount Fuji as you can see on the screen. The box shown here, is kept at the Cowra Japanese Garden. Mount Fuji is an obvious choice for them as a sacred landmark of their homeland and a very recognisable symbol of Japan.  

Although POWs and the civilian internees were treated generally the same way by Australian officials, no riot or breakout of any kind took place at any Japanese civilian camps in Australia. The difference is recognisable in various ways. For example, in the sports they played in the camps. While the baseball and similar were common among the POWs, there were additional games by civilians that were not widely saturated in Japan at that time, such as tennis. A record indicates that the internees at Tatura Number Four Internment Camp built a tennis court there. Even more striking is an extent concrete cricket pit at the site of the Woolenook Camp, about one hour by boat on the Murray River from Renmark. In this South Australia camp, cricket games were played with the guards and the pitch is a reminder that internees were culturally more aligned with Australia than Japan.  

At Loveday camp in South Australia and its Woolenook satellite camp, civilian internees had access to find native Australian hardwoods. A number of beautiful timber objects such as boxes and cedar fruit three-dimensional sculptures have survived. Unlike the objects made by the Japanese POWs where artistic conventions created derived from Japanese styles, these sculptures made at South Australian camps are more reminiscent of those by European artists. Another suggestion of how culturally far removed some of the civilians and internees were from the enemy country with which they were identified by the Australian authorities. The man in the sculpture wear shorts that were not common outfit in Japan in the middle of 20th century. And he's holding a woman and kissing her, another un-Japanese expression of that time. Certainly, something not conducted in public spaces.  

Suddenly after the war was concluded many of these civilians, including those who are born in Australia and those who spend the majority of their lives in Australia were repatriated from Australia to Japan. Those who continue living in Australia, approximately 200 of them bit their tongue and moved on with their lives rather than revisiting this dark history.  

In the US and Canada, the governments apologised in 1988 for the mistreatment of 120,000 Japanese Americans and Canadians during the Second World War. To date, no apology has been made by the Australian government for the treatment of the Japanese in this country. I, as a Japanese Australian who has conducted this research would like to ask Prime Minister Albanese and his government to take the right action sooner rather than later. Prime Minister, I'm prepared talk with you.  

If the experiences of Japanese Australians during the war have largely been unrecognised in Australia, the experiences of ordinary Japanese people in Japan during the war have not been a subject of scholarly research in Australia either. For most who are of my generation or younger, war is unimaginable. We watch movies and play video games and they are typically set in battlefields. Can we imagine how ordinary people lived during the war?  

I'm rare in my generations as I experienced a war. I was reporting the Iraq War from Baghdad in 2004 as a journalist. There, I saw ordinary people spending their ordinary days; they eat, they work, they commute, and they are engaged in recreational activities such as playing sport like soccer. One of the largest stores in my neighbourhood was a toy store displaying colourful eye-catching items for fun. I realised people are entitled to enjoy themselves during wars.  

At the National Library, which is not just Australian library but also major leading library of the Asia Pacific where Australia is situated, the Library had systemically collected books, journals, magazines, and newspapers from the region, mostly from the countries of Northeast and the Southeast Asia. For Asianist such as myself and many of my colleague researchers here at the National Library and the adults who are watching my presentation online, the Library offers a notable treasure boxes, especially if you usually live in a small cities or country towns such as Adelaide like myself.  

For me, if you studied fashion, being able to access here fashion and the lifestyle magazines as well as historical photos has advanced a number of my projects. A study of fashion journalism is important to fashion scholars because fashion media have been closely curated with fashion scenes, trends, and industries. Fashion magazines are and were, especially until the development of social media some 15 years ago, acting as windows into fashion for consumers in public, and also used as a source of inspiration by those who are in the position to dispatch fashion trends such as designers.  

As was the case in Australia, Japanese magazines for women contained patterns for them to make clothes by hand at home for themselves and their family members. The photo on the screen is a pattern from the magazine entitled Shufu no Tomo, which is translated as Friend of Housewives. This was printed in 1941, the year when Japan entered the war. In 2021, when I was at the Library as an Asian Study scholar, I found this pattern. Sharyn helped me to take a photocopy, which is a larger than A3 so that was quite difficult task. And I brought the photocopy to Japan in 2022 to find out if an ordinary Japanese housewife or mother can make a dress from this pattern. Of course, ordinary Japanese women, or me,n these days, just like Australian woman or man, do not normally sew clothes. So I have to find a woman who happened to be a mother and a housewife with some sewing skills, but not a professional who belongs to the fashion or textile industry. After a couple months and a couple hundred dollars, here's a dress she made from this pattern, which is this one here. And I'm going to pass it around, okay? Even though the pattern was made over 80 years ago, the clothes look quite fashionable in the 2020s. I'm skeptical, however, if this type of dress was enjoyed by Japanese children back in the early '40s.  

Although Japan was a late comer to the Second World War, it was already fighting against China and it had long been expected fight against the Allies. The war mentality was everywhere in Japanese society. From Australia's perspective, Japan was a threat for decades. Britain and Japan had an alliance for 20 years from 1902 to 1922, so Japan fought for the Allies during the First World War. Japan moved to the South, occupying the Pacific Islands of the German territories. However, from Australia's view, the expansion was a threat. The most powerful country in Asia at that time was getting closer to Australia and Australia's mother country was on the other side of the globe. Japan kept becoming larger. It already had Taiwan and Korea and it also expanded to the West, establishing the puppet state of Manchukuo in the northeast Chinese part of Manchuria in 1931.  

By 1936, Australia's trade diversion policy decided to enter a trade war against Japan by introducing restrictions even though Japan was Australia's second largest trade partner. Australia's decision was driven by Australia's interest within the framework about great power alliance namely Australia's imperial relationship with Britain.  

Japan was and remains today poor in raw materials. Japan was in need of expansion to secure resources, and especially sanctions by the Allies led by the US was the most likely scenario at that time. Over 90% of all consumer in Japan came from imported sources, and the vast majority, 80%, came from the US. As a resource poor country, Japan tried its best to produce resources domestically. It tried to mine oil, it even tried to produce plant-based oil from pine trees to run military vehicles. In terms of clothing materials, although silk was Japan's primary export product, silk was not the best material for military clothing. Japan imported wool from Australia, but it also tried to grow wool mainly on the northern island of Hokkaido, as the photo here shows. However, it gave up on wool production in the late 1920s. By then, Japan was the second largest buyer of Australian wool. Japan's buying power was undeniable factor for Australia.  

In 1934, the Australian Eastern Mission marked a turning point in the history of Australia's external relations, where a more self-confident and assertive nation began to distinguish Australian from British interest. The mission led by Deputy Prime Minister J.G. Latham visited seven states in Asia, including Japan. This was the first Australian diplomatic mission outside of Britain and its empire, and it was said to had been quite successful. Australia negotiated to form Australia and Japan treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation. In the following year, 1935, Australia even appointed its first trade commissioner in Tokyo.  

However, there was a demand by Britain's Manchester Mission visiting Australia in 1936 to tighten that trade tie between Australia and Britain instead Australia and Japan. It meant that Australia could rely on one country, Britain, for both trade and defence. Australia's export to Japan shrunk by more than half from 1935-36 to 1936-37 while Australia’s exports to Britain increased by only 2%.  

What happened in 1936 and the years that followed remind me that in some ways of what has happened between Australia and China in recent years. Tariff restrictions were introduced and Japan, which was actively buying Australian wool and wheat, reduced purchases. Australia's trade went to indirect with Japan for the first time in history, and they took 15 years for the damaged trade relationship to recover. Australia's friendship treaty was only signed with Japan in 1976, 40 years after it was initially proposed.  

Politics, trade and war, they are big and important. And big and important things often determine smaller things that matter to individuals. Throughout the 1930s and '40s until Japan recovered from the war, shortage of materials were evident in the everyday lives of ordinary Japanese people due to trade restrictions and the wartime policy of prioritising the military.  

In my ongoing and forthcoming research on Japanese fashion during the Second World War time, I am dedicated to discovering the roles of fashion during the war. How fashion functioned when it was seen as a luxury and unnecessary, when materials were limited, and when sartorial clothes were controlled by the state. To date, no peer reviewed research has been published on this topic in English. This is a period when Japanese fashion that rarely been studied even by fashion scholars in Japan. In contrast to numerous studies on earlier modernities and the cultural developments that reshaped Japan in the post-World War period.  

During the war, however, the people still wore clothes. There were still potential fashion consumers and even though they were unable to buy clothing with money, but with coupons.  

Let me speak a little bit about Australia. In Australia, clothing was the first item to be rationed. As we remembered what happened at the beginning of COVID when people panic bought toilet papers, people fought and grabbed items of clothing at random, often without trying them on, when Prime Minister Curtin announced that rationing was coming on clothing. Rationing was also introduced on petrol as well as foods such as tea, sugar, butter, and meat. You might have heard these stories from your grandparents. I heard stories, for example, when sugar was short in South Australia's Riverland region and no lolly was available at shops in towns, lollies was still available at canteens in military sites. Visiting a military site was like visiting heaven for a young boy. This is a story I heard from Riverland locals. Our joy was taken away in Australia just as it happened in Japan, even prior to Japan's enter to the Second World War.  

In Japan, the national slogan of "luxury is the enemy" was introduced in August 1940, and soon, posters with the slogan was seen on Japanese street. As I said, Japan was already fighting against China and the total war was on its way. Rations were introduced for matches in October 1940 in major cities and soon became nationwide, followed by sugar, rice, miso, soy sauce, cooking oil, and charcoal. At the time they went to buy, even coupons, you can see them on the screen, even coupons did not guarantee the purchase of these items due to the extreme shortage. In Tokyo where there wasn't enough space for growing food and vegetables, it was impossible attaining enough food through coupons and there was shortage of clothing material such as cotton as well. 

 In 1942, clothing coupons were introduced, just like in Australia, as a point system. Those in six major cities in Japan had 100 points per year where the rest of the population had 80 points. Here's some examples of what you could get. One point for hanky, two points for a pair of socks, six points for underwear, three points for a pair of trousers, 20 points for a jumper, 40 points for pyjamas, and 50 points for a formal dinner jacket. In 1943, inflation was introduced, so the point required to purchase these items increased by 25%. Just like food coupons, clothing coupons did not guarantee the purchase of clothing. It became a subject of availability. So for Japanese white collar workers, for example, purchasing new clothes for their work became impossible, but it did not matter that much as wearing business attire became discouraged.  

Japan had already introduced what's called Kokuminfuku or the National Attire Civilian Clothing Code in 1940. Perhaps the more direct translation is national clothing. Although this sartorial policy was an order, the Kokuminfuku, you can see on the screen, was not strictly enforced until Japan entered the Second World War. And furthermore, it was only applicable to man. However, it still meant a lot to Japanese sartorial history at this was the first sartorial order and social expectation since the mid 19th century when Japanese white collar workers were made to wear Western business suits instead of the kimono at work.  

The Kokuminfuku looked like halfway between military uniforms and business suits. The designs were related with the simple, certainly simpler than business suits, a tie was not required and neither was a shirt with a collar. Many business people went to local tailors to convert their business attire to Kokuminfuku. Also, Kokuminfuku are to be worn on all occasions. So only one set of clothing, maybe two, rather than multiple needed to be owned by one Japanese male adult. Kokuminfuku typically came in what is called the national defence colour, or khaki in plain English. But there could be in other conventional colours such as grey or brown. I've not seen anything in bright colours or even in navy, but I'm assuming navy may be an okay colour. If one needed to purchase it, it was available at shops only at the cost of 14 coupons, which was a lot more economical than an ordinary business suit. Kokuminfuku certainly had an effect on saving textile material resources and raising the war spirit.  

As for women, in 1942, drawing from the same concept, the yojinfuku, which can be translated as ordinary clothing styles were announced. There were largely two styles: Japanese kimono and Western. Just like the Kokuminfuku, the clothes could be worn for all occasions providing more mobility than formal Western dresses or Japanese kimono. Reading Japanese academic journals on fashion from 1942, there seem to be great encouragement to wear the yojinfuku and the Japanese women experienced this sartorial shift.  

However, talking with Second World War survivors in Japan, none of them noticed such thing existed during the war. The war mentality was already deeply penetrated to ordinary Japanese people, and the first traditional Japanese work pants of mompe, commonly and originally worn by women for agricultural work on countrysides, already became the fact pants in cities around 1942.  

Because the Second World War was total war, especially for Japan that was resource poor, everybody was expected to participate. For example, housewives were trained to be firefighters and the students were working at factories instead of studying at school. Participating in volunteer activities were enforced. There was no need for women to be feminine. They have to be physical and they have to move around. Wearing Japanese robes, yukata or kimono, or even skirt does not necessarily allow women to be active.  

The photo here was taken in 1944 and they are students of Taisei Girls High School in Mito City in northeast of Tokyo. You can see that they are wearing like, kind of school uniforms on top, but at the bottom they're not wearing the skirt but they are wearing work pants or mompe.  

So this is what that mompe look like, and it's quite easy to make them. So I'm actually going to demonstrate how we can make it quite easily. Unfortunately, I don't have the great sewing skills. So I'm just going to use a piece of paper and a sticky tape. Okay? So this is the, let's say a piece of cloth. Okay? You fold that into half. Okay, and you cut, like that. Now here's a bit of a sewing, but let us use sticky tapes because it's easier. And we didn't really test sticky tapes. 

Blake Singley: No, we didn't. 

Tets Kimura: No, we should have. Okay, so I just stitch the side, okay? And now I have to cut the end so your leg can come out. Okay. And that, we actually need them. So cut like that, fold into half, and cut there. And now we need that sealed. So that goes there to make extra room for the legs. Okay, so now you can actually see that's like pants. Let's get back down on this side as well. So now, you can see that it's like a trousers, right? And I'm going to pass this around. The great thing about this is there's no waste. Okay. And so, you saw like I cut the middle and created sort of like triangle stuff, and that you can see there, right? This is from the magazine from 1945.  

And if you check some of the old Japanese pattern from the 17th century, which is kept at this Library, you can also see the same principle here. Okay? And this is like a slightly different version, but you can actually see, this was actually made by a Japanese woman and she basically made it on like next day I visited her. And you can see like how this like, you know, she's got like a belt which actually goes around, which also you can see in that as well. So I might pass this around, too.  

Now, reading women's magazine from the wartime, any articles related to fashion focused on how not to waste, how to recycle, and how to contribute to the war by so doing. In my interviews, I spoke with approximately half a dozen of Japanese Second World War survivors who lived in different part of Japan, both urban and rural, and now said that they had room to think about fashion. The Second World War was the era when fashion cease to exist even for young women who are otherwise the most fashion conscious group of the population.  

There were many turning points in the war, one of which was definitely the Battle of Okinawa. Over a hundred thousand American soldiers landed on the main island of Okinawa, which is located between the Japanese main island and Taiwan. Okinawa became a grand battlefield for three months, from April to June 1945. When survivors realised there would be an occupation, some decide to commit suicide, but some others decide to surrender. Here's Yuhiko on the screen, a school teacher who surrendered to the US Forces. She was given male clothes as no feminine apparel was available. Quote, "One of the first thing she asked for was lipstick," end of quote.  

Fashion came back in post-war Japan soon after the war ended. There was a boom in learning Western sewing techniques, and many private schools were established. Younger generations enjoyed dressing up, but unfortunately, some did for survival as they had no way to make money. They had nothing to sell but themselves. Also, during the occupation, Australian serviceman was sent to Hiroshima and some of them met young Japanese women who then moved to Australia as war brides in the 1950s. But this is another story.  

In the post-war Japanese women's magazines, patterns for Western dresses emerged, and of course, there was much waste as they needed to cut fabrics in curved shapes. The lifestyle magazine that have been promoting the value of fighting for Japan were now focused on how women could enjoy and achieve a better life. This women on the front cover of the August 1948 edition of Shufu no Tomo is smiling, showing her teeth, and her lips are decorated with lipsticks. She also shows her feminine body shape. Her shoulders are naked and the shape of her round breasts is visible. The war was truly over. And looking back at the history from the 21st century, I can see that this was the beginning of New Japan that enjoyed growth when society was filled its full of hopes.  

Let me conclude my presentation by saying that a large body of research and published personal accounts on the Second World War have focused on tragic experiences such as loss from battlefields and how they suffered at home from military attacks, internal policing, and hunger. Fashion and art might be two of the least related topics when people think about war. But we are humans who expresses ourselves through art and fashion. War or no war, we are associated with art and fashion. I'm pleased that I have advanced my research on these topics with two of the National Library scholarships. And I'd like to end my presentation by thanking the Library once again and for providing me with the opportunities. Thank you. 

Blake Singley: Thank you very much, Tets. That was absolutely fascinating. We probably have time for one very quick question. I asked you to wait to get the microphone before you ask this question. So anybody got a question for Tets? Up here at the front was the first hand up. Just there. This lady here at the front was the, she's the winner. 

Audience member: Thank you very much for fascinating presentation. Your demonstration of making the mompe was quite interesting. But my understanding was that most of those trousers were made out of kimono fabric, which is much narrower. Do you know how they made those with a much narrow kimono fabric rather than, you know, Western width, which is 90 centimetres? 

Tets Kimura: Sure. It could be slightly narrower, maybe like that, but same principle you can actually make from fabric with this shape to mompe. So you got kimono. 

Audience member: Yeah. 

Tets Kimura: You undo the kimono and stitch the kimono, and that's a piece of the fabric. 

Audience member: Yeah. 

Tets Kimura: Okay? Shapes it like that, okay? And from this, you can make mompe in the way I did. Yeah. Yeah. 

Blake Singley: Thank you. Well, unfortunately we are out of time, but just a couple quick plugs before we go. I hope you can join us for our fellowship lecture, Mining Modjeska's Archive, on Thursday, 20th of June at 5:30 PM. In this lecture, the 2024 National Library of Australia Fellow in Australian Writing, Dr Bernadette Brennan, will share a little of what she has discovered within the archives of award-winning writer and editor Drusilla Modjeska and explore some perennial questions about ethics in biographical research and writing. If you'd like to hear other lectures or performances by our fellows, these can be found on the Library's website or YouTube channel.  

So, thank you for attending this evening and please join me once and again in congratulating Dr Tets Kimura and thanking him for his fantastic presentation. Okay. 

Follow Dr Tets Kimura as he presents a lecture on his 2023 National Library Fellowship research into how grief was experienced during the Asia-Pacific War in two different nations, Australia and Japan, and how it is identifiable in art and fashion.

Dr Tets Kimura is a 2023 National Library of Australia Fellow in Japan Studies, supported by the Harold S. Williams Trust.

About Dr Tets Kimura's Fellowship research

At the conclusion of his two residencies at the National Library of Australia through a 2021 Asia Study Grant and a 2023 National Library Fellowship, both supported by the Harold S. Williams Trust, Dr Tets Kimura delivers a presentation on how grief was experienced during the Asia-Pacific War in two different nations, Australia and Japan, by two different kinds of ordinary 'Japanese' people.

In Australia, civilians with a Japanese background were classified as enemy aliens, even though Australia was their home. Here, they were interned in enemy camps, they cried to be treated fairly, and their emotions have been preserved in art and craft works that were made during their internment.

Civilians in Japan also suffered in many wars; their experiences with censorship, famine, forced labour, and firebombing by the Allies targeting Japanese homes have been well-studied. But the war time was also an era when fashion was controlled by the authority, where people were unable to express themselves due to the introduction of the state sartorial code of kokuminfuku (national attire) and mompe working pants.

Dr Kimura’s presentation showcases how grief in the war is identifiable in art and fashion, aiming to generate further discussions on how ordinary people experienced the war, and how to read the war from the perspectives of art/cultural history and fashion studies.

About Dr Tets Kimura

Dr Tets Kimura holds academic status in the creative arts at Flinders University. He is due to publish the monograph Fashion, Soft Power and Cultural Diplomacy: A Case Study of Japanese Fashion in Australia (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). As a journalist, he reported the Iraq War from Baghdad in 2004. 

About National Library of Australia Fellowships

The National Library of Australia Fellowships program offers researchers an opportunity to undertake a 12-week residency at the Library. This program is supported by generous donors and bequests.

Image credit: Students of Taisei Girls High School in Japan c.1944. Photo courtesy of Harue Goto.