The picture was not titled, location is not known [c1940s] there was no attribution. [RESTORED] I cropped the image, repaired the bottom left corner that was covered by the photo retainer, adjusted the tone and contrast, then sepia toned it.

During the unfortunate war years, when Chinese territory was taken by Japan, the Imperial Japanese Army had occupied a substantial amount of the land along the eastern coast of China for a number of years. Since photography itself knows no allegiance, many photos of course, would be taken by IJA soldiers. Some recorded their startling cruelty and inhumanity to their fellow man; less well known images simply documented mundane daily experience. Many would be of the kind that soldiers (of any flag) take to show one's daily surroundings to those nervously waiting back home for their safe return.

Below is probably such a picture. Found on a Chinese web site dedicated to the war years, it seems to have been taken from a private Japanese photo album. The original picture wasn't scanned, but was directly photographed with a digital camera from an opened album page. One corner of the photo bore a picture retainer (used to hold a photograph onto the display page) typical of home albums during the mid 1900's, and the resultant photograph was clearly evident of Barrel Distortion (a defect phenomenon of modern camera lenses where the middle of the picture seems to bulge outwards toward the viewer), where the camera is held too close to an object being photographed, in this case the album page.

This is a very interesting picture of the Chinese civilian's adaptation to prevent bomb damage. Several of the buildings bore bamboo bomb shields; that is layers of bamboo built elaborately into a mesh atop buildings, with the intent to prematurely detonate falling bombs. This would limit the sustained damage to the outside of a home or building. Otherwise, a bomb would crash through the roof and explode inside, often collapsing a structure and killing all of its inhabitants.