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Fengyang guniang (Maidens of Fengyang)
This woodcut, by an artist called Fang Wenxing, was reproduced in Zhonghua huabao (Chinese Pictorial) 1.4 (November 1943). The importance of the muke (woodcut) form to artistic practice in occupied China has been almost entirely overlooked in the literature. The muke form has hitherto been associated with the art of resistance in China, despite being an important part of “occupation” visual cultures as well.
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RNG troops with rifles
Photograph of RNG army recruits engaged in rifle practice, possibly as part of the Rural Pacification (qingxiang) campaigns.
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Rural Pacification cadre making a speech
Photograph of a member of the RNG Central Propaganda Group’s Number 2 Rural Pacification Propaganda Team as he addresses a rural audience. The photograph was possibly produced by the RNG’s Central News Agency, which increased its capacity for photography in 1942 to compete with the propaganda work of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists in Chongqing.
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Rural Pacification cadres rousing peasants
Photograph of members of the RNG Central Propaganda Group’s Number 2 Rural Pacification Propaganda Team leading a rural audience in the shouting of slogans. The photograph was possibly produced by the RNG’s Central News Agency. Note the watchtower in the background flying the Nationalist Chinese flag, suggesting this photograph was taken in a “pacified village”.
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Qingxiang biaoli guan (Within and beyond Rural Pacification)
In this artistic representation of a village which has undergone Rural Pacification, peasants are shown going about their business within the walls of a “pacified” village. Outside the village walls, resistance fighters starve to death and inflict violence upon local residents. The image is taken from the periodical Zhongguo manhua (Chinese Cartoons) 2.1 (October 1942). This was the house magazine of the Chinese Cartoon Associations (Zhongguo Manhua Xiehui).
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Xin Zhonghua huabao (New China Pictorial) cover, September 1942
This cover image from the New China Pictorial 4.9 (September 1942) shows an unnamed member of the Chinese collaborationist forces in the outfit of a kendoka. There is little to identify this image (almost certainly created by the news agency Dōmei, as it was used as the cover image for the Japanese-language Dōmei Graph in October 1942) as being of a Chinese man, other than the inclusion of the Nationalist Chinese (white sun) insignia on his cap. The same image was used in later propaganda celebrating the collaborationist government’s declaration of war on the Allies. This was the only cover image from this magazine which included a male figure. The New China Pictorial was a bilingual (Chinese-English) published from 1939 through 1944 in Shanghai by the occupation journalist Wu Linzhi for distribution in China and throughout Southeast Asia.
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RNG troops by a riverbank
A group of RNG soldiers walks along an unidentified river bank. Possibly part of the Rural Pacification (qingxiang) campaigns.