191 Comic Papers 



whole address, which he meanwhile took down in 

 shorthand, afterward reading Japanese notes to the 

 audience in a most unimpressive fashion. The other 

 time Mochizuki, a bright youth recently graduated 

 from Stanford, volunteered to serve. Having taken 

 the joint course of Dr. Krehbiel and myself on the 

 history of International Conciliation, he felt very 

 much at his ease. After my preliminary paragraph, unfair ad- 

 therefore, he ran on for ten or fifteen minutes, when vantage 

 Professor Kokubo, an old Stanford man, came for- 

 ward, saying that I must stop the boy. "The people 

 came to hear you," said Kokubo, "and he is giving 

 your speech himself." My eager double was ac- 

 cordingly brought back to earth. 



Japan has two clever comic papers, the Tokyo The two 

 Puck and the Osaka Puck, imitations in their way of "p^^^^" 

 our own Puck in the days of its political influence. 

 These two weeklies constitute a mouthpiece of the 

 common people and are often unsparing or even 

 brutal in their criticism of public men and policies. 

 As a matter of fact, however, the bark of the Japanese 

 journalist is said to be worse than his bite, and he 

 often prints attacks he would never think of making 

 privately. This I judged to be distinctly true on 

 meeting the amiable editor of the vitriolic Tokyo 

 Puck. 



Each number of both weeklies contained a full- 

 page colored cartoon of artistic merit — numerous 

 smaller sketches, also, most of them stupid and some 

 slovenly, suggesting the worst monstrosities of Ameri- 

 can comic supplements. In the Osaka sheet, the Notun- 

 brighter of the two, I was occasionally figured but {"^^fj^^^ 

 without malice. One full-page picture represented 

 me as red in the face, declaiming vociferously against 



C 361 3 



