230 new images for Japanese leaders and ministers

[Randwyck]

236, to be correct.
That project is an offspring of Japanese Graphic Pack, but while unit models and tech team pics are mainly useful to those who play Japan, leaders and ministers might be interesting to other players as well. Minor corrections to leaders and ministers names are made as well, see readme for details.

Download link
(700 kb)

Some examples (before - after):

 

[unmerged(61606)]

that's a lot.

 

[Lord Finnish]

Wee finally got rid of that picture It's so blurry

 

[Miihkali]

It's unbeliavable how lazy paradox made their pictures, really. Some Finnish ministers look terrible, and much better pictures can be found with google search

 

[Randwyck]

that's a lot.

Quite a lot, yes. Most of them difficult to find, too.

Wee finally got rid of that picture It's so blurry

I disliked that pic as well, considering it is one of the few (but very useful) Commando generals.
It's cropped from that photo:

Takashi Sakai parading after the fall of Hong Kong.

It's unbeliavable how lazy paradox made their pictures, really. Some Finnish ministers look terrible, and much better pictures can be found with google search

By no means that Paradox person was lazy. I'd even say more: s/he deserves to have his/her name engraved on a bronze plaque.
Finding photo of a correct person is difficult enough, but finding a good photo is even more difficult. And then you have to edit them — literally thousands of them. It's really exhausting.

Here are some Tojo's:

 

[Gen. Skobelev]

Great! Thanks for putting these together. And yes, compiling pictures for all those in the game is a huge task and Paradox did quite good job at it.

 

[unmerged(14143)]

Oooh, excellent quality! I'm impressed. Makes a great pair with my German pack (plug).

 

[JRShield]

Just remember, Paradox has to deal with copyright issues too. You don't.

 

[Randwyck]

Just remember, Paradox has to deal with copyright issues too. You don't.

Err, most of these pictures are over 60 years old, copyright doesn't apply to them (according to Japanese laws, AFAIK). Besides that, many pictures were just poorly cropped (in some cases they even cropped the wrong person from a group photo), so I cropped them properly, sharpened them and then fiddled with brightness and contrast to make something more acceptable even from hopeless photos.
That said, by no means I wish to bash Paradox. They made a great work, and I'm the first to admit it.

 

[clanjay1989]

Err, most of these pictures are over 60 years old, copyright doesn't apply to them (according to Japanese laws, AFAIK). Besides that, many pictures were just poorly cropped (in some cases they even cropped the wrong person from a group photo), so I cropped them properly, sharpened them and then fiddled with brightness and contrast to make something more acceptable even from hopeless photos.
That said, by no means I wish to bash Paradox. They made a great work, and I'm the first to admit it.

That's true. I really admire their work as it has been difficult for me to find Chinese minister/leader pictures even when I know Chinese and have access to Chinese resources. I couldn't even imagine how they get every picture for all the people.

And one question for you Randwyck. Since Paradox didn't include the first names of Japanese leaders, wouldn't it be kind of hard to find the correct pictures? Because Japan simply had that many people who shared the same last names...

 

[Randwyck]

And one question for you Randwyck. Since Paradox didn't include the first names of Japanese leaders, wouldn't it be kind of hard to find the correct pictures? Because Japan simply had that many people who shared the same last names...

Yes, it was hard indeed.
There were several tricks though:
1) if there were several leaders, who shared the last (family) name, Paradox often included the name or at least a first letter of the name;
2) if I found several different leaders with a common family name, I checked the Generals.dk database to determine the most likely one. E.g. he should be no less then a Mj General by the end of war (with the exception of Air leaders), and he should have taken part in some action, not just sit somewhere in Japanese logistics facility the whole war.
3) the new photo should resemble the Paradox' picture, though it was tricky sometimes.
Still there are a couple of generals which I was not sure about, so I just picked a better photo. They were quite obscure generals though.

By the way, I got a nice book on the WW2 in Asia, and there are some photos of Japanese(mainly) and some Chinese leaders which I have not found on the Internet. So mayby I'll update that pack some time later. Possibly I'll include some Manchurian leaders as well. There'll be a problem with the names though, as the book is in Russian and Japanese names are terminally misspelled there.