Shina Kengaku Dai Chizu [Travel Map of China]

Presenting China as a backwards opponent during the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese War.

This idyllic map of China, printed in Japanese, presents a serene topographic overview of the country. Small vignettes depict scattered industries and scenes of rural life, with a particular emphasis on agriculture and the peaceful countryside supposedly enjoyed by China’s peasant population. Red overprinting provides information on place names, political boundaries, and transportation infrastructure, notably the locations of airfields.

A small-scale inset in the lower right presents the broader geopolitical situation of East Asia, highlighting the proximity and influence of the Empire of Japan, whose territories extended to the Liaodong Peninsula (upper right) and the island of Taiwan (just above the inset). At the time of publication, China and Japan were engaged in the brutal Second Sino-Japanese War, a conflict that many historians in East Asia regard as the beginning of the wider Second World War. The ongoing fighting is largely absent from the map itself, though a careful observer may notice the flag of the Japanese-backed government in Nanking.

The verso, approximately titled “A Picture Diary of the Shining Victories of the China Incident,” presents a starkly different narrative. Six dozen captioned images, combining photographs and illustrations, outline a propagandized chronology of the conflict from the Japanese perspective, celebrating military advances and portraying the war as a series of triumphs.

The map was designed by the talented Japanese manga artist Shimada Keizo, best known for Boken Dankichi. It was issued in June 1938 as a supplement to Shonen Korabu, a popular boys’ magazine published by Tokyo-based Kodansha.