Imonbukuro (Comfort bags)

An imonbukuro, or “comfort bag”, what we would now call a “care package”, was used to send small gifts to the troops. Hewitt (p. 261) indicates such items included “tins of crabmeat, razors, blank postcards, sake and cigarettes”, etc.

This first one is about 23cm by 30cm (9” X 12”) and has three big characters that say i-mon-hin, “comfort articles”. There is a close-up below of the identification information in the lower left. Part of the cloth drawstring seems to have been replaced by a length of modern shoelace.

The back just has a few katakana phonetic symbols in the upper left corner (see close-up below).

Here is the close-up of the identification information in the lower left corner of the front. The right column is headed ju-sho (address) and the left column, shi-mei (name). The address starts Tokyo-shi (Tokyo city), Shiro-something-bashi-ku (Shiro-?-bashi ward—there is a character that looks like it was left out and then squeezed in afterwards, making it almost illegible), Ko-something-machi (ko-? town), and then possibly a number. The name in the right column also starts out easy and then becomes harder. The surname seems to be Nagazawa, and the given name, something-ichiro. Then there is the character for commerce, sho, and another one I’m not sure of. The two red stamps are made by a hanko, or name stamp, which the Japanese use instead of signatures for many purposes, like giving approval. Both of these appear to be the same, Okano. The upper one is quite faint so Mr. Okano may have re-stamped it to make sure it was legible. Perhaps these stamps indicated that the contents had passed inspection.

These are the katakana characters on the back. The first three say Okatsu, probably a last name, while the last one is actually a kanji three. It is also used in several given names, so I am guessing this was the sender’s name.

The bag above looked rather austere, but comfort bags were private purchase items, so some makers tried to increase sales by making their bags a little special. Here is one made of hemp that says imonbukuro, comfort bag, across the top (right to left) and shows a scene of a woman holding up some sweet potatoes she has for sale. These are a traditional treat in Japan, especially popular in winter, when street vendors walk up and down crying out their wares and pulling mobile roasters. Nowadays they often drive trucks playing pre-recorded calls, but one still sees the old hand-pulled roasters from time to time. In the lower left is a helmet. The little thing on top of the helmet seems to be the kanji character for gift, okuru. Some merchants had stocks of unsold bags at the end of the war and one can occasionally get an unused one like this.

The back is very plain, but shows one thing that made this acquisition special for me: it still has the original price tags, shown in close-up below.

If we zoom in on these tags, there is a lot of information about who made the bag, etc. I will translate the whole thing as soon as I can get to it, but for now I’ll just mention that the official price was 34 sen, or about one-third of a yen, and it was made in Osaka.

Here is another “fancy” bag. The three characters across the top read from right to left and say i-mon-bukuro, or “comfort bag”. The scene on the bag shows a small boy adding a stitch to a senninbari. The two-column caption to the right of the tree says Mon-chan no sen-nin-bari, or “Little Mon’s thousand stitch belt”. The woman is wearing a traditional Japanese coverall/apron for housework or cooking called a kappogi. The character in the small circle in the lower left is toku (special), and the column of two characters to the lower right of the tree says Ryu-hei, a name (probably that of the artist). The bag is made out of a fairly stiff, shiny material, possibly synthetic, and measures about 8.75” X 12.75” (22cm X 33cm).

This bag looks used but is not marked with any name. It is made of fairly coarse material, perhaps hemp. The red characters at the top say i-mon-bukuro, “comfort bag”. The two children are wearing school uniforms (even today elementary school uniforms for boys look quite military). The boy has a toy airplane. I am not sure whether the girl has a flower or a pinwheel in her right hand, but by the way she is holding it I suspect it is a pinwheel. The bag in her left hand says bu-un-cho-kyu, the ubiquitous wartime Japanese slogan “eternal good luck in war”.

The back is unmarked except for a couple of small stains.

Here’s another one with a school connection. It seems to have been a national effort to provide these comfort bags to soldiers. I have read of the local chapter of the Dai Nippon Kokubo Fujinkai (Geater Japan National Defense Women’s Association) spearheading the preparation and sending of bags. Schoolchildren also seem to have been part of the effort. The characters on the front read from right to left. The two on the top say ko-gun, or “Imperial Army”. The four across the bottom are the ubiquitous wartime slogan bu-un-cho-kyu, “eternal good luck in war”. The red circle is, of course, the hinomaru, or sun, from Japan’s national flag.

The characters on the back are read in columns, starting on the right. The first column on the right has two characters: i-mon, or “comfort”. The middle column has six characters: hyo-go-ken-take-kura-gun, or “Hyogo Prefecture, Takekura County” (Takekura is my best guess of the pronunciation; I was unable to find such a jurisdiction on a modern map of Hyogo Prefecture). The last column on the left has five characters: iwa-zono-sho-gak-ko, or “Iwazono elementary School”. Sinnce all the characters on the front and back are printed except the name of the school (Iwazono is written in by hand), it appears that the local school system ordered these bags and then each school just added their name to the ones they prepared.

I bought some old Japanese photo magazines recently and came across this article in the July 29, 1942 edition of Shashin Shuho (“Weekly Photo News”). It is entitled imonbukuro de yukata mo juban mo, “Bath robes and underwear from comfort bags!”. On the right you can see items of clothing made from salvaged comfort bags, with the characters for comfort bag plainly visible. In the upper right is a kendo top, with underwear just below that and a letter holder just to the left. In the bottom right corner is a yukata (sort of like a bathrobe) made from salvaged bags. In general the article describes an exhibit of items made by soldiers from improvised materials in the field.

This photo shows soldiers in a sod shelter near the border between Japanese-controlled Manchuria (then called Manchukuo) and the Soviet Union in 1939. The caption on the photo says that “when the long-awaited comfort bags arrive, the soldiers turn into little children”, as evidenced by their ear-to-ear grins. The picture comes from page 58 of bessatsu (special edition) 1-1 of the Mainichi Gurafu (Mainichi Graphic) dated January 1, 1975 and entitled Ichi oku nin no Showa goju nen shi (50 years of Showa history in the lives of 100,000,000 people).

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