Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021. x, 229 pp. (B&W photos, illustrations.) US$68.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-8332-4.
New, untapped scholarship on China during World War Two is seemingly exhausted: the amount of research is voluminous, and predictably covers military, political, economic, diplomatic, and operational histories. In recent years, the study of Wang Jingwei’s Reorganized National Government (RNG) has regained popularity as researchers seek interesting aspects of World War Two-China that the public may be unaware of and that stray from the classic narrative between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. Even within scholarship on Wang Jingwei’s regime, research reverts to the aforementioned historical types. Yet, Jeremy Taylor’s Iconographies of Occupation exceptionally provides a refreshing perspective of Wang Jingwei’s government during Japanese occupation. Taylor’s central theme examines methods, whether successful or not, used by the RNG to project legitimacy amongst the Chinese population under its governance. The author defines the RNG within the context of various media, the origins of visual cultures and icons, depictions of Wang Jingwei and other political icons, archetypes of masculinity and femininity in wartime propaganda, and how the RNG imagined its own sovereignty within China and Pan-Asia. Taylor successfully depicts the lack of coherence in iconography, diversity of characters used, changing circumstances of war, and challenges to the RNG’s credibility presented by Japanese occupation. Iconographies of Occupation’s focus on visual culture mirrors issues encountered by Wang Jingwei’s government throughout World War Two in a broader context. Just as the RNG’s propaganda failed to fully legitimize the government in the eyes of those under its rule, and most often it fell on deaf ears amongst the rural population, so too did the RNG fail to legitimize itself militarily, politically, and diplomatically.
Chapter 1 establishes influential factors that defined visual culture within the RNG. For example, the author explores how individuals and institutions politically validated themselves under Japanese occupation, borrowed heavily from Republican era iconography, tied themselves to Sun Yatsen, alluded to well-known historical narratives, and utilized public spectacle, ceremony, and dramatization. While noting the use of the Republic of China’s (ROC, Guomindang) flag, Taylor explains that “it had been recounted in Chinese visual art and media in the early war years, with the hoisting of the ROC flag in the midst of shelling during the Battle of Shanghai depicted as one of the great symbolic acts of Chinese heroism” (26). Taylor also points out that the RNG’s reliance upon more familiar optics from the ROC merged with Japanese ideology, specifically Pan-Asianism.
Chapter 2 addresses the RNG’s attempt to reinvent its visual infrastructure by creating new institutions like the Ministry of Publicity (MoP) and the Central News Agency (CNA) to broadcast propaganda to an often inaccurately imagined audience. An entire industry developed from what Taylor calls the “occupied gaze,” in which commercial interests, cinema, and advertisements sold their products coupled with war messaging; a company selling gonorrhea pills went as far as correlating medicinal benefits with political awareness, claiming that it “eradicated communism” (55).
Chapter 3 focuses on Wang Jingwei’s iconographical curation as the face of the RNG. Throughout the chapter, Taylor highlights the inconsistencies of Wang’s likeness in the public’s eye and portrayals of the leader’s various versions ranging from revolutionary, martyr, Sun Yatsen’s rightful successor, to sex symbol for educated women. The author primarily focuses on photographs that depict Wang as a military leader, in either an army or navy uniform, observing troops on the frontline (79), or as a diplomat meeting with contemporary leaders within Japan’s Pan-Asia. Even Wang’s funeral photos and procession are made to resemble those of Sun Yatsen (87).
If there is an outlier in Iconographies of Occupation, it is chapter 4, which concentrates on various gendered archetypes of the RNG’s visual culture efforts. The subject matter could have been a separate monograph by itself and that may be something the author considers for future scholarship. Nonetheless, the chapter provides an intriguingly fresh look at tropes about masculinity and femininity encapsulated in wartime propaganda. Taylor narrates a clash between traditional roles and new, modern, wartime roles for both men and women in the RNG. The author interestingly notes that women exhibiting modern consumption patterns were seen by liberals as creating modern women but to conservatives, as a hinderance to national development (92). The author credits the shift in gendered archetypes in RNG visual culture to Japanese influence and acceptance of modern, industrialized, consumerist society.
Chapter 5 focuses on how the RNG visualized its own agency within occupied China. Wang Jingwei’s regime was perpetually trapped between Chinese patriotism and Japanese imperialism (117). Taylor analyzes maps and charts that include the RNG but most often as a client state of the Dai Nippon Teikoku. According to Taylor, no matter how extensively RNG visual culture used nostalgia and allusions to the past, and referenced sovereignty and legitimacy, even if it reinvented itself as a New China, it was only effective for some of the educated, urban elite. Often, the RNG’s branding was unsuccessful amongst the rural population that was simply trying to survive wartorn China. Taylor concludes that ultimately the RNG was unsuccessful in its endeavours to unite China because it lacked a single, uniform ideology to effectively convey cohesion under its governance.
Jeremy Taylor’s Iconographies of Occupation garners this reviewer’s resounding recommendation as not only a valuable contribution to the field of study but also to scholars and students of World War Two history, modern Chinese and Japanese history, nationalism, and the Chinese Civil War, at both undergraduate and graduate levels. I certainly agree with the author’s conclusion that “while so many governments have ignored the RNG or sought to erase it from the visual record since 1945, it is important we look again at Wang Jingwei’s China” (154). Much of the scholarship on Wang Jingwei still deals in the Cold War era binary of good versus evil. It is time for the study of the RNG to take a nuanced approach and Taylor has certainly done just that with this monograph.
Travis Chambers
University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond