e Geisle served as chief editorial cartoonist with PM Magazine in New York.Overall the opinions put across in his cartoons of this time present themselves as being informed and rational. They are consistent with images of their time in terms of methods used to make their point. During this time he covered themes ranging from the internal debate over the US isolationist policy, the dangers represented by the Axis powers to the need to reevaluate the average American’s racial views as in Image 1. That his political commentary during the war should include such blatant stereotyping of the Japanese emphasises the degree to which racial prejudices existed throughout the American perspective and qualify Geisle’s work as representative of that perspective.The characteristics that were used to describe the Japanese were not creations of Pacific War. Western travel literature is rife with observations of physical differences between people of Eastern and Western decent. The most notable difference lent its name to the late nineteenth century fears of the “Yellow Peril.” Not only are the Japanese (and indeed most all Asians) set apart by the colour of their skin, but the colour yellow may hold an association with unhealthy-ness in the Western mind. But skin colour was not the only attribute used to describe the Japanese.How the general American public perceived the Japanese is aptly demonstrated by Image. The large glasses suggest a myopic sense of vision preventing the Japanese from seeing the world in Western (i.e. superior) terms. Subject to faulty vision the Japanese could not fully develop an accurate and true understanding of the reality as the Americans understood it.Further more, what flawed concepts of the world the Japanese did hold were concealed from the West by unchanging facial expression? The squinting eyes and buck-toothed smile were constant. They were considered an act of dishonesty, a mask behind which t...
