Artist's commentary
"Crossing the Bridge of Flames..." (Published in "Expeditionary Army in South China," Kokusai Hōdō Kōgei Co., Ltd., March 1940
From Twitter:
“Don’t you people have the word ‘gratitude’ in your dictionary? 😬✊
Oh, what’s this! When Chinese people thought this was Chinese soldiers saving an old woman, they praised it highly…
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🇯🇵 But when it turned out they were actually Japanese soldiers, they pretended it never happened lol.It’s Japanese soldiers carrying an elderly Chinese woman!
This photo was even used on the cover of Shina Jihen Gahō — a historical fact.
This exposes the Chinese Communist Party trying to hide the Japanese Army’s good deeds because they’re inconvenient.”
From: Interpreting "Wartime Imagery" in Modern Japan: The Case of the "Family" by Akihisa Kawata
In the photo book South China Expeditionary Army, produced by International News/Press Craft Co., a photograph showed a Japanese soldier carrying an elderly Chinese woman on his back across Haizhu Bridge in Guangzhou. Beside the photograph, the following passage was printed [fig. 30]: “A Japanese soldier and an old woman passing over the bridge of flames. In the expressions of these two, we already sense the dawn of a new East Asia. A solemn and majestic [image/scene?] that unceasingly suggests Japan’s noble and exalted mission.” There is no context here for seeing the Japanese soldier as a “match-pump” figure — that is, someone who sets fire to Guangzhou and then rescues the old woman from the sea of flames. What exists instead is a vivid contrast between Chinese soldiers, who abandoned the old woman amid the flames of war, and Japanese soldiers, who take their place and strive to rescue her.
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