A colorful pictorial map of the world entitled Sekai Jōsei Chizu (“Map of the World Situation”), published in Tokyo in 1940 by the publisher Ōkura Shoten (大倉書店) with the aim of representing the global geopolitical situation on the eve of the Pacific conflict, at a time when the Japanese Empire was presenting itself as a new world power.
The map, highly decorative and narrative, translates geopolitical reality into an immediate figurative language: the continents are populated by animals, soldiers, ships, airplanes, monuments, and national symbols, turning geography into a visual narrative of the world. East Asia, and Japan in particular, is the compositional and political centerpiece of the image.
Each region is illustrated through lively and sometimes caricatural scenes, combining an educational function with propaganda.
Japan is surrounded by naval fleets and air forces, symbols of its military and industrial power.
Continental Asia shows paratroopers and soldiers along the border with the Soviet Union, evoking the tension of the northern borders.
Europe is depicted as a battlefield with tanks, cannons, and aircraft, emphasizing the full scale of World War II.
Africa is decorated with exotic animals—elephants, lions, camels—alongside European colonial figures.
The Americas combine industrial and natural motifs: factories, skyscrapers, whales, and bears.
Oceania and the South Pacific are home to tropical islands, whales, merchant ships, and submarines, while Antarctica is animated by penguins and seals, in an almost fairy-tale register.
This type of map, widespread in Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, belongs to the tradition of educational pictorial cartography (e-shi chizu, 絵地図), which combined popularization, popular aesthetics, and political messaging. Published in 1940, at the height of imperial expansion, it reflects the optimism and sense of Japan’s centrality in the new world order imagined by the regime.
