Postcard images of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong

Postcards are keepsakes of people's travel memories or a record of "been there". It is a medium with many functions. It is not only an art work that shows local customs and scenery of a destination, but also a collection of cultural values and precious historical data. In an era before information technology was well developed, postcards played an educational role and became a source of knowledge for people to learn. Japan is a country where images are used aptly to express different messages, and the emergence of postcards represents such use case. At the beginning of the 20th century, Japan began to publish postcards containing imagery of cultures, customs and geography at home and abroad, becoming a channel for the Japanese people to gain knowledge of places beyond their own home city or prefecture. However, in the era of Japan military expansion, postcards became a tool for the military to gloss over the cruelty of wars. This book contains more than 100 postcard from the era of Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. These images deliberately created by the occupiers allow us to see what we can, as well as what can’t see.