The Representation of Self and Other in a Semi-Colonial Environment: An Analysis of Japan Punch, 1862–87

Abstract

The Representation of Self and Other in a Semi-Colonial Environment:An Analysis of Japan Punch, 1862–87 Beninio McDonough-Tranza (bio) in 1862, Charles Wirgman, a young correspondent for the Illustrated London News, arrived in Yokohama, a burgeoning multicultural city riven by the contradictions of imperialism. Twenty years had passed since Commodore Perry's display of military strength and technological superiority had forced the Tokugawa Shogunate, like the Qing Empire before it, to negotiate a series of unequal treaties with European powers and the United States, which marked, for the West, the "opening" of Japan. Several Japanese cities, designated as treaty ports, were opened for trade and for foreign residence. Yokohama, the most significant of these treaty ports, had rapidly grown from a small fishing town to a bustling trading centre and had attracted a contingent of foreigners who mostly, like Wirgman, had arrived in Japan to pursue their fortune. Wirgman, a budding artist as well as a journalist, quickly found his niche in the composition of the hugely popular satirical periodical Japan Punch, which, in imitation of the famous London Punch, combined cartoons and written articles and which he solely owned, composed, and edited from 1862 to 1887. Japan Punch, together with the rest of the treaty port press, owed its existence to the most humiliating aspect of the unequal treaties—the system of extraterritoriality, which left foreign residents in the treaty ports subject only to the laws of their native countries, imposed through a system of consular courts, and not to the Japanese state.1 The foreign settlement at Yokohama was an enclave of European imperialism that the Japanese state sought to contain. In China, where the system of exterritoriality had first been developed, the initial concessions led to increasing encroachment by the Western powers and the gradual expansion of the settlements and the privileges they enjoyed. Wirgman, along with many of his fellow expatriates, may have expected to see Japan follow a similar path. However, by 1887, when Wirgman completed the final issue of Japan Punch,Yokohama and Japan had been transformed and the delicate system of thinly veiled semi-colonialism was close to collapse. Wirgman lived through the most transformative and revolutionary period in modern Japanese history, during which Japan would challenge the precepts of European imperialism. The archive of his journalism represents a unique and remarkable source on this encounter. [End Page 45] Among specialists on Meiji Japan, Japan Punch is well known. As James Hoare notes, "few books about the treaty ports … lack one or more of Wirgman's pictures" (162). However, Wirgman's cartoons are generally used only for illustrative purposes in such texts. To the best of my knowledge, with the exception of one chapter in Todd Munson's recent The Periodical Press in Treaty-Port Japan, Jozef Rogala and Hitomi Yamashita's edited collection of Wirgman's cartoons—which "is not meant to be an academic history" but aims only "to extend the fun and frolic of the life and to acquaint the world with the works of Charles Wirgman" (viii)—represents the only study (academic or otherwise) of Japan Punch in English. Studies of Japanese media do occasionally reference Japan Punch since Wirgman exerted a considerable influence on the development of Japanese pictorial satire and also opened the first photography studio and European art school in Japan (the Japanese word for cartoon, punchu, immortalizes his contribution). However, in these studies, Japan Punch is analyzed with reference to the incorporation of European art in Japan rather than as a source on Victorian attitudes to the wider world.2 To some extent, this may be attributed to the generalized academic neglect of cartoons, and periodicals that make significant use of cartoons, as historical sources. As Julie Codell recognizes, the "study of how visual content functions to generate meanings and reader identifications in periodicals" is an extremely "under-utilized" area of research (410). Peter Duss concurs that "historians … have rarely taken [cartoons] seriously as texts" although they represent extremely valuable sources that "provide access to 'everyday' reactions to politics" ("Weapons of the Weak" 995). Indeed, the first volume to examine the various Punch magazines produced by British expatriates in Asia was published...