In this paper, I analyzed articles about war published in Haha no tomo (Mothers’ Companion) from September 1953 to March 2023. The aim is to contribute to understanding the reaction to the war in Ukraine by studying the history of the connections between mothers, picture books, and helping children understand war in Japan.

    This advertising-free magazine, first published in 1953, has served to promote Fukuinkan’s products to the mothers of young children. It contains practical information on raising children, such as original stories to read, but over the years many articles have also touched on famous events, such as war. The editors of Haha no tomo, which gradually developed a large readership, explained that thinking, knowing, discussing, and informing about war are a mother’s responsibility to her children.

    Across the seventy years of publication, Haha no tomo’s articles reflect the changing beliefs and opinions that mothers had about war based on their experiences. In the 1950s, those articles reflected strong beliefs in peace, but from the end of the 1960s to the early 1970s, the experience of watching the Vietnam War on TV made the magazine contributors reflect on their own experiences and how to explain the war to their children. Around the 1990s, the magazine argued that mothers, due to a lack of experience of war, should be storytellers about what happens during war. The magazine and its readers had been focusing on how to preserve the stories about the horrors of war. On the other hand, the question of why and how their mothers and grandmothers were ignorant before WW2 and cooperated with the war effort became forgotten. This reinforced the image of a peace-loving mother and made it difficult to talk about war when Japan was being drawn into conflicts such as the Gulf War.

    Currently the war in Ukraine is being ignored by Haha no tomo. Mothers and media have changed. New ways of telling the story of mothers and war are being sought.