“100 million hold hands, encourage, and support each other”, Patriotic Women’s Association propaganda postcard series, c. 1940.

See also:
Thousand-person Stitches (Sennin-bari) propaganda postcard, c. 1940.
“Do not forget”, Imperial Rescript for the Declaration of War, propaganda postcard, c. 1942.

“Between 1890 and 1935, the Choshu clique’s leaders and their successors built a machine to mobilize the rural populace for total war in the face of growing threats to Japan’s national unity.

“These army officers established four nationally centralized organizations with local village and hamlet branches and subdivisions for teenagers, adult men, and women [under the umbrella of the Army-directed Greater Japan National Defense Association].

“The purpose of these groups — the reservist, youth and defense women’s associations, and the youth schools — was to use the members’ commitment to their agricultural hamlet and its values to mold patriotic ‘national villagers’ who supported the army and its ‘rural’ and military ideals.

“By 1935, the four organizations were in full operation and enrolled between eleven to twelve million people [about 20% of the population in 1940].

Patriotic Women’s Association propaganda postcard series, cover, c. 1940.

“… The Patriotic Women’s Association dated back to 1901, when a group of socially prestigious women with the support of a field marshal from Satsuma and the Speaker of the House of Peers, who was also the scion of the most illustrious princely house in Japan, established the organization primarily to conduct war relief for soldiers.

“The army praised it highly for its efforts to comfort soldiers in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War. The association’s leaders from its inception envisaged it as a primarily national, not a local organization, tended to recruit members from the well-to-do — one had to pay substantial dues to join — and made no effort to set up local branches.

“… By late 1937, the Aikoku fujinkai had grown to almost three million members, but its membership was still only a little more than one-third its rivals. The Patriotic Women’s Association, despite its prestigious history, Home Ministry support, and post-1931 efforts, could not successfully compete with the new organization because it lacked the local advantages of its rival [the Greater Japan Women’s Defense Association].”

– A Social Basis for Prewar Japanese Militarism: The Army and the Rural Community, by Robert Smethurst, 1974