The World as Satire and Vision: “Sekai Shin Manga Chōkanzu” (1924)
The Sekai Shin Manga Chōkanzu (New Caricatured Bird’s-Eye View Map of the World), published in 1924 (Taishō 13), represents one of the most significant and fascinating pinnacles of Japanese pictorial and satirical cartography in the early postwar period. This work is part of the editorial and cultural tradition known as Manga Chizu (comic/caricature maps), which flourished in Japan between the end of the Meiji era and the early decades of the Shōwa era.
The map serves as an extraordinary geopolitical mirror of its era: the world has just emerged from the traumas of World War I, the Japanese Empire is establishing itself as the preeminent global power in Asia, and the globalization of trade and transportation is visibly accelerating. All of this is filtered through the lens of satire, cultural stereotypes, and a biting yet deeply informative irony.
In stark contrast to Eurocentric cartography, the map adopts a projection that places Japan and the Pacific Ocean at the center of the world. Europe is confined to the far left quadrant, while the Americas occupy the right portion. This geographical centrality reflects the geopolitical pride and imperial aspirations of Japan in 1924. Scattered across the various continents are small clock faces.
These indicate the various time zones around the globe, calculated relative to Japan Standard Time, underscoring the perception of a now-interconnected world.
Dense dotted lines crisscross the oceans, indicating the main commercial and postal shipping routes, complete with distances in miles and travel times (e.g., the Yokohama–San Francisco route). In the lower left corner, a panel features the traditional map showing the formal political division of the Earth, serving as a useful geographical reference for the reader.
The large world map is striking for its extraordinary visual density. There is no empty space that is not enhanced by a narrative or decorative intent. The style of the vignettes blends the tradition of Western caricature (derived from magazines such as Punch or the Japanese The Tokyo Puck) with the fluidity of line typical of early Japanese comics. The dense web of vignettes drawn by Ogawa and Maekawa offers a valuable record of how Japan in 1924 perceived itself and other nations, oscillating between sharp analyses of current events and stereotypes inherited from the Western colonial imagination.
The Soviet Union: The Bolshevik Threat
While the Western world is treated with satire but good-natured humor, the Soviet Union (freshly established) faces a harsh political condemnation. The Russian people are portrayed as a mass of chained slaves, subjugated by the new regime. Just beyond the borders of Manchuria looms a grim and violent illustration: a raging tiger clutching a bloodied saber, a clear metaphor for Japanese fears of Bolshevik military expansionism.
Weimar Germany
Emerging defeated from the war and devastated by economic and social crisis, Germany is depicted in a ghostly manner: a human skull resting atop a pile of books. A cultured and ruthless satire that portrays a nation that remains the cradle of science and philosophy (the books) but whose political body is momentarily “dead.”
Warlord China
The fragmentation of China, torn apart by civil wars between military factions, is brilliantly summarized through a cartoon depicting a “tug-of-war” between the nation’s North and South, mirroring the institutional chaos of its Asian neighbor.
The United States of the Roaring Twenties
During this era, the U.S. (before World War II propaganda portrayed it as an enemy) was viewed with admiration and regarded as the home of modernity and prosperity. Stylized skyscrapers stand out along the Atlantic coast, alongside industrial smokestacks, transcontinental railroads, hints of the nascent Hollywood, and explicit illustrations dedicated to sports that were also hugely popular in Japan, such as baseball, boxing, and tennis. Further north, indigenous culture is represented by a monumental feathered totem pole.
Europe and the Major Place Names
Western Europe is populated by traditional symbols: France features a slender Eiffel Tower bustling with painters and cafés; Great Britain is a tangle of industrial smoke, ships, and gentlemen with umbrellas; Italy is identified by an erupting Vesuvius and vignettes depicting the opera tradition. A curious and poetic note at the bottom of the entry for Scotland describes it in Japanese texts as “beautiful and morphologically very similar to Japan” due to its mountainous coastline.
Africa and South America: Colonial Exoticism
In these regions, Japan fully adopts a Eurocentric perspective: Africa is reduced to a naturalistic compendium of lions, elephants, and crocodiles, with indigenous peoples portrayed according to the rigid stereotypes of the time (wearing loincloths and wielding spears in ritual dances); Egypt is symbolized by the Pyramids and the Sphinx. South America is dominated by the majesty of the Andes, the caimans of the Amazon, gauchos on horseback, and coffee and banana plantations. Historical references point to Christopher Columbus’s landing sites or Napoleon’s exile on Saint Helena.
Taiwan (Japanese Colony)
The island of Taiwan, at the time under Japanese imperial rule, is depicted through a native armed with a spear. This is a direct reference to the high-altitude indigenous peoples (such as the Seediq) with whom the Japanese colonial army had engaged in fierce clashes and military pacification campaigns during those years.
The map, which also includes specific references to Western history—such as Christopher Columbus’s landing point in the Americas and Saint Helena Island, where Napoleon was exiled—was created collaboratively by two of the most important and influential illustrators of 20th-century Japan:
Ogawa Jihei (小川治平, 1887–1925): An extraordinary political satirist and cartoonist, he was one of the main collaborators of Kitazawa Rakuten (the father of modern manga) for the magazine Jiji Manga starting in 1921. Endowed with a sharp sense of irony, Ogawa poured his exceptional talent for political synthesis into this planisphere; this map represents one of his last and most complex masterpieces before his untimely death in 1925.
Maekawa Senpan (前川千帆, 1888–1960): A renowned satirical illustrator for major newspapers such as the Yomiuri Shinbun, Maekawa is universally celebrated as a pillar of the Sōsaku-hanga (創作版画 — “Creative Prints”) movement, a school of thought that advocated for the artist’s total centrality in every phase of print creation (drawing, engraving, and woodblock printing). His contribution to the map is evident in the extraordinary fluidity of the line and a refined geometric-spatial harmony.
The map was published in Tokyo by Kokusai Jōhōsha (International Information Society), a prestigious publishing house founded by the eclectic entrepreneur and former Zen monk Ishihara Toshiaki (石原俊明, 1888–1973). The map was printed as a special supplement for the photojournalism and current affairs magazine Kokusai Shashin Jōhō. This editorial detail is crucial: it demonstrates that the map, despite employing the lens of caricature, enjoyed significant cultural and educational authority.
The 1924 Sekai Shin Manga Chōkanzu holds exceptional historical value when compared to what would follow. In 1932, just eight years later, the same publisher, Kokusai Jōhōsha, would release a new world map with the exact same title, commissioning illustrator Shishido Sakō to create it. However, by 1932, the Wall Street crash and the rise of totalitarianism would have erased all traces of Taishō Democracy.
While this 1924 map depicts a cosmopolitan and open planet, crisscrossed by peaceful merchant ships, fishing boats, and tourists, the 1932 version would replace the merchant ships with warships, portray Americans as caged gangsters or corrupt capitalists, and feature the dictatorial faces of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. Ogawa and Maekawa’s 1924 edition stands before us as Japan’s final, precious, and ironic breath of optimism and internationalism before its tragic descent into militarism.
