The Prints in Context

The below prints, sales samples of designs for rigid fans (uchiwa), featuring various patriotic themes including stanzas from patriotic songs, slogans to mobilize the home front and cartoon-like images of troops in China, were issued in support of national mobilization for "Total War" (sōryokusen) during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).[1]

The Second Sino-Japanese War was one of the most destructive conflicts of World War II, beginning with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 7, 1937, and ending with Japan's surrender on September 2, 1945. This war marked the culmination of growing Japanese aggression toward China following the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). "With half of China ruined, 20 million Chinese (military and non-military) dead, and 480,000 Japanese soldiers killed on Chinese soil, the eight-year conflict was one of the bloodiest in world history."[2] 

The beginning of the war also marked "a new phase in the government’s plans for national mobilization . . . as Japan prepared for full-scale war with China."[3] On September 9th 1937, Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro announced the National Spiritual Mobilization Campaign (Kokumin Seishin Sōdōin Undō) to "ensure maximum popular support in wartime."[4]

"The purpose of this campaign was to integrate the population of Japan more fully into the state, and heavy emphasis was placed on ideological propaganda to strengthen popular identification with the state and foster a sense of nationalism.”[5] In other words, the state sought to inculcate in the citizenry "the culture of sacrifice needed in a time of Total War and for the formation of a new order in East Asia."[6]

[1] The Second Sino-Japanese War is known in China as the War of Resistance Against Japan. 

[2] Library of Congress "Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945: A Resource Guide," https://guides.loc.gov/sino-japanese-war-1937-1945 [accessed 9-12-23]

[3] "Women, the State, and National Mobilization in Prewar Japan," by Jane Mitchell, thesis, History and Asian Studies, University of Adelaide, 1986, p.39. https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2440/112277/2/02whole.pdf [accessed 9-6-23]

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] "Entertaining War: Spectacle and the Great 'Capture of Wuhan' Battle Panorama of 1939," by Kari Shepherdson-Scott, appearing in The Art Bulletin, Vol. 100, No. 4, December 2018, p. 97. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44972823 [accessed: 9-9-23]