Comic Strip Blog
Dare Devil
The comic strip I Choose to write about was titled Dare Devil. The comic strip has a heading of “Extra-Play “Slap The Jap” excited new game inside! It also has a Japanese looking man who is the largest picture, and he is holding a knife, which seems to be cutting a picture of planes. Behind the man cutting the plane picture there are other Japanese soldiers behind him who are little and seem to be scared of what is going on. They also seem to be stabbing themselves with a knife. The large Japanese man has a huge mouth that is open in a very dramatic way, his eyes come to a point at the end and his nostrils seem to be flaring. The large man seems very angry and not happy. This seems to be mocking the war that went on the Japanese. I feel like the main man who is cutting the picture of the planes is towards the enemies and he is showing the anger they hard towards them. The other men in the picture are showing what happened to all the solders in the war and how many dies and some probably wanted to kill themselves.
The Japanese immigrated to the Americans to have a better life for themselves. As Takaki states, “Unlike the Irish, the Japanese went east to America” (246). But they, too, were pushed here by external influences. During the nineteenth century, America’s expansionist thrust reached all the way across the Pacific Ocean. After all the troubles the Japanese were faced with they wanted a better life for themselves and this comic strip is showing this not in a racial way but in a very blunt way. The comic shows a side of the Japanese that was not usually thought of the seemed demanding and wanting revenge from the main character. Takaki stated, “In December 1919, the Japanese Federation of Labor and the Filipino Federation of Labor submitted separate demands to Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association. The workers wanted higher wages, an eight-hour day, an insurance found for retired employees, and paid maternity leaves” (259). The Japanese were much smarter and strong then many people saw them as. After getting out of troubled areas and coming to America it opened a lot more positive opportunities for the Japanese culture. The comic strip is not racist but it is an example of how the Japanese were treated and portrayed. Then men in the back show weakness, and the main man in the front shows how the Japanese really felt they were mad, pissed off, treated poorly, and seen as weak.
I feel like the comic strip is a mixture of how people saw Japanese and how the Japanese saw themselves. I do not think the comic strip is racial at all. But I do think the comic strip mocks a lot of things and ways people think of the Japanese people. The men in the back are the weak ones because it seems as thought they are killing themselves by stabbing themselves. The main man in the picture is taking a picture of airplanes and cutting it up in a very strong, mad, furious way. I feel that is how the felt towards what was going on and they wanted people to see how they felt when they were getting treated poorly. I think the comic strip is a good example of two sides to explain what was going on at the time, and how the two sides were portrayed and how the Japanese really felt.