Description

A color lithograph patriotic fan sample print, likely created between 1937 and 1941 during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)[1], depicting two older children in martial poses. A large red star above them bears the inscription 精忠満腹日本魂 日本刀寒一條水 (With unwavering loyalty and a heart full of Yamato spirit. In the cold steel of Japanese swords, like a swift-flowing river.) This saying is taken from a poem, an ode to his grandfather, by Murata Minejirō (1857-1945), historian and author, included in his 1927 history of  Bungo and Chikuzen Provinces, about the arrival of Commodore Perry's Black Ships, reading in part (in lose translation): 

How audacious these foreign emissaries are! 

Their words lack humility, they should be beheaded. 

Beating drums, they try to boost their morale, 

Sagami Tarō[2] is my master, my sword cuts through the air. 

With unwavering loyalty and a heart full of Yamato spirit,

In the cold steel of Japanese swords, like a swift-flowing river, 

They vow to sever the heads of these intruders, 

In this land of true men among men.[3]

Note: Transcriptions and translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

[1] The Second Sino-Japanese War is referred to in China as the "War of Resistance Against Japan."

[2] An alias of Hōjō Tokimune (1251-1284) who led the Japanese forces of the Kamakura shogunate against the invasion of the Mongols in 1274.  

[3] 防長近世史談 (Bōchō kinsei shidan), Minejirō Murata, Daishōsha, Tōkyō, 1927,  p. 251.