A vehicle rear monitoring system includes a camera that captures an image of an area to a rear of a vehicle, and a processing unit that processes the image captured by the camera. The processing unit creates a first vehicle rear image that is displayed in a first display area that is a portion of a display area of a display device, when traveling forward, and creates a second vehicle rear image that is displayed in a second display area that is within the display area of the display device and that is an area that includes the first display area and is larger than the first display area, when traveling backward.