[The Current Situation and Distribution of Resources in China].

Good. Some wear along fold lines. Verso repairs along middle fold line. Soiling at right-center. Size 30.5 x 21.25 Inches. This is a rare 1938 map of the natural resources and wartime situation in China, published by To?yo? Kyo?kai, a nationalistic organization of political and business leaders in Japan. It reflects Japan's main war aims and strategy, to control China's resources and prevent their use by Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist (Guomindang) forces. A Blueprint for Conquest This map serves two main functions; to show the current state of the war in China and to highlight the prevalence and distribution of various natural resources. The thick red line shows a supply route, labeled the 'Comintern Route,' running from the Soviet Union to the Chinese government's headquarters at Chongqing and the Chinese Communists based at Yan'an, Shaanxi Province. The red dotted lines show the retreat of Chiang's forces to Chongqing and Kunming in the preceding months. The location of various important resources like forests (??), cotton (?), iron (?), and coal (??), as well as arsenals and factories for war materiel, are noted. Some prefatory remarks on the map (????) are written in the top-left margin by Morishita Hiroshi (???), the president of Morishita Jintan Co. (????????), a company specializing in pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and cosmetics (still in existence today). Morishita thanks To?yo? Kyo?kai for their work, which helps to spread knowledge about the endless untapped resources of China. Due to its relationship with the military and need for raw resources, many of which were rare and only found in one or two locations, it is unsurprising that the pharmaceutical industry would be so vocal in its support of Japanese expansion throughout East Asia. The legend includes symbols for political borders, rail lines, and cities, as well as a guide to the color shading on the map: yellow is Japanese-occupied areas, red is the Communist base area in and around Yan'an, purple is the 'Southwest faction' (warlords only partially under Chiang's authority, such as Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi, and Long Yun), and green is the Hui Ma family warlords. Blue pillboxes represent the positions of Japanese troops, red pillboxes denote anti-Japanese units (that is, Chiang's armies), and black pillboxes signify the Chinese Communists. At top-left is an inset map (???) showing supply routes to Chongqing via Southeast and Central Asia, including by sea through ports in southern China and Tonkin. The area shaded with horizontal red lines shows the extent of Soviet and Mongolian People's Republic forces and the vertical black lines represent the limit of British power (greatly overstating the case). Ideology and Imperialism In order to fulfill its ambitions to supremacy in East Asia, Japan needed land for its own large population to settle and resources to power the empire, especially as relations with the West worsened and Japan moved towards autarky under the rubric of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Imperial Japan never publicly espoused a philosophy equivalent to the Nazis' lebensraum , and its basic framework for approaching other Asian peoples was a combination of nationalism and Confucianism, but racialist thinking became more common as Japan's empire expanded from the Meiji period onwards, especially after the start of the war in China in 1937. As here, there was no inhibition on open or thinly veiled discussion of seizing China's resources to benefit Japan's population. Japan's Dilemma in China When this map was made, Japanese troops had recently captured Wuhan and were in the process of capturing Guangzhou (Canton). These victories capped over a year of nearly uninterrupted gains. However, Japan's hope of quickly forcing Chiang Kai-shek to surrender had not succeeded, as Chiang retreated far into the Chinese interior to Chongqing (??) and rallied the nation for a long and grinding conflict. As can be seen here, Chiang's major problem wa.…