Shanghai is known for its cartoon and publishing scene fueled by the urban and political dynamics of the semi-colonial metropolis. The little book Shanghai Life, published in 1942, describes the founding and purpose of the newly-created Shanghai Cartoonist Club on the first page, in three languages (Chinese, Japanese and English): “Since the outbreak of the War of Greater East Asia, the great metropolis of Shanghai has undergone a great change, and its cultural and economic life now occupies a unique position. The cartoonists of Shanghai have formed the Shanghai Cartoonist Club, for the purpose of better co-operating and promotion of their art.”
The "unique position" refers to the Japanese occupation and the founding of the Wang Jingwei regime – the Chinese puppet regime of the Empire of Japan, also known as the Nanjing Regime (1940–1945). A closer look at the club's members list and exhibition venue quickly reveals its complex political background. Managed by Hisami Kiyono, probably between 1940 and 1942, the Shanghai Art Gallery was a branch of Gallery Nichido located on 212 Nanking Road it. The underlying source here is a newspaper article, kindly provided and translated by the Fukuoka Art Museum, and in which Hisami Kiyono reports on the visit of the Japanese artist Kenshi Ito to the Shanghai Art Gallery. During this time Kenshi Ito exhibited in the showroom The Studio, which was run by the German architect Richard Paulick while nothing is known so far about exhibitions at the Shanghai Art Gallery, that might have seemed more plausible at first glance. But there is too little information available here to draw any conclusions.
Among the Japanese members of the club was the Japanese Army cartoonist Miuro Yoshio/Noa (Noa). Chinese members were Chen, Xiaozuo (Ma Wu) and the movie cartoon pioneer Wan Laiming. Chen's cartooning practice has been researched in the context of Sino-Japanese collaboration and war propaganda. However, Wang is famous for his anti-Japanese cartoons. These cartoons were promoted by Jack Chen (Chen Yifan) in London to seek support for China’s "War of Resistance". These seemingly ideological contradictions reveal the complex and extremely difficult situation for all artists in wartime Shanghai under Japanese occupation. Among the Jewish-European club members were the Viennese artist Friedrich Schiff and Fred Fredden Goldberg from Berlin, a later inhabitant of the so-called Shanghai Ghetto and member of the ARTA (Association of Jewish Artists and Fine Art Lovers) and the Poale Zion (Workers of Zion) in Shanghai. Further members were Russian speaking émigrés, such as the popular cartoonist Sapajou.
This entry is written with little information available about the continued existence of the Shanghai Cartoonist Club. It is considered a precursor of the Chinese Cartoonist Association which was founded in late 1942 and came to be known as RNG (Reorganised National Government) propaganda organ that launched its first own magazine Chinese Cartoons (Zhongguo manhua) in October 1942. The composition of the members seems astonishing divers at first. But it might very remotely reminiscent of the propagated construct of a “multi-ethnic Greater Asia" under Japanese rule, as well as simply Shanghai’s international population reality. At least the ‘supernumerary nation type’ represented by ‘white émigrés’ meaning the Russian speaking refugees in (Northern) China, can be found in ‘Manchurian’/Japanese propaganda materials. However, the members did not only vary in terms of their origins, but also in terms of the reasons that led to their stay in Shanghai, and these differed greatly.
Correspondingly, the cartoons contained in the booklet display a stylistic and technical diversity or particularity, such as the contribution by Wan Laiming.
The gaunt figure of his kneeling beggar is set in black ink lines, which condense into an expressive, but silent mimic of suffering on his cautiously raised face.
The delicate and simple coloring darkens behind his back, while the bare skin of a lifeless child's body hanging belly-down over his pointed knees reflects the pale light surrounding him. Composition, Gesture, and motif may be associated to a socio-critical style attributed to left-wing artistic production, such as the woodcut movement, but the choice of material, the technique, and its execution point in a different direction. His Beggar may also refer to a traditional Chinese perceived painting practice, involving ink(lines) and brush and to a genre history of rendering beggars, peasants or 'liumin' in China.
His image is rather difficult to reconcile with the typical definition of the term cartoon and artistically symbolises the complex mixture of art historical discourses, topics and political issues that could be addressed here.
Others display a humorous portrayal, and at first glance do not convey a clear or controversial (political) message, while some combine both.
The exploitation of the female body by artists and artistic propaganda means, also in the context of Sino-Japanese collaboration cartooning, is well researched and thus it is not very surprising that Shanghai Life contains various examples of sexualised, and objectified representations of a ‘depraved’ female body, displaying nationalist, racist, colonial, and imperial concepts, discourses and ‘anti-western’ sentiments at various levels. Often artistic means such as juxtaposition and exaggeration are used. Gestures, facial expressions, and attributes, such as clothes, accessories, and the urban frame function as codified amplifiers. Sometimes, and to some extend the humorous tone creates a milder perception of the political noise.
The size of the little oblong book relates to the format of the palm-sized lian huan hua (linked serial picture storybooks) which were published in Shanghai in large quantities from the 1920s onwards and often distributed by street libraries which was captured by the photograph Sam Tata. The lian huan hua format was also used by Friedrich Schiff and Paula Eskelund for their little book Squeezing through! Shanghai Sketches 1941–1945 and for Sapajou’s Five Months of War published by North-China Daily News & Herald in 1938 as well as the Sapajou Album published for the German Information Bureau by Max Noessler & Co in 1943. In addition to its use for children's books, it seems the format was considered sustainably suitable for accessible propaganda material and as a creative space and media for art production of any kind and origin.