6 The making of harmony and war, from New Year Prints to propaganda cartoons during China’s Second Sino-Japanese War
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Shaoqian Zhang
Abstract
This chapter examines the media war unleashed on the Chinese population by the forces of Japan and China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), which comprised one of the essential steps in Japanese military expansion and imperialist strategy. Comparison and contrast is made of the mass-produced wartime cartoon posters – commissioned by governments and military agencies – which were aimed at the Chinese audience. Drawing on established traditions of ‘New Year Prints’, visual methods of persuasion and indoctrination appealed to both sides in the conflict, because of the low level of literacy in the country and the strong folk-oriented visual tradition of the Chinese people. To mobilise popular support for the respective military governments, political cartoonists relied not only on existing, centuries-old pictorial vocabularies, but created new ones as well. These political images were usually produced in large quantities and distributed among the general population, during a period which featured the emergence of a modern and media-conscious state system.
Abstract
This chapter examines the media war unleashed on the Chinese population by the forces of Japan and China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), which comprised one of the essential steps in Japanese military expansion and imperialist strategy. Comparison and contrast is made of the mass-produced wartime cartoon posters – commissioned by governments and military agencies – which were aimed at the Chinese audience. Drawing on established traditions of ‘New Year Prints’, visual methods of persuasion and indoctrination appealed to both sides in the conflict, because of the low level of literacy in the country and the strong folk-oriented visual tradition of the Chinese people. To mobilise popular support for the respective military governments, political cartoonists relied not only on existing, centuries-old pictorial vocabularies, but created new ones as well. These political images were usually produced in large quantities and distributed among the general population, during a period which featured the emergence of a modern and media-conscious state system.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures vii
- List of contributors xvi
- Acknowledgements xxi
- 1 Introduction 1
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PART I: High imperialism and colonialism
- 2 Courting the colonies 31
- 3 ‘Master Jonathan’ in Cuba 66
- 4 ‘The international Siamese twins’ 92
- 5 ‘“Every dog” (no distinction of color) “has his day”’ 134
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PART II: The critique of empire and the context of decolonisation
- 6 The making of harmony and war, from New Year Prints to propaganda cartoons during China’s Second Sino-Japanese War 161
- 7 David Low and India 192
- 8 Between imagined and ‘real’ 216
- 9 The iconography of decolonisation in the cartoons of the Suez Crisis, 1956 242
- 10 Punch and the Cyprus emergency, 1955–1959 277
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PART III: Ambiguities of empire
- 11 Outrage and imperialism, confusion and indifference 305
- 12 Ambiguities in the fight waged by the socialist satirical review Der Wahre Jacob against militarism and imperialism 334
- 13 The ‘confounded socialists’ and the ‘Commonwealth Co-operative Society’ 362
- 14 Australian cartoonists at the end of empire 393
- Index 426
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures vii
- List of contributors xvi
- Acknowledgements xxi
- 1 Introduction 1
-
PART I: High imperialism and colonialism
- 2 Courting the colonies 31
- 3 ‘Master Jonathan’ in Cuba 66
- 4 ‘The international Siamese twins’ 92
- 5 ‘“Every dog” (no distinction of color) “has his day”’ 134
-
PART II: The critique of empire and the context of decolonisation
- 6 The making of harmony and war, from New Year Prints to propaganda cartoons during China’s Second Sino-Japanese War 161
- 7 David Low and India 192
- 8 Between imagined and ‘real’ 216
- 9 The iconography of decolonisation in the cartoons of the Suez Crisis, 1956 242
- 10 Punch and the Cyprus emergency, 1955–1959 277
-
PART III: Ambiguities of empire
- 11 Outrage and imperialism, confusion and indifference 305
- 12 Ambiguities in the fight waged by the socialist satirical review Der Wahre Jacob against militarism and imperialism 334
- 13 The ‘confounded socialists’ and the ‘Commonwealth Co-operative Society’ 362
- 14 Australian cartoonists at the end of empire 393
- Index 426
