75 pages • 2 hours read
The Last Rose of Shanghai
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Background
Historical Context: Conflict in China, 1937-1945
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. In The Last Rose of Shanghai, Yamazaki exemplifies the supremacist tenets of Japanese expansionism.
The events of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War inform the novel and are often referenced by the characters. At the beginning of the novel, Aiyi’s family has already lost and rebuilt their wealth after the initial fall of Shanghai. Sinmay discusses the tenuousness of the Nationalist-Communist alliance and rages about the Japanese bombing of Chongqing, the new location of the Chinese capital. Aiyi worries that Ying is involved with the Communists, the radical faction of the working class, as wealthy families tended to align with the Nationalists. Lastly, the Communist victory in 1949 leads to Aiyi’s ejection from China for marrying a non-Chinese man, which went counter to the Communists’ nationalist philosophy.
Geographical Context: Shanghai Leading Up to the 1940s
Shanghai is a city located in the central area of China’s coast. It is built on the mouth of the Yangtze River estuary, in addition to having the Huangpu River flowing through its center. This location made Shanghai a trade center, which led to international powers pursuing control of it in the 1800s. A series of treaties in the second half of the 19th century resulted in Chinese concessions allowing the French, British, and Americans to claim territory around what was then the walled city of Shanghai. In 1895, the First Sino-Japanese War resulted in the establishment of a Japanese presence in the city. The walls were demolished in the early 20th century and the city expanded, becoming its own municipality (not including the concession territories). This introduced Shanghai’s “Golden Age,” ushering in many public projects and scores of international residents, some of whom settled in the city for generations. Though Shanghai was not fully under Japanese control until 1937, Japan did invade the city in 1932, destroying an entire district and killing 18,000 people.
This long history of foreign interference in Shanghai is central to The Last Rose of Shanghai. Several of the neighborhoods that Aiyi visits—the International Settlement and the French Concession, for example—were founded in the 1840s and well-established by World War II, which explains Victor Sassoon’s position as an entrenched millionaire in the city. The Shanghai Municipal Council governing the Settlement, which was disbanded by the Japanese in 1941, was also a fixture of Shanghai from 1854. Thus, when Aiyi thinks of Shanghai as a city that does not belong to itself, she is referencing almost a century of history. This longevity informs the novel’s depiction of the international residents’ certainty that Japan will not attack them and thus the population’s utter shock when the Imperial Army invades the Settlement.
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