The relationship between wartime Japan and Germany under National Socialism was not one of unequivocal friendship and sympathy. Rather, the two countries were connected both in terms of alliance and opposition, each constituting for the other a model to be emulated, a mirror reconfirming one's own greatness and a warning example of what hindrances to steer clear of. In this paper, I reconstruct and analyse discourses in Japanese women’s magazines of the Asia Pacific War, which formed part of this process of constructing the self through the image of the other, and in which Japanese as well as German women were actively involved. My focus is on how these German and Japanese women produced and reproduced gendered and racialised images of their own as well as of the other nation and how they constructed gendered roles of participation in war and colonialism. I also examine the dynamics of the communication evolving between the Japanese and the German women. The analysis reveals nationalist and colonialist attitudes of the German women that went beyond National Socialist indoctrination, but it also shows the particular political and inter-cultural constraints that these discourses were subject to. The contributions by the Japanese women, on the other hand, were characterised by an unexpected degree of self-confidence and by occasional comments that clearly subverted the editorial pretext of presenting Germany as a model to be emulated by Japan.

2009.3.16正誤表(Errata）追加