An extraordinary photograph by well-known modernist photographer Horino Masao depicting schoolgirls parading in gas masks through the Ginza in 1936 launched me into this project. That is why it sits on the cover of my book (Fig 1). The questions this image elicited, particularly the ambivalent symbolism of the gas mask as a technological instrument of protection and a grotesque fetish of monstrous transformation, sent me on a journey of curiosity that revealed a wide-ranging air defense (bōkū) movement permeating every aspect of Japanese culture from the 1930s through the end of the war. The Japanese government, along with many businesses, utilized rich and creative marketing campaigns to sell, engage, and prepare the public for the possibility of war from the air. And while I found the expected patriotic posters illustrating how model citizens should prepare their homes and bodies, and the propaganda pieces warning of the horrors that could come if lights were not properly blackened out during an air raid, I also discovered a surprising assortment of aestheticized imagery, some even humorous, that went far beyond this usual wartime patriotic fare. The volume of production was staggering. I began to see the widespread creative investment in communicating air defense to the Japanese people.