How a British media entrepreneur of "Punch" in 19th century Japan satirised Western civilisation

What is it about?

“Punch” style political satire and humour magazines spread around the world during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This global media phenomenon is traced back to Victorian Britain’s Punch or London Charivari (1841-2002), which is considered as the parent publication that spawned imitators in name or style across the British empire and in other semi-colonial societies in East Asia. Rooted in the metropolitan imagination of Victorian London, the Punch found itself at the centre of its own informal empire. As offspring geographically situated on the peripheries, the global manifestations of Punch-style media publications are understood as having reproduced, internalised and further circulated imperial ideology and iconography through, for example, visual modes such as caricatures. This research introduces and reevaluates the Japan Punch (1862-1887) satirical magazine. Published in the Yokohama treaty port by the British correspondent and artist Charles Wirgman, this research demonstrates how the publication departed from the established historical narrative of global punches. Through humour, satire, parody and generating laughter, the Japan Punch diverted from imperial hierarchies or simply ridiculing the Japanese “Other,” and instead lampooned the British “Self” and Western ideas of civilisation.

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Photo by Anelale Nájera on Unsplash

Photo by Anelale Nájera on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This research on transnational flows of satirical media in the late nineteenth century is significant to modern Japanese history and global history. Previously it was assumed that the Japan Punch was a chief disseminator of a “superiority humour,” which positioned Japan and the East as backwards in relation to a more advanced and civilised West. The story continues that in line with the metanarrative of Japan’s rapid modernisation and nation building initiated by its mid-nineteenth century “opening,” the Japanese media would soon modernise in like manner by reproducing imperial humour cartoons that laughed at regional neighbours they had overtaken and overthrown. This research reconsiders this West to East unidirectional flow of knowledge framework by revealing how a transnational culture of satirical humour emerged in late nineteenth century Japan, which through laughter, sought to destablise dominant notions of civilisational progress.