ABSTRACT
The single largest public relations campaign of the war centered on Army Day ( 10 March) in 1943, which was observed throughout the Japanese Empire with several events and the slogan, uchiteshi yamamu. Literally translated, the slogan means "Continue to Shoot, Do not Desist,"1 but a more colloquial translation would be "Keep up the Fight" or "Stay on the Offensive." This classical phrase from the eighth-century Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) was attributed to Emperor Jinmu, mythological founder of the Japanese Isles and putative ancestor of the wartime emperor. During a drawn-out campaign to subjugate the Japanese isles, Jinmu rallied his troops with this phrase, which he made into a song (uta). 2 The phrase was pregnant with meaning, conjuring up the sacred origins of Japan; the sanctity of the imperial throne; the connection between the emperor, his loyal subjects, and the land; and the "never surrender" ethos of the samurai and Japan's modem military. It also suggested a parallel between the first emperor's military leadership and the reigning emperor as commander-in-chief, and likened the military struggle leading to the foundation of ancient Japan (that is, Yamato) to the war that expanded the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere into a Japanese global empire.
