JAPANESE EMPIRE.

£700 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Japanese Propaganda Map Showing the Empire's Conquests in the South Asia and the North Pacific. An arresting and well-preserved piece of Japanese wartime propaganda issued as a supplement to a state-sponsored popular magazine.The front side of the sheet shows a map centred on present-day Indonesia and covering the surrounding territories across to the eastern part of India and down to the northernmost part of Australia. An inset shows a close-up of islands in the Pacific and across to the western coast of America and Canada. The map demonstrates the extent of Japanese control in the region and the strength of its military, with troop numbers, as well as counts of ships and planes, listed in boxes close to every territory. At the same time, the ongoing enemy threat to Japanese interests is indicated on the map by a large inset chart to the bottom-left enumerating the substantial Allied naval presence in the Pacific region. This dual message of power and threat, signalling that the war is going well but that sustained effort is also needed, makes this map a classic example of military propaganda.As if to justify Japan's "East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" - Tokyo's euphemistic term for its colonial possessions - the rear of the sheet includes a history of British and American aggression in the region, complete with cartoons of Western imperial aggressors spilling blood in Hong Kong and planting flags on territories with hairy hands, as well as an image showing a Japanese fist cru

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