Fabricated captions attached to wartime photographs were disseminated domestically through a major newspaper.
This essay traces how propaganda images were reframed as historical “evidence” and absorbed into education.

May 10, 2016

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
All emphasis in the text, except for the headline, is mine.

“China Fabricated Photos, Asahi Spread Them
Soldiers as Escorts → ‘Women Hunting’ / Buying Chickens → ‘Looting’”

In The Japanese Army in China (1972) by former Asahi Shimbun reporter Katsuichi Honda, there appears a photograph showing uniformed men carrying rifles on their shoulders together with a group of women and children crossing a bridge.
The caption asserts: “Japanese soldiers rounding up women and children. Rape and gang rape extended from girls of seven or eight to elderly women over seventy.”
However, it was later discovered that this photograph originally appeared in the November 1937 issue of Asahi Graph with the caption, “A group of women and children of Hinomaru Village returning from fieldwork to their village under the protection of our soldiers.”
A similar distortion applies to a photograph of a Japanese soldier smiling while carrying two chickens over his shoulder.
The caption claimed that “all livestock, including goats and chickens, were looted as spoils of war.”
In reality, the photograph came from the December 5, 1937 issue of The China Incident Pictorial (a special supplement of Weekly Asahi and Asahi Graph), and the chickens had been purchased with payment.
These two photographs share a common feature.
Both were included in Record of Japanese Bandit Atrocities published in China in 1938.
This book was a wartime propaganda publication compiled by the National Government Military Affairs Commission headed by Chiang Kai-shek, intended to advertise alleged Japanese brutality domestically and internationally.
The photographs were reproduced without authorization from Japanese magazines, and at the stage of reprinting in that book, the captions were fabricated.
Travels in China also contains many of the same photographs used there.
Despite such sloppy and erroneous content, Honda’s works were strongly recommended in teachers’ manuals, leading many educators to use them in classrooms.
Chinese wartime propaganda spread into Japan through the Asahi Shimbun and penetrated the education of young people.
To be continued.