Wang Meng, The Generation and Propagation of A Japanese Militaristic ‘Amazing’ Story

　　‘Amazing Stories’ were the important part of the militaristic culture of modern Japan. The ‘Senninbari (a belt with a thousand stitches) amazing story’ was particularly widespread and typical among those stories. There were two critical folkloric elements of the ‘Senninbari’ custom constituting the concepts of women and tiger of the Japanese traditional society. The Japanese militarism reformed and took advantage of these two elements to make the custom an ‘amazing story’. The ‘amazing story’ of ‘Senninbari’ was formed during the Russo Japanese War and spread widely after the September 18th Incident. After the exceeding wide propagation of this story at the beginning of the Sino Japanese War, it declined when the war entered the stage locked in a stalemate. The wide propagation of this story during the wartime was attributed to the strong motivation of semi official civil organizations and the acceleration of various militaristic media. The generation and propagation of the ‘Senninbari’ was essentially an interactive history between the emotion of the Japanese people and the militaristic propaganda, reflecting the complexity of the demotic emotional world in the wartime.