1/ In wartime Japan, maps were instrumental to planning and prosecuting the war in Asia.

They were also rich in symbolism, signaling an expansion in the geographical consciousness of the Japanese public.

A thread of some of my favorite wartime images that use maps as props:

2/ One of the more common tropes was the use of maps in tourist advertisements, revealing newfound connections between the archipelago and its expanding empire.

Here we have one such ad depicting a Japanese family en route to Korea.

3/ With the start of the 2nd Sino-Japanese war in 1937 came a boom in the cartographic marketplace. Maps were key to orienting the public to war developments in unfamiliar lands

Here's a family taking in a radio broadcast, w/ their "news listening map" hanging in background.

4/ Similarly, here's another ad featuring a mother and child, carefully studying a map of changing battlefronts.

Maps were routinely deployed in ads as a fixture of the dutiful domestic sphere.

5/ Of course, as the war came home after 1944, maps were also used to mobilize the Japanese public to rise to their civil air defense duties.

Here, e.g., is a pharmaceutical ad featuring an "air defense warrior," bucket in hand, standing proudly before a map of the empire

6/ These are many other examples. These are just a few that I've come across in the course of my research w/ @CaryKaracas on the firebombing of urban Japan during WWII.

For those interested, I explore this topic in a short essay in this volume: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo21163223.html

And then, of course, there are globes!

Here's a different sort of "talk" with dad. Published in 1936, this image predates the the war, but still conveys a sense of how maps/globes were styled as a fixture of the modern household.

cc: @Naga_Kyoto @chizutodesign @chizulabo