At first glance, this appears to be a picture of Abe Lincoln upset by being provided with a map produced by AI hallucinations, as he points accusingly at Nouth Calorina. He probably hasn’t even noticed that the Dakotas are there, despite not being admitted to the Union until a quarter century after that fateful night at Ford’s Theater.

But the map is actually the result of artistic license by the producers of the Japanese production of John Drinkwater‘s play Abraham Lincoln. And that’s not Honest Abe; it’s actually actor Chojuro Kawarasaki playing the role. The photo appeared in the April 8, 1946, issue of Life Magazine, which notes that this was the first such production since long before the war, at Tokyo’s Imperial Theater. The play was “very carefully tailored for Japanese playgoers’ consumption,” and the theater was off limits for American GIs. Despite wearing elevator shoes, the 5 foot 7 actor was unable to get up to Lincoln’s 6’4″.

The magazine noted that “many Japanese, including Emperor Hirohito, have recently been professing themselves great admirers” of the Great Emancipator. Audiences were reportedly “large but not house-packing.”

While we don’t have a video of the Japanese production, the 1952 CBS-TV Studio One production can be viewed at the following link: