Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses violence and death.

Though the events of The Last Rose of Shanghai take place within the years of World War II, the Japanese occupation of Shanghai began in 1937, the first year of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese Imperial Army invaded China and swiftly captured Beijing, Shanghai, and the capital, Nanjing, dealing major blows to the Chinese forces who were known as the Second United Front. This Front was an alliance between Chinese Nationalists and Communists, who had been opposing forces in the Chinese Civil War starting in 1927. After the Japanese were defeated, the alliance crumbled and the two factions resumed fighting, culminating in a Communist victory in 1949.

Japan’s occupation of China was marked by extreme brutality and war crimes against civilians. China’s dead numbered at least 20 million. Japanese imperialism was based on the belief of the Emperor’s divine mandate to rule “the eight corners of the world,” which framed other Asian nationalities as uncivilized and lesser (Beasley, William G. Japanese Imperialism, 1894-1945. Clarendon Press, 1987, pp. 226-27). This Japanese supremacist ideology was the foundation of the atrocities committed in Japan’s colonized territory.