When the carving knife hit pinewood and art collided with the chaos of war, a new weapon emerged in China. Woodcut printing — a traditional handicraft once used for images that captured the sanctity of Buddhist scriptures and expressed the elegance of literature — assumed a new mission during WWII. It became a potent battle cry to rouse the people and ignite the flames of resistance.

The Chinese woodcut printing tradition dates back more than a millennium. The oldest woodcarving with a precise date is an illustration from the year 868 that was found in a Buddhist text uncovered in Dunhuang, in the northwestern Gansu province. The print’s flowing lines and balanced composition reflect the sophistication of the craft even in its early days. From the Buddhist imagery on Sui and Tang dynasty scrolls and the illustrated pages of Ming and Qing dynasty books, to the guardian effigies pasted on commoners’ doorways during the Lunar New Year, woodcut printing has left an indelible mark on both elite and popular culture.

A century ago, literary giant Lu Xun promoted an artistic revolution called the New Woodcut Movement. Taking inspiration from international printmaking traditions, especially those from the Soviet Union, the movement sought to create works that reflected and critiqued social injustices in order to awaken the public to such issues.

When the Chinese League of Left-Wing Artists was founded in Shanghai in July 1930, the League, alongside Lu Xun, became a driving force behind the promotion of woodcuts as more than book illustrations or religious imagery. The following August, the League hosted a six-day woodcutting workshop in Shanghai, led by Japanese bookseller and cultural figure Uchiyama Kakichi, with Lu Xun serving as translator. Thirteen students from four local art organizations attended the event, which is now regarded as the formal beginning of China’s New Woodcut Movement.

On July 7, 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident ignited full-scale war between China and Japan. Faced with brutal conflict that threatened the very survival of their nation, brilliant literary and artistic minds, who in peacetime composed poetry and painted in solitude, threw themselves into the war effort. In the shadow of raging war, these artists produced some of their best works using woodcut printing. “I will inspire the resistance and call on fellow artists to join the cause,” renowned artist Zhang Shanzi wrote to his brother.

With their easy reproducibility, speed of distribution, and striking visual impact, woodcut printing emerged as the primary wartime art. Besides art pieces that were shown in exhibitions, woodcut printing was also used for wartime magazines, pamphlets, books, graphic novels, and the like.

For example, the wartime anthem “March of the Volunteers” — which later became the national anthem of the newly founded People’s Republic of China — inspired a wave of woodcut art. Artist Chen Yanqiao’s “Singing at the Frontline” depicts soldiers in a rousing rendition in the midst of war. In Li Hua’s “Rise! Ye Who Refuse to Be Slaves,” the song’s lyrics echo through its distinctive bold lines and rough strokes, while another of Li’s works, “Roar, China!,” which vividly interprets the lyric “From each one, the urgent call for action comes forth,” is often seen as a striking visual companion to the anthem itself.

In wartime China, woodcut art evolved in two distinct arenas: the Nationalists-held “rear areas” that remained beyond the Japanese occupation, and the front line, Communists-held “border regions” situated close to the fighting. Though shaped by different political and geographic contexts and stylistically divergent, woodcut art from both areas was equally influential.

Woodcut art from the rear areas gained momentum in 1938 with the founding of the All-China Association of Anti-Enemy Woodcut Artists, which had hundreds of members. It printed countless magazines and anti-Japanese pamphlets, as well as woodcut instruction manuals for artists who were unfamiliar with the art form’s techniques. Touring exhibitions organized by the association circulated woodcut art to cities across southwestern China, making its citizens aware of the fighting and atrocities of Japan’s occupation happening far away from their homes.

Far from the relative safety of the rear areas, artists in the border regions forged their own distinctive woodcut tradition. Some artists immersed themselves with the troops of the Communist Party, producing enduring images of the soldiers’ and local villagers’ resistance efforts. They also churned out publicity materials, designed newspaper headlines and illustrations, drew maps, and even engraved stamps and currency when needed.

During his time in the mountains, engraver Yan Han produced his work, “The Five Heroes of Langya Mountain,” after reading a story in the military paper, Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region Daily, about five soldiers who chose to leap from a cliff rather than surrender. His 16-panel masterpiece stands as a testament to one of China’s most celebrated stories of wartime heroism.

Thematically, rear-area woodcuts tended to depict brutal battle scenes from the front lines, using art to condemn the violence and grim realities of war. Their works were intended to rouse public outrage and rally the resistance by documenting Japanese atrocities and exposing the suffering of those in occupied zones. In contrast, border-region artists lived more closely among the local population, and as such were more adept at incorporating folk art. From Lunar New Year prints and stone carvings to paper cutting and shadow puppets, these traditions infused border-region woodcuts with great diversity, making them distinctly local and grassroots in character.

Beyond fueling domestic support, wartime woodcuts also informed international audiences of the harsh realities of the war in China. In 1939, 1940, and 1942, with the support of the Sino-Soviet Cultural Association, Chinese engravers collected hundreds of prints and other art pieces for exhibitions in Moscow, Leningrad, and more.

In the autumn of 1942, a bilateral U.S.-China effort opened a joint exhibit in the southwestern city of Chongqing, with several of the works transported back to America by President Roosevelt’s envoy, Wendell Willkie. The prints were exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and featured in Time magazine. Eighty-two prints were later compiled into a volume titled “China in Black and White” (1945) by the American author and Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck.

Woodcuts were by no means the only art form documenting WWII. On the battlefront, the war was fought with guns and artillery; on the cultural front, knives, brushes, and ink were the weapons of choice. They waged a war of angered cries and quiet laments, direct assaults, and subtle maneuvers. United in purpose, China’s artists came together to fight and win a cultural battle against Japanese imperialism, fortifying the spirit of a nation at war.

Translator: Cynthia Lin.

(Header image (from left to right): Woodcut prints by Wang Maigan (1941), Zhang Wang (1933), and Li Hua (1947). From the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai Luxun Museum, and China Art Museum)