World War 2 Poster Analysis

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This poster is a poster that displays Japan’s intentions for going to war. There are five characters in this poster, each representing different countries that took part in the Pacific part of World War II in 1941-1945. The countries are America, Britain, China, Netherlands (Dutch) and Japan. Japan, dubbed as the land of the rising sun, is depicted as the sun in the upper right corner of the poster. America is depicted as a prisoner as seen in the black and white striped clothes and is labelled “A” on his shirt which clearly stands for “America”. Britain is depicted as a plump figure and is labelled “B” which stands for “Britain”. China is depicted as a figure with a tail and is labelled “C” for “China”. Lastly, the Dutch is depicted as a …show more content…

The artist could have intended to critisise the British of being lazy and useless. The reason for this is probably because the Japanese troops found it way to easy to invade British colonies such as Singapore due to the fact that British forces were too concentrated on the war against Germany and thus provided little support for citizens of British colonies such as Singapore. China is depicted as a figure with a tail of an animal. The tail is a common depiction of the Chinese and is used as an insult by the Japanese. The Japanese despised the Chinese due to complicated historical issues between the two countries. Examples of Japan’s hatred for the Chinese was the Rape of Nanking where Japanese troops killed the Chinese by a mass execution and spared nobody, not even the women and children. Dutch is represented as a shoe because the Dutch were known to make wooden shoes. However, the artist could also intended to critisise that the Dutch were not as powerful as Japan, as displayed by a shoe against the sun. Before the war, Japan wanted to be seen as equal with the Westerners in terms of power however they decided that they wanted to be superior to them and thus initialised war and invaded many countries. This too could be another reason for war and message of the