Browse Items (74 total)

Side-profile of a woman in traditional Chinese dress and attire holding an orchid. Through this painting, Fujishima aims to create his idealized portraiture of "oriental beauty." For such an image, he proposes three crucial components: Chinese…

A bright red sun rising next to Mt. Fuji across an extravagant gold background. This painting by Yokoyama Taikan is a nationalistic painting that celebrates Japan's imperial glory. It is part of the series "Ten Mountain
Views and Ten Ocean Views",…

This oil painting depicts the final banzai charge of Japanese soldiers against American troops during the Battle of Attu island, one of bloodiest battles in the Pacific War. The word "Gyokusai" in the title roughly translates to "smashed jewel", and…

The title is a latin phrase with biblical origins that translates to "where are you marching?". This quote describes the lone Japanese soldier with his back turned to us, standing at the crossroads in a barren landscape, uncertain of where to go.…

A surrealist painting that depicts the artist's sentiment towards the defeat of Japan following the second world war. In the foreground, we see a heap of human bodies stacked up in a rough pyramid shape in front of a barren desolate landscape.…

This painting depicts the historic British surrender of Singapore to the Japanese after the Battle of Singapore in 1942. At a small office of an automobile factory, General Arthur Percival meets with General Yamashita Tomoyuki to sign the official…

A painting showing two women clad in kimono enjoying
a cool evening by the lakeside. Back then, paintings showing Japanese women in kimono were popular and touted as an exemplar of Japanese feminine beauty.

A portrait of Emperor Hirohito with his face erased is placed in the middle of a Japanese national flag and is crossed over with a bold red diagonal lines from each corner of the flag.

Several images of mother and child are layered to show the expected roles of mothers across the society. The cult of motherhood was one of the discourses to support the nationalist ideology for illusory unity during the war.

By contrasting images of Japanese mothers and Korean comfort women, Shimada visualizes the imperialist hierarchy.