Asian Punches
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Asian Punches A Transcultural Affair Hans Harder · Barbara Mittler Editors 123 Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context Series Editors Madeleine Herren Axel Michaels Rudolf G. Wagner For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/8753 . Hans Harder • Barbara Mittler Editors Asian Punches A Transcultural Affair Editors Hans Harder Barbara Mittler Department of Modern South Asian Institute of Chinese Studies Languages and Literatures Heidelberg University South Asia Institute Heidelberg, Germany Heidelberg University Heidelberg, Germany ISSN 2191-656X ISSN 2191-6578 (electronic) ISBN 978-3-642-28606-3 ISBN 978-3-642-28607-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-28607-0 Springer Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2013939976 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 This work is subject to copyright. 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Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) We shall always play PUNCH, for we consider it best to be merry and wise— “And laugh at all things, for we wish to know, What, after all, are all things but a show!”—Byron. “The Moral of Punch,” inaugural editorial, Punch, 17 July 1841. Preface This book is the outcome of a conference on the transcultural aspects of Punch magazine, held in November 2009 at Heidelberg University. The event was con- vened by a research group called ‘Gauging Cultural Asymmetries: Asian Satire and the Search for Identity in the Era of Colonialism and Imperialism’, working under the auspices of the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows’. Asian Punches attempts to bring together for the first time research on late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century versions of the Punch, and similar satirical journals from various parts of Asia (including Cairo, which is, of course, North Africa, and Istanbul on the border between Asia and Europe). Many satirical periodicals of the time were directly inspired by the British Punch magazine and often even adopted the name Punch.It is hoped that this overview of Ottoman, Egyptian, South Asian, Chinese and Japanese Punch versions and other Punch-inspired satirical periodicals will add a new dimension to research on Punch, and ‘Victorian’ satirical journalism generally. We also hope to show the necessity of adopting a transcultural perspective when dealing with such phenomena, as well as making some headway towards providing clues for what such a perspective might entail. Assembling materials from a number of different Asian languages, this book uses their respective conventions for the transcription of terms, quoted passages or bibliographic references. The transliteration of Ottoman Turkish is based primarily on that found in the Redhouse dictionaries: James W. Redhouse, A Turkish and English Lexicon, and Redhouse Yeni Turkc¸e-Ingilizce€ Sozl€ uk€ .1 For Arabic, translit- eration is restricted to the indication of long vowels, hamza and ʿayn. For the South Asian languages, conventional diacritics are used, with some additions suggested 1 James W. Redhouse, Redhouse Yeni Turkc¸e-I€ ˙ngilizce Sozl€ uk€ (Istanbul: Redhouse Press, 1986); James W. Redhouse, A Turkish and English Lexicon (Istanbul: C¸ag˘r{ Yay{nlar{, 2001). vii viii Preface by Rahul Peter Das.2 Chinese is rendered into Latin script in accordance with the Hanyu Pinyin system and Japanese is transcribed into Ro¯maji. We are grateful, first of all, to the Cluster and its sponsor, the German Research Foundation, for funding this project. We would like to thank all contributors for sharing our enthusiasm for this endeavour by writing and rewriting chapters for this book. Some of them agreed at very short notice to compose additional chapters: Ritu Khanduri, who rewrote an article on Indian versions of Punch for us, and Marilyn Booth, who contributed an additional article on The Cairo Punch. Last but not least, we would also like to thank those without whose help it would hardly have been possible to put this book together: Verena Vockel,€ who did an excellent job organising the conference; Jessica Fischer for very prompt copy- editing; Emily Mae Graf and Anne Moßner for producing the typescript, the latter especially for coordinating unified transliterations and assembling the images; Judit A´ rokay for her support with the Japanese titles; Eliane Ettmueller for the transliter- ation of the Arabic citation in Marilyn Booth’s first chapter; Nasir Abbas Nayyar for his help with the transliteration of several Urdu titles, Richard Littler for graphics restoration of the illustrations; and Andrea Hacker for supervising the publication on behalf of the Cluster of Excellence and Springer-Verlag. Hans Harder Barbara Mittler 2 See Rahul Peter Das, “Review of Dusˇan Zbavitel, Bengali Literature (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1976),” Indo-Iranian Journal 27 (1984): 51–69; 66, n. 2. In the following chapters, there are, however, a few deviations from this system. For example, the vocalic -r- is written as r, the retroflex -r- as ṛ, and -b- as the last part of a Bengali conjunction is written as -v- wherever Sanskrit-derived words are concerned. Contents Prologue: Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Asian Punch Versions and Related Satirical Journals ................................ 1 Hans Harder Part I Punch, the Template The Presence of Punch in the Nineteenth Century ................. 15 Brian Maidment Part II Punch in South Asia Punch and Indian Cartoons: The Reception of a Transnational Phenomenon .............................................. 47 Partha Mitter The Possibility of Satire: Reading Pratap Narain Misra’s Bra¯hman, ˙ 1883–1890 ................................................ 65 Alok Rai From Punch to Mat 0va¯la¯: Transcultural Lives of a Literary Format ... 75 Prabhat Kumar The Punch Tradition in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal: From Pulcinella to Basantak and Pa¯˜cu .......................... 111 Chaiti Basu Crossing Boundaries: Punch and the Marathi Weekly Hindu Pan˜ca (1870–1909) .............................................. 151 Swarali Paranjape ix x Contents Punch in India: Another History of Colonial Politics? .............. 165 Ritu Gairola Khanduri Part III Punch in the Middle East Insistent Localism in a Satiric World: Shaykh Nagga¯r’s ‘Reed-Pipe’ in the 1890s Cairene Press ................................... 187 Marilyn Booth Abu¯Nazza¯ra’s Journey from Victorious Egypt to Splendorous Paris: The Making of an Arabic Punch .............................. 219 Eliane Ursula Ettmueller Teodor Kassab’s Adaption of the Ottoman Shadow Theatre Karagoz€ ........................................... 245 Elif Elmas What’s in a Name? Branding Punch in Cairo, 1908 ................ 271 Marilyn Booth Part IV Punch in East Asia ‘Punch Pictures’: Localising Punch in Meiji Japan ................ 307 Peter Duus ‘Punch’s Heirs’ Between the (Battle) Lines: Satirical Journalism in the Age of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 .................... 337 Sonja Hotwagner Participating in Global Affairs: The Chinese Cartoon Monthly Shanghai Puck .................................................... 365 I-Wei Wu ‘He’ll Roast All Subjects That May Need the Roasting’: Puck and Mr Punch in Nineteenth-Century China ........................ 389 Christopher G. Rea Epilogue: Ten Thousand Pucks and Punches—Satirical Themes and Variations Seen Transculturally ............................... 423 Barbara Mittler Prologue: Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Asian Punch Versions and Related Satirical Journals Hans Harder The Punch magazine is in itself quite a landmark in the history of newspaper and magazine publishing. In terms of the duration of its publication, it is certainly one of the top 100 newspapers and magazines worldwide. Apart from some interruptions during its last years, Punch