A uniquely Japanese item from World War II was the imon-bukuro (慰問袋), or comfort bag. Similar to modern day care packages, they were hand-assembled packages of comfort items for the troops sent by their supportive home front from the youngest citizens to corporations. They often contained sweets, canned food, toiletries and other packable pleasantries to make life a little nicer for those on the front lines or at sea.

My recreated bag (left to right, starting at the top): canned food, cigarettes, collapsible hand flag in bag, boxed shaving mirror, clay pipe, tooth powder, toothbrush, collapsible razor, mame bean bags, Todoroki Yukiko bromide, big pouch of loose tobacco with naval markings. All rest atop an imon-bukuro.

I got interested in these while working on my home front presentation and ended up collecting a few, which I’ll share throughout and at the end of this article as reference. I also began collecting content for my bag to help students visualize how they’re packed and get a better look at the world of wartime Japan.

The contents are called imon-hin and the length of Japan’s war as well as its changes in fortunes affected what went into them. While there were suggestions on things soldiers would like, such as what would be better for a bag being sent to troops in cold Manchuria or on tropical islands, there was not a universal list of anything that ‘must’ go into a bag.

When the war started in 1937, Tsubaki Yoshiko made imon-bukuro in junior high school (middle school) and kept a log of what she packed in her bags along with their cost. (For reference, a yen was akin to a dollar and broken down into 100 sen.)

comedy sketch – 10 sen
popular songs – 10 sen
kendama (cup-and-ball game) – 10 sen
shogi (chess-like game) – 20 sen
fan – 10 sen
doll – 10 sen
notebook – 10 sen
toiletry set of soap, ear cleaner, and razor – 20 sen
loincloth – 20 sen
tissue paper – 25 sen
stationary – 25 sen
sewing kit – 30 sen
soramame (fava beans), mashed and dried tai (sea bream) – 60 sen
Total value – 2 yen 90 sen

The students would also include letters of encouragement (imon-bun) in the bags, an item that would stay consistent throughout the war and regardless of sender. She also noted sending honey and sweet bean jam sweets, and soba noodles. Other items I’ve seen in photographs and mentioned in passing in books has been collapsible hand flags, bromides (glamour shots) of popular actresses or singers, canned foods, sweets of all kinds, sake, cigarettes, tobacco and pipes, medicine, protective amulets, and sometimes even lipstick to remind the troops of the girls back home.

Golden Bird cigarettes

The mame (bean) candy bags feature a soldier in China

An industry grew up around selling goods for imon-bukuro, such as advertising Shiseido pushing it’s Made in Japan® high-quality toiletries as ideal for imon-bukuro making, and the creation of imon-bukuro items. It made consumerism patriotic and in a time of rationing and privation, still profitable. Suntory produced fun-sized bottles of alcohol designed to fit in the bags. Confectioner Morinaga made a special imon-bukuro tin for its delicious soft caramels (which I may or may not regularly enjoy because I saw them on In This Corner of the World). In 1937 they held a special sale were the company would send an imon-bukuro with candy and bromides (glamour photos) of popular actresses Takasugi Sanae, Takamine Hideko, or Hara Setsuko, on behalf of customers who met certain buying criteria. It’s like winning a prize for someone else.

This mirror was made for imon-bukuro purchase and features a presumably popular actress or singer on the back. If you know who she is, please let me know.

This can of toothpowder was made by Shiseido and is quite ideal for the bag.

Whether a soldier wanted whatever was given to him in this mysterious lucky bag, regardless of the particular sweets or food inside, it beat sucking on sorghum.

Incidentally when creating my imon-bukuro display I purchased a bromide of Todoroki Yukiko for it as I couldn’t find the above actresses but this one was from that era and was in good shape. When I showed it to her, my wife’s aunt pointed out that Todoroki was one of her mother’s favorite actresses. Her mother, Iseki Sui, is one of the two people who’s stories of wartime life inspired my World War II Japanese home front presentation and in turn this article.

Todoroki Yukiko

The bags themselves could also be attractive as they ranged from homemade with material at hand to the organizational bags with association markings and the creatively adorned commercially available variety; in turn they could continue to be used as bags or as hand towels. Based on the price-tagged imon-bukuro in my collect they could cost a few dozen sen. My cheapest has a one color illustration and was19 sen and the most expensive has a more complicated multiple-color image for 36 sen. An important side not for people who collect militaria- those bags with the Charlie Brown stripe on it are rarely imon-bukuro, they are hoko-bukuro and kichohin-bukuro and used for other things.

The imon-bukuro’s origin goes back to the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) and was popularized by Yajima Kajiko, a women’s education proponent and president of the Japan Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She believed that sending sweets and snacks from home would keep troops from drinking. The primary distributors of imon-bukuro from then until 1945 were various patriotic women’s associations.

Women’s associations mobilized the women of Japan in supporting the war effort as well as humanitarian missions between the wars. The first association was the Aikoku Fujinkai (Patriotic Women’s Association) which was founded in 1901. It began with high-class wives funding and conducting charitable activities to support the military now being deployed abroad. This included sending imon-bukuro to the troops in Korea, Manchuria and even Japanese POWs in Russian prison camps. Their membership was made up of the financially well-off elites that could afford such expenditures, but in time newer women’s organizations would come into being that the average woman could (or would be required to) join.

Unakami-gun (Unakami Count)y Fujinkai Meeting

Osaka’s Dai Nippon Kokubo Fujinkai (Greater Japan National Women’s Association) was founded in 1932 by the wives of Imperial Japanese Army officers and a kempeitai (military police) commander. From its inception the seemingly civilian patriotic organization which allowed average women to join and support the troops was directly controlled by army leadership. It would spread nationwide and become the single largest women’s association until all were forcibly united under the banner of the Dai Nippon Fujinkai (Greater Japan Women’s Association) during World War II. (It united them by creating an extra layer of bureaucratic nonsense on top of the existing organizations.)

Left to right:
Aikoku Fujinkai
Dai Nippon Fujinkai
Aikoku Fujinkai

My modern reproduction monpe with original Dai Nippon Fujinkai sash, hand flag, Fujinkai purse and bokuzukin air raid hood.

A key difference in how these two organizations collected and distributed imon-bukuro was that unlike the aristocratic Aikoku Fujinkai, the Dai Nippon Kokubo Fujinkai was in every city, town and village. Their comfort bags could be sent from local branches to soldiers and sailors from their own hometowns or prefectures making them a true taste of home.

They were not alone though as private companies, the Red Cross, schools, individuals and local organizations all took part in creating imon-bukuro. They became part of wartime Japan’s culture landscape and even had multiple songs about them. (Links at the bottom for Imon-bukuro Song No. 1, 2, 3 and 4!) The imon-bukuro allowed the Japanese public, regardless of age or social standing, to feel that they all could play a part in the war and had a personal stake in it.

Red Cross nurses fill imon-bukuro (from Jugonoato)

Millions were sent over the course of the war, though in the final two years there was a sharp decline as Japan’s fortunes fell. Resources became ever scarcer, rationing worsened and air raids were key factors. The navy also began refusing imon-bukuro in 1944 due to an inability to move them as most of Japan’s shipping now lay at the bottom of the Pacific. (The nation’s overtaxed shipping situation that began with the outbreak of the war is its own fascinating story.)

Post-war the idea of sending something like the imon-bukuro but far more robust caught on in the US when Arthur Ringland and Dr. Lincoln Clark got support from 22 American charities to create the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE). With the war over and a years-long invasion of the Japanese home islands no in the future they were able to take possession of and send 2.8 million 10-in-1 military rations to Europe. It didn’t draw inspiration from imon-bukuro, but the iteration of CARE packages I receive when deployed to Iraq in 2008 looked strikingly similar to a bigger (and therefore more American) version of the imon-bukuro than a box of 10-in-1 rations!

The outpouring of support from American citizens to make our lives a little nicer resulted in a lot of sweets, granola bars, sports drink mix and the little comforts that make life nice, though admittedly I worked on a base so didn’t have it near as bad as the guys in the forward operating bases. As well as the ever-present box of sweets, our break room was adorned with drawing and letters of encouragement from school children. I personally began emailing a few people who sent me packages and had friendships with them. That happened during World War II as well; service members would send thank you post cards and notes to the senders. For some the correspondence even turned into romance and marriage.

Soldiers hold up imon-bukuro in an image from Shashin Shuho, the government’s official propaganda magazine

For those looking to recreate an imon-bukuro with imon-hin for their own displays or classroom use, finding imon-bukuro themselves is not difficult though they are not abundant. Militaria websites and eBay are good places to check, I spent about $20-$40 on my individual bags but they can be priced higher. The items I included are from years of searching online and at local Japanese flea markets, since civilian items are less prevalent on militaria sites but usually a booth or two sells what I’m looking for at flea markets. I also checked Japanese online auction sites and had good luck with them. The canned goods were made by applying reproduction 1930s labels to modern cans. Otherwise everything else in the display is original.

Stomach medicine made sometimes prior to the 1950s

(Resources and references after the additional imon-bukuro imagery)

Nagoya Castle; the real castle burned down in a May 1945 air raid

“Good-bye, working girl!”

“Banzai!”

A political cartoon featuring Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Chiang Kai-Shek trying not to assign blame for their losing the war.

Imon-bukuro Resources

There’s a pair of 1939 “Home Front” (Jugo Urehi Nashi / 銃後憂ひなし) imon-bukuro campaign videos available on YouTube that will be useful if you want to see some scenes of the time depicting women’s associations collecting materials for and making imon-bukuro.

Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSKdyZJYo0

Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkY2YyI02xc

This website has some good images of imon-bukuro contents from these two videos and gives some extra context:
https://ima.goo.ne.jp/column/article/4805.html

Imon-bukuro no Uta (Comfort Bag song) No.1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQsI33t9Epc

Imon-bukuro no Uta (Comfort Bag song) No.2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th1eDtRElUQ

Imon-bukuro no Uta (Comfort Bag song) No.3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_UIhb93Bvw

Imon-bukuro no Uta (Comfort Bag song) No.4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CqdQf4wlHM

Website with many examples of imon-bukuro items
http://gunsozakkicho.web.fc2.com/zimonbukuro.htm?fbclid=IwAR15pts_amP5zPQZ6mDfJe2RTRjwzTmvcaGDYAOpefwYPhxQQoBXaj2r8iY

REFERENCES

CARE’s History
https://www.care.org/about-us/our-history/

Defamiliarizing Japan’s Asia-Pacific War edited by W. Pick Brecher and Michael W. Myers

The Historical Consumer: Consumption and Everyday Life in Japan, 1850-2000 edited by Penelope Francks and Janet Hunter

Luxury & Thrift in Wartime
http://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/shiseido_01/sh_essay04.html

Morinaga Digital Museum
https://www.morinaga.co.jp/museum/history/detail/product/38

Senso: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War edited by Frank Gibney

A Social Basis for Prewar Japanese Militarism by Richard J. Smethurst