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
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Hans Harder Barbara Mittler Editors Asian Punches A Transcultural Affair
Editors Hans Harder Department of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures South Asia Institute Heidelberg University Heidelberg, Germany Barbara Mittler Institute of Chinese Studies 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. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. 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.
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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 convened 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 T urkçe-ingilizce S ozl uk. 1 For Arabic, transliteration 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 T urkçe-iṅgilizce S ozl uk (Istanbul: Redhouse Press, 1986); James W. Redhouse, A Turkish and English Lexicon (Istanbul: Çağr{ 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 Rōmaji. 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 V ockel, who did an excellent job organising the conference; Jessica Fischer for very prompt copyediting; Emily Mae Graf and Anne Moßner for producing the typescript, the latter especially for coordinating unified transliterations and assembling the images; Judit Árokay for her support with the Japanese titles; Eliane Ettmueller for the transliteration 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 Dušan 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 Brāhmaṅ, 1883 1890... 65 Alok Rai From Punch to Mat 0 vālā: Transcultural Lives of a Literary Format... 75 Prabhat Kumar The Punch Tradition in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal: From Pulcinella to Basantak and Pā cu... 111 Chaiti Basu Crossing Boundaries: Punch and the Marathi Weekly Hindu Pañca (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 Naggār s Reed-Pipe in the 1890s Cairene Press... 187 Marilyn Booth Abū Nazzāra 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 Karag oz... 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