Elite Collaboration in Japanese-Occupied China: The Cultural Power and Political Influence of Hu Lancheng, 1938-1945

Abstract

Results of the Project: I conducted research at the general library of the University of Hong Kong from 21-27 May and 11-18 June; at the Second Historical Archives in Nanjing, China from 28 May-10 June; and at the East Asian Collection of Stanford University and the Chinese Collection of the University of California-Berkeley from 14-24 August 2004. I perused and photocopied significant material about the project. For example, at the Second Archives I found an official document, signed by Chairman Wang Jingwei in 1941, which appointed Hu Lancheng as Deputy Propaganda Minister of Wang's puppet Chinese government headquartered in Nanjing (1940-1945). I also discovered an official message (dated November 1944), composed by a Japanese consul in Shanghai, in support of Hu's new journal titled Bitter Bamboo for publication in Occupied China. At the East Asian Collection I located the first edition (1940) of Hu's It Is Difficult to Go To War, But It Is Also Not Easy to Achieve Peace. This volume of essays was his primary work arguing for China's painful but necessary collaboration with the Japanese.