My son Matthew recently went through a collection of my old comic books. He found an obscure one from 1972, featuring a Terrytoons mouse called Hashimoto-san. Hashimoto-san is a Japanese mouse who heads a mouse family, and uses his judo chops to beat up his cat nemesis. The dialogue is startling to contemporary eyes. It's total chop-socky. For example, I'm holding in my lap the comic Matthew found, looking at a panel in which Hashimoto-san is helping his wife onto a trolley leaving for Mount Fugi Buji:
HASHIMOTO-SAN: "I have made it! Now honorable wife -- grab hand!WIFE: "Yes, venerable husband. Now you see why we need a motor car.
Later, Hashimoto-san tells his wife and kids, "Honorable head of family say this good exercise! Keep family very young!" Etc.
It's cringeworthy to read it today, but according to the Wikipedia entry, not only was Hashimoto-san conceived in 1959 by a Japanese-American cartoonist, but the character was actually considered progressive because it was the first American comic to feature the Japanese in a positive light. Here's more info on the character from Toonopedia. It's interesting to reflect on how things we find embarrassingly regressive today were, in their time, representative of enlightenment.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Whoops - make that title, *Miso* Corny...
but the character was actually considered progressive because it was the first American comic to feature the Japanese in a positive light.
And Amos 'n Andy was the first radio/TV program to depict black people as doctors, lawyers, and other professional people, as opposed to depicting them just as entertainers or domestics.
But...but...Judo is a throwing/grappling art, it lost the strikes of its jiu-jitsu parentage a century ago, hence "judo chop" is an oxymoron. Now I wonder, the knife-hand strike in Japanese is called 'chuto'...but that would be karate.
All this aside, do you know it is Free Comic Book Day this Saturday, May 3? Local comic book stores are given boxes of comics to match all sorts of interests, to give away - the idea is the free ones will tease you to buying more. It works, too. So let your son start his own collection so when he is a dad he can share some of the weird, odd, embarassing comics of his youth.
http://www.fpsmagazine.com/blog/2008/04/censored-eleven-problem.php
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.