“Kosei Ono writes a chapter specifically about the impact of Chinese cartoons in Japan, beginning with the watershed success of Princess Iron Fan, conceived in China as an anti-Japanese parable, but screened in wartime Japan as an innocent children’s cartoon retelling an episode from Journey to the West. Of course, it also spooked the hell out of the Japanese Navy, which threw money into making a rival feature so that Japan could regain the cultural high ground – the result was Momotaro: Sacred Sailors.”

Over at All the Anime, I review Daisy Yan Du’s new collection Chinese Animation and Socialism, which manages to link wartime propaganda, Chairman Mao and contraband dubs of Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children.