Empress Shōken existed in the ad quem of the origin where Japanese visually enjoyed the image of “Home Front.” In effect, the empress supported the battlefront of the Sino-Japanese War, which was depicted by the visual mass media “Nishiki-e” of the Meiji era. Although brutal battle scenes or an exaggerated figure of a soldier do not appear in the illustrations of the war, we have examined “Nishiki-e” from a broad perspective of dealing with the illustrations of the war. In this way, the empress was recreated as a representation of an ideal “Home Front” and functioned as a suitable propaganda model for mobilizing Japanese women for war. The emergence and representation of the “Home Front” played an important role as a basis of change with regard to the social status of women. The existence of the empress was emphasized as a representative model during the war. Furthermore, the image of Empress Kōjun from the illustrations of the war overlaps with the representation of Empress Shōken during the Pacific War. Hen ce, we h ave looked i n to t he s uccession o f the image of t he “ Home Front” to posterity. In this paper, we have focused on another form of war in mainland Japan and the nationalization of women through the meaning of the “Home Front” representation system of the empress.

Empress Shōken , Nishiki-e , battle picture , Home Front , Sino-Japanese War , nationalization of women