Empire of Comic Visions: Japanese Cartoon Journalism and its Pictorial Statements on Korea, 1876–1910

Abstract

Abstract This essay introduces the Japanese political cartoons that satirized Japan–Korea relations during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By situating the cartoons within the development of print media and by re-presenting the popular gaze on Korea in particular and Asia in general, this essay argues that cartoon journalism made an artistic discovery in which equivalence between imperialist relations and everyday life was created. By the time of the annexation of Korea in 1910, it was widely believed in Japan that ‘pre-modern’ Korea must be absorbed into the control of ‘modern’ Japan. Setting the firm ground for the state to carry out imperialist projects, such popular consensus furnished continuous attention and participation on empire-building from Japanese society. Notes 1 Freud, ‘Wit’, 776. This is a revised and translated version of an article published in Korean as ‘Cheguk eui chodae’, Asea Yonku, 118 (December 2004). 3 Ibid., 246. 2 Sumitani, ‘Shōno geijutsu, manga’, 236. 4 Ikebu, ‘Manga no omoshiromi’, 7. 5 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 148. 6 Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 339. 7 Ishiko, Nihon mangashi 1, 2; Itō, Nihon shimbun mangashi; Shimizu, Manga no rekishi; Nihon shimbun hakubutsukan, Shimbun manga no me—Hito, seiji, shakai. 8 Duus, ‘Weapons of the Weak’; Karlin, ‘The Gender of Nationalism’; Dower, War Without Mercy; Dower, ‘Graphic Others/Graphic Selves’. 9 For example, see Kinefuchi, Fukuzawa Yukichi to Chōsen. 10 Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 60. 11 Shimizu, Manga no rekishi. 12 Ibid., 36. 13 Ono, Nihon shimbun hattatsushi. 14 Wirgman was a correspondent on the Illustrated London News. He came to Tokyo in 1861 but was already familiar with East Asian affairs as he had been dispatched to China to cover the Arrow Incident in 1857. He began Japan Punch and published it for 25 years. See Itō, ‘Shimbun mangashi’, nos 7 and 10. 15 Japan Punch, March 1876. 16 See Gong, The Standards of ‘Civilization’ in International Society. 17 Shimizu, Manga no rekishi, 81–101. 18 Tobae, February 1887. 19 Shimizu, Manga no rekishi, 53. 20 Yamaguchi Junko, ‘Kaisetsu’, 6–7. 21 Ono, Nihon shimbun hattatsushi, 99–114. 22 Yamaguchi Junko, ‘Kaisetsu’, 18. 23 Berridge, ‘Popular Sunday Papers’. 24 Duus, ‘Weapons of the Weak’. 25 Philippe, Political Graphics, 184–187. 26 Marumaru chinbun, 16 June 1894. 27 Marumaru chinbun, 14 July 1894. 28 Capturing the Japanese linguistic characteristics of reading the same Chinese character in different ways, or substituting different Chinese characters of similar pronunciation to shade the original meaning of words, this kind of wordplay (kotoba asobi) appears very often, from Tokugawa graffiti up to modern cartoons. See Kida Jun'ichirō, Nihonjin no fūshiseishin: Rakushoni miru jidai haikei. 29 Marumaru chinbun, 7 July 1894. 30 Marumaru chinbun, 28 July 1894. 31 Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 343–345. 32 Fukuzawa sent his cousin, Imaizumi Ippyō (1865–1904), to the United States to learn about cartoons. Upon returning, Imaizumi joined Jiji shinpō in 1885 and drew illustrations and cartoons. 33 Jiji shinpō, 3 January 1882. 34 Ibid. 35 Bull and Watson, The Expansion of International Society; Gallagher and Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’; Gong, The Standards of ‘Civilization’ in International Society; Duus, ‘Japan's Informal Empire’. 36 Yamamuro, ‘Ajia ninshiki no kijuku’; Tanaka, Japan's Orient. 37 Jiji shinpō, 8 August 1894. 38 Donald Keene shows how Japanese society actively internalized the notion of civilization at the end of the war in his article, ‘The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 and its Cultural Effects in Japan’. 39 Jiji shinpō, 22 August 1904. 40 On Kitazawa, see Shimbun kenkyū, October/December 1974; February/April/June/July/August/September 1975. 41 Shimizu, Manga no rekishi, 107–117. 42 Jiji shinpō, 22 August 1904. 43 Tokyo Puck, 1 September 1910. 44 Quoted in Ishiko, Nihon mangashi 1, 71. 45 Ariyama, Kaigai kankō ryokō no tanjō. 46 Marumaru chinbun, 7 July 1906. 47 This was not unrelated to the government's strategy to make newspapers an ‘agency of social control’ by exploiting the newspaper's need to secure a mass market. Being aware of the newspaper companies' need for an ever-larger market as their papers went commercial, the government cunningly induced them to become ‘neutral’ institutions by promoting ‘objective reporting’ and tamed them into being an agency for population control. The case of the Osaka Asahi newspaper, which was the mother company of the Tokyo Asahi, is a prime example. The Osaka Asahi was established by Murayama Ryūhei and Ueno Riichi in 1881 as one of the ‘small newspapers’. It soon came to face financial difficulties and asked for government financial assistance in 1882. In response, the government requested the Osaka Asahi to become ‘neutral’ as a condition for receiving subsidy. See Ariyama, Kindai Nihon jaanarizumu no kōzō, 135–140. Governmental effort to turn newspapers into allies for ‘social control’ was not limited to Japan. For example, Gladstone of Great Britain proclaimed that ‘[T]he freedom of the press was not merely to be permitted and tolerated, but to be highly prized, for it tended to bring closer together all the national interests and preserve the institutions of the country’. See Curran, ‘The Press as an Agency’, 58. 48 Niroku shimbun, 2 September 1910.