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Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia - The Case of Natori Yōnosuke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Andrea Germer
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This essay investigates the relationship between art and politics by exploring the wartime activities of a Japanese photographer, Natori Yōnosuke, during the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945). Natori was an active participant in the production of propaganda photos and photo magazines that were aimed particularly at reaching non-Japanese speaking audiences, such as different groups of Asians living in Asia or Americans and Europeans in North America and Europe. Germer analyzes the political significance of Natori's aesthetics, his wartime political agency in China, his activities in the contexts of tourism and imperialism, and his direct involvement in the state's cultural propaganda. The author focuses on Natori's political agency as it is reflected in three particular areas: his creative work, his visual strategies, and the management of magazines that he edited.

Germer introduces some of the representative state-sponsored photo magazines in which Natori was directly involved, such as Shanghai (1937), which justified Japan's invasion in China, and Manchukuo (1940), which represented Japan's rule of Manchuria as benevolent. This essay discusses the format, visual strategies, and the management of the state-sponsored magazines and the private Nippon; and problematizes Natori's postwar silence about his wartime activities. This essay includes images of photo magazines and provides Natori's views on the role of photographs in propagating wartime ideologies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 10 , Special Issue S1: Course Reader No. 1. War and Visual Culture , January 2012 , pp. 8 - 37
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Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2012

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