Fascism. 7th Conference. Japanese Fascism El Fascismo. 7a. Conferencia. El Fscismo Japones

Date

1939

Creator

Among the Taller de Gráfica Popular’s earliest projects was a collaboration with the Liga Pro-Cultura Alemana, a vehemently antifascist group of expatriate Germans. As one of its initiatives, the Liga held a public lecture series in Mexico City addressing the threat of fascism. The TGP created a set of eighteen large-scale poster prints to advertise the lectures. In his 1939 poster publicizing the conference, Isidoro Ocampo depicted Japanese emperor Hirohito as a menacing spider overtaking Chinese territory. Japan had been invading China since 1931. On November 11, 1937, its military assaults escalated to a bloody massacre in the Chinese capital city of Nanjing. Often referred to as the Rape of Nanjing, this massacre, during which Japanese soldiers held mass executions and looted the city, lasted for six weeks and wiped out an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people. The caricature of Hirohito as a black widow consuming China alludes to this slaughter, which would have been addressed at the Liga’s conference. Ocampo uses his print to vilify Hirohito, portraying him to the Mexican public as synonymous with the evils of fascism. from Costa, Para la Gente: Art, Politics and Cultural Identity of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Notre Dame, 2009)