Cartooning Collaboration: Cultural Production and the Image of Rural North China Under Japanese Occupation

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines cartoons reflecting rural North China created by Chinese collaborationist artists during the Second Sino-Japanese War. I argue that these cartoons showcased a transition in the discourse of rural modernisation. I examine the image of Japanese-occupied rural North China from the perspectives of cultural history and visual culture studies. Analysing cartoons by northern Chinese collaborationist cartoonists, I delineate the transformation of the image of rural North China before and after 1937 and present the process in which rural North China was reconceptualised, reshaped, and visualised by pro-Japanese propaganda after 1937.