Mobilizing Citizens' Ears: Aural Training as Civil Defense, 1941-45

In the mid-twentieth century, the Japanese state trained its citizens to identify the sound of a falling bomb. This article explores the little-studied impact of audio-based military technology on wider society, beyond the military sector and beyond Western contexts. In 1941, Japan's elementary schools-renamed National People's Schools-provided new musical training in perfect pitch to strengthen Japan's national defense efforts in wartime. "Explosive sound training" taught children to identify recorded explosive sounds of enemy aircraft, though ultimately such training could not mitigate widespread destruction. This article argues that the recent discussion of "the story of acoustic defense" can benefit from a much broader historiographical framework, one focused not just on the military frame. In the Japanese case, the story was shaped through the active interactions between the military, society, and educational institutions. A multidisciplinary analytical perspective provides a more critical and nuanced understanding of how modern sound-politics overlapped with exercising wartime power.