Japanese War Propaganda in China, 1941 – “Last Days of the Japanese War – Construction of a Liberated North China”

I came across this image on ARTSTOR and hadn’t seen it before. Here’s is their accompanying notes below:

This broadside was apparently produced by the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese war, announcing (hopefully) the “Last Days” of the war and “Construction of a Liberated North China.” The Japanese had captured Nanjing in December 1937; the figure in black fleeing Nanjing with a moneybag is labeled “VIP” or “important cliques,” a reference to senior Kuomintang Party officials. Following the Japanese capture of industrial Wuhan and the vital port of Canton in the fall of 1938, large parts of the north were under control of the Japanese or guerrilla forces. The happy figure in the north signals “a liberated North China,” bright with hope.“The Japanese, not without reason, assumed that Nationalist China was bound to fall,” or that Chiang Kai-Shek would be forced to negotiate terms. Instead, Chiang – “in a miracle of organization” – moved the entire government and supporting infrastructure in late 1938 to remote Chongqing in remote western Szechuan province, far beyond the reach of the Japanese army. Jowett 73.In response, Japan unleashed massive “indiscriminate” air raid attacks, killing more than 5,000 “Chinese noncombatants” in the first two days of raids alone. Bix 364. Chongqing became “one of the most bombed places on earth.” Jowett 74. Hundreds of raids were conducted, mostly using incendiary bombs, from May 1939 into mid-1943. In the best-known raid, on June 5, 1941, some 4,000 civilians were asphyxiated in an air-raid shelter tunnel.This map was likely produced during that period. Because the text is in Chinese, it appears to be a Japanese effort to weaken the resolve of the Nationalists and their supporters. The figure cringing under the Japanese bombs falling on Western China is captioned “Chiang Kai-shek is embattled/bruised and battered.” Below him are huge flames with the caption “burning in the flames of the Red Peril” (here likely a reference to the incendiary bombs, rather than the nascent communist movement).Date is estimated.