The 'Art' of War: Media Representations, Propaganda, and Public Opinion in the Sino-Japanese Conflict, 1931-1945

Organizer: Edna Tow, University of California, Berkeley

Chair: Gregory J. Kasza, Indiana University

Discussant: Susan L. Glosser, Lewis and Clark College

Keywords: war, media, propaganda, visual culture, Sino-Japanese conflict] This panel adopts an interdisciplinary and cross-regional approach to examining the role of media depictions in structuring public perceptions of the Sino-Japanese conflict, 1931-1945. Media, here, is invoked in a broad sense, and the papers underscore the wide variety of communicative mediums—both official and non-official—that helped shape people's understanding of mass events such as war and organized violence. From artistic renditions and popular entertainment forms, to pictorial representations and photo-ops, visual discourses were indispensable to the war effort and frequently combined with the printed word to drive public opinion, define policy, and cultivate communities of sentiment. As such, the panel presenters seek to highlight the social and cultural dimensions of media circuits and the ways in which strategies of image-making were integral to the process of waging war at home and abroad. Brett Sheehan focuses on clashes between Chinese and Japanese in Tianjin, showing how each camp employed photographic imagery to sway domestic and international audiences to their cause. Edna Tow documents the efforts of the Guomindang regime to sustain public morale in the wartime capital of Chongqing through the calculated use of media campaigns and spectacles. The practice of "art-journalism" is addressed by Kuiyi Shen, both as an organized movement to instill patriotism in the masses and as a means of individual expression distinct from government-produced propaganda. Finally, Barak Kushner surveys the tradition of kamishibai (Japanese paper plays) to shed light on how younger generations were drawn into Japan's war movement. Collectively, these papers consider how the conflict between China and Japan was played out as a "war of words and images" in the context of a divided polity, one in which national allegiances and political legitimacy were mutually contested among the Guomindang state, Japanese imperial administration, and Communist base area governments.

Brett G. Sheehan, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Throughout the 1930s, tensions between Japan and China ran high in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin. Over a period of about two years, the city was wracked by a series of assassinations, bombings, and riots. Virtually no work has been done directly on this urban warfare in either English or Chinese. Passing references in histories fail to link these events together as part of a climate of violence used by both sides to maneuver for strategic advantage and, most crucially, to manipulate international opinion. This paper uses rare materials from collections in Japan, China, and the United States to show how newspapers, pamphlets, and books played as important a role in this Sino-Japanese conflict as did guns and bombs. Photographs, especially, became a "universal" language intended to bridge barriers of language, culture, and political affiliation. "Aggrieved" parties on each side appealed to the larger world community for sympathy and assistance. Japanese residents in Tianjin and Japanese newspapers at home worked hard to portray the Chinese perpetrators of these incidents as criminals, assassins, and even terrorists. Chinese, for their part, tried to simultaneously minimize perceptions about the level of Chinese-instigated violence while portraying themselves as victims of Japanese imperialist aggression. Defining terrorism proved difficult, however, as one person’s terrorist was another’s "dare to die" freedom fighter. In the end, this war of words and pictures did more to exacerbate tensions and increase intransigence than it did to goad the international community into action.

Edna Tow, University of California, Berkeley

After Japan's invasion and subsequent occupation of northern and coastal China in 1937, the inland city of Chongqing was catapulted into the national limelight when it became the de-facto headquarters of the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. By virtue of the newfound prominence and visibility this designation afforded, the city and its population took center stage in the ensuing eight-year conflict, a conflict of global dimensions that saw the first extensive and coordinated application of industrialized war technologies by the Japanese military against civilian populations and infrastructure in Asia. Indeed, over a period of five years, the wartime capital was the target of massive air raid campaigns launched by Japan's High Command as part of a calculated strategy to wear down Chinese resistance and resolve. Under these circumstances, how did ordinary citizens make sense of wartime deprivations and devastation wrought by Japanese terror bombing? My paper seeks to engage this question through an examination of the Guomindang regime's centrally-coordinated media campaigns to preserve municipal order and civilian morale in Chongqing. In this regard, media representations of civic gatherings, city-wide commemorations, and charitable events became an important means of building community solidarity and shoring up the popular mood, even as such spectacles served as platforms for communicating state-sponsored ideology, values and policies. By investigating the role played by press coverage and photo-opportunities in framing public perceptions of national crisis, this study highlights the ways in which media constructions provided a critical battleground for shaping everyday understandings of life under bombardment.

Kuiyi Shen, University of California, San Diego

The early 1930s was an important period for Chinese art when urban artists began to experiment with different media forms and familiarize themselves with the prevailing practices of their international colleagues. At the same time, these efforts to master the techniques and functions of Western art media took place in the context of an increasingly tense Sino-Japanese relationship, leading many Chinese artists to apply their newfound sensibilities in support of the rising movement of resistance against Japan. By using different forms of artistic media at their disposal, their work highlighted the Chinese people's suffering and helped domestic and foreign audiences understand the dire conditions in far-flung parts of China. This paper examines the artist Shen Yiqian as a case study for how individual artists employed visual imagery as a powerful medium for inspiring patriotic support for the war. Shen, a graduate of the Shanghai Art Academy, was active in the 1930s and 1940s as an artist and journalist in many different fields, including ink painting, posters, cartoons, and photography. In response to Japan's aggression, he organized the Guonan xuanquantuan (National Crisis Propaganda Team) and the Zhandi xieshengdui (Battlefield Sketching Team), whose members traveled to the battlefronts in both Nationalist and Communist-controlled territories, visited Yanan, and organized exhibitions in Shanghai and other parts of China to raise national and international attention about wartime realities. Significantly, Shen's disappearance and apparent assassination in 1944 seems to indicate that such "art journalism" could be viewed as a potential threat to the government, reflecting the oftentimes tense relationship between artistic media and politics during times of war.

Barak Kushner, Independent Scholar

During the Asia-Pacific War, 1931-1945, children and teenagers were seen as critical to victory because they represented a key engine of domestic support for Japan’s imperial project. My paper centers on unofficial youth culture that existed outside of the school system, which frequently pleased and annoyed the civilian government. I draw attention to a less easily quantifiable arena of propaganda that occurred on the playground and in the streets: kamishibai. These were cartoon panels drawn on large pieces of cardboard and shown to children as a performer narrated a story. Over the course of the conflict, kamishibai voluntary associations helped generate their own unique brand of wartime propaganda and served as mouthpieces for galvanizing Japan’s youth. In contrast to the opaque slogans that targeted the literate adult population, mobilizing younger generations involved adapting traditional stories to the new lexicon of war. My research analyzes the content of this youth entertainment-cum-propaganda, using slides to show how Japan’s war was repackaged and sold to younger audiences as a series of exciting tales featuring valiant heroes and dastardly enemies. Kamishibai did not disappear with Japan’s surrender in August 1945 and remained enormously popular. This continuity demonstrates how postwar Japan employed the same vehicles to renovate the country that had contributed to its ruin. US occupation forces helped reinvigorate the industry, albeit stripped of its wartime coloring, even as repatriates from elsewhere in Asia continued to perform kamishibai for a living and served as persistent reminders of its wartime past.