Constructing East Asians in a European comic book series

4.1 Quantitative analysis

In order to identify the propagation of different ethnic identities in The Adventures of Tintin and to comprehend how these groups are included and excluded, as a first step, I manually quantified the number of times each ethnic group appears in panels along with the frequency of their speech in speech bubbles.^[5] This quantification is based on categorization criteria discussed above under step 1. I repeated this task three times at different time intervals between the years 2012–2015 to confirm its accuracy.^[6] Recording the dispersion of panels and speech bubbles under each ethnic category along with the propagation of the most recurring character roles helps us to understand the proportion and frequency of appearance of each group which is the basis for my sampling. Such quantification can also identify trends in the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others. For example, in The Adventures of Tintin, East Asians can be described as both “in-groups” and “out-groups” depending on different perspectives in context which deal with their national identity, as will be seen in detail in Section 5. Table 2 presents both the frequencies and percentages of panels and speech bubbles for each ethnic group in The Adventures of Tintin.

As can be seen in Table 2, East Asians tend to be the most frequently occurring non-European ethnic group in the whole Tintin series, which makes them an interesting case study for understanding in what ways they are being depicted and constructed.

4.2 Qualitative analysis

A qualitative examination of all groups is beyond the scope of this paper. The focus, however, is exclusively on particular character roles from the selected ethnic group (East Asians), as mentioned above, and more specifically on the Chinese and Japanese characters in this series, while explaining the ultimate implications through a narrative, textual, and visual analysis considering the socio-historical context in which the stories were written. According to the context of the stories, the narratives revolve around the adventures of a young Belgian reporter, Tintin, the challenges he faces, and his interactions with people from various ethnic groups in different countries (e.g. the Soviet Union, China, and Japan). In sum, the subsequent sections include a narrative analysis of the volumes in which East Asians appear, followed by multimodal discourse analysis of selected character roles based on their function and frequency of appearance.

5.1 Narrative analysis of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets ^[7] and The Blue Lotus

Following the overall quantification of panels and speech bubbles presented in Section 4.1, this section explores the discursive construction of selected, most frequently occurring non-European character roles (East Asians) in the Tintin series. In order to answer the research questions on how character roles from different ethnic groups are constructed in the series, the section conducts a detailed case study from this ethnic group based on the frequency of occurrence and the functions of characters as stated above. Moreover, the analysis seeks to examine if there are any racist/ethnicist stereotypes in this series and, if so, how such stereotypes are reproduced in these books. Due to space limitations, this paper cannot offer a complete analysis of all the linguistic features in the excerpts provided. It only includes those features which are directly or indirectly relevant in addressing my research questions. The characters within this ethnic group are identified with their national identities as Chinese and Japanese in the following three volumes, respectively: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (TLS) (1929), The Blue Lotus (BL) (1934), and The Crab with the Golden Claws ^[8] (CGC) (1940). Considering visual features (see Figure 1), I begin with the Chinese villains, as they are among the first non-Europeans with explicit references to their national identities to appear in the series. Following Propp’s (1968 [1928]) narrative analysis, the lines below indicate the main narratemes allocated to them, showing how this group is constructed overall within the “dangerous mission” plot type.

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (TLS)

1. Villains (anonymous Chinese) attempt to harm the hero (A) (Pr6)

2. They fail (I)

In their first appearance in TLS (70–71), East Asians are portrayed as Chinese torturers (see line 1). In this context, they are hired to torture the hero (Tintin) after he is arrested by the OGPU^[9] (see Vignette 1).

Vignette 1:

(a–g) First appearance of East Asians (Chinese) in TLS, pp. 70–71 © 1999, Casterman: Paris and Tournai; © 1999, 2007, 2011 Egmont.

Both torturers look identical with regard to their facial features (bony heads and narrow eyes), pigtails, and body gestures (folded hands), and they wear somewhat similar traditional Chinese outfits. Such homogeneity is based on the common but outdated Western stereotype that all Chinese look alike, thereby denying them individual characteristics. Their namelessness may suggest their insignificance in the narrative. Their action as torturers, however, is foregrounded in terms of its salience (see Kress and van Leeuwen 2006), which is realized by depicting several torturing devices, like swords, a bed of spikes, and a hot poker. This combination of a homogeneous depiction of these two Chinese characters along with their likely intended action (torture with a hot poker) against the hero denotes their brutality and serves to reinforce the atrocity of the Chinese in this context. As illustrated in Vignette (1 c–g), they fail in their intention to torture the hero (line 2). This failure ironically implies their inability and incompetence.

The next time East Asians are depicted in the Tintin series is in the BL adventure, where both Chinese and Japanese characters appear as representatives of East Asians. In this volume, Hergé challenges prevailing Sinophobic stereotypes while foregrounding Tintin’s friendship with a young Chinese boy he meets in the course of the adventure, and then, as will be seen in Section 5.2, he champions a Chinese view of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, the context against which the text is set (see Mountfort 2012). The only way to distinguish these two national identities from each other in this volume is by a slight difference in their physical appearance. That is, the Chinese are depicted with bony faces and narrow eyes, mostly wearing traditional clothes, whereas the Japanese are distinctively portrayed with protruding noses and jutting teeth, wearing Western-style clothes (cf. Laser-Robinson 2005). As will be seen, the Japanese character roles are constructed as cunning and vicious individuals who attempt to harm the hero in this volume (lines 11, 16–17, 25), whereas the Chinese, unlike in the TLS adventure, share the same positive attributes as the hero (e.g. wit, bravery, wisdom), thus associating them with Europeans. To understand how they are constructed in this narrative, I first address the overall functions to identify the complexities of these two national identities and their actions in relation to the hero.

The Blue Lotus (BL)

1. The villain (Mitsuhirato, Japanese) recognizes the hero (Tintin) (Q)

2. The hero receives a letter from the villain (γ)

3. The villain asks to meet the hero (η)

4. The hero goes to meet the villain (δ) (C)

5. A helper (Didi, Chinese) rescues the hero several times (Rs.)

6. A secret society (Sons of the Dragon, Chinese) abducts the hero (ß)

7. The society helps the hero (K)

8. A donor (Mr. Wang, Chinese) introduces himself to the hero (J)

9. The villain pays other villains (unknown international forces) to blow up some railway tracks (ε)

10. The villain recognizes the hero (Q)

11. He attempts to harm/kill the hero (4x) (A13) (Pr6)

12. He fails (x4) (I)

13. The hero knocks him down (2x) (E)

14. A donor (Hsi-yang, a Chinese professor) is kidnapped (ß)

15. The international settlement police arrest the hero (A15)

16. Japanese forces imprison the hero (A15)

17. The villain (Mitsuhirato) attempts to bribe the hero (η 8)

18. He fails (I)

19. A donor (Mr. Wang) rescues the hero (Rs.)

20. The hero travels to find a second donor (the professor) (↑)

21. The hero meets the helper/partner of the hero (Chang) (D2)

22. The villain asks for support from the international forces (A)

23. He kidnaps the donor(s) (Mr. Wang and his family) (A1)

24. He unites with the supervillain (Rastapopoulos) (A)

25. They aim to kill the hero and the donors (A13)

26. The partner of the hero (Chang) rescues the hero and the others (Rs.)

27. The villains are arrested (A15v)

28. A group (Japanese delegates) in the League of Nations resigns (I)

29. The villain (Mitsuhirato) commits Hara-Kiri (Su.)*(U)

30. Society praises the hero (W)

As can be seen in the above lines, the analysis starts with the helper, the donor, and the partner of the hero, all of whom are Chinese, and then moves on to the villain(s) who are either Japanese or “foreign” forces. On the one hand, the helpers/donors/partner of the hero support the hero by either rescuing him from danger (lines 5, 19, 26) or helping him to find a solution to a problem (line 7). On the other hand, the hero, too, rescues them from being kidnapped (line 20). Thus, it is implied from the context that these characters are not defeated in the end. The villains, however, are ultimately defeated, since their actions, such as poisoning, kidnapping, sabotage, bribery, an assassination attempt, and drug-dealing (see lines 9, 11, 17, 23, 25), are generally considered to be both morally and legally criminal. They (Japanese) all fail in the long run (see lines 11–13, 17–18, 27–28) or commit suicide (see line 29). These repetitive failures suggest their incompetence and weakness, while the Chinese win in the end, as they are associated with the hero and therefore it is implied that, similar to him, they are wise and strong. Such a distinctive contradiction within the same ethnic group (East Asians) provides insights into the salient features of the context of situation, i.e. colonial propaganda. In the mid-1930s, when BL was published, China, and especially the city of Shanghai, was ruled by two heavily fortified military sectors: one occupied by the Japanese and the other by Western colonial powers, both British and American troops, under the name of an International Settlement (IS) (Laser-Robinson 2005). This division of the city, as Laser-Robinson (2005) also notes, was followed by corruption and poverty, all of which are similarly presented throughout the book. In this way, BL is not only a fictionalized reconstruction of the Chinese and Japanese but, as I argue, it is also a parallel historical snapshot (i.e. intertextual reference) of the conflict between Japan and China, and Western powers, during that period. Next, I provide six selected extracts from their interactions to approach my research questions by means of linguistic analysis.

5.2 Positive representations of Chinese characters in BL

BL was written to inform Europeans about the oppression that the Chinese were suffering under colonial rule. At the same time, the story serves to convey implicit messages about cultural stereotypes from a European point of view (see Assouline 2009; Laser-Robinson 2005; Thompson 2011 [1991]) while regarding the Chinese as “Europe’s own internal others” (Mountfort 2012; Wallace 2008). This important background points at Hergé’s sympathy for the Chinese^[10] due to a friendship with his Chinese friend, Chang Chong Jen, who was the model for the fictional character of the same name, Chang, in the volume. Thus, this friendship and his thorough knowledge of Chinese art and the context seems to have influenced the positive representations of the Chinese in the making of BL (see Farr 2011; Thompson 2011 [1991]). As an illustration of such positive representations, Text 1 below presents the first interaction between the hero (Tintin) and his Chinese partner (Chang). This fragment is of significance as it explicitly demonstrates them exchanging beliefs/comments on prejudices and stereotypes that Chinese and Europeans have for each other (see lines 3, 5–8, 10). I use abbreviations for the names of each character, e.g. “T” for Tintin and “C” for Chang. Additionally, for ease of reference, the page numbers and panel orders are included. I will follow the same convention for the subsequent examples in this section.

Text 1

Description of context: On his way to Hukow, a Chinese city, Tintin rescues a young Chinese boy from drowning in the river. Once the boy gains consciousness, Tintin introduces himself.

To put Chang at ease, after questioning him about his health, Tintin uses a hyperbolic utterance, You almost swallowed half the river! (line 1), potentially triggering humor. Then, in order to encourage his addressee after asking his name, Tintin takes the initiative and introduces himself. Chang gives his full given and family name, Chang-Chong-Chen. He appears surprised that Tintin has saved his life. The reason is that he assumes that all white[men] are wicked. The use of the verb “thought” indicates that the implicature of his utterance is not true, i.e. ‘all whites are not wicked,’ an utterance which is replicated by Tintin in the next panel (line 5). Ostensibly, Chang associates all whites with the “devil” (white devils), and therefore considers them stereotypically to be wicked from his point of view. For him, they are devils because, as he explains, they massacred his grandparents during what he refers to as the war of Righteous and Harmonious Fists.^[11] Tintin realizes that Chang is referring to the same event that Europeans label The Boxer Rebellion (line 4). This intertextual reference to a real historical event in twentieth-century China, which signifies the blurring of boundaries between fiction and reality and also demonstrates the different points of view of these two characters in referring to the same event. The repetitive use of the collective reference “all” in phrases such as all white devils, all white men, and all Chinese serves to reinforce the idea that they have biased perceptions of each other. Tintin then lists the negative stereotypes that Europeans have of the Chinese, which are similar to the stereotypes summarized by Pickering (2001), for example those related to their personal traits (such as being cunning and cruel) and their physical appearance (wear[ing] pigtails [line 6] and having tiny feet [line 7]). The list also includes their “weird” habits and costumes, such as always inventing tortures, eating rotten eggs and swallows’ nests (line 6), and throwing their unwanted babies into the rivers (line 8). In this way, as Peeters (2012: 77) maintains, the principal prejudices of Westerners as regards China are evoked, similar to those stereotypes mentioned by Pickering (2001: 137): “sinister characters with pigtail and drooping moustache […] ruthless, cunning […].”

Meanwhile, Tintin’s reference to stupid Europeans (see line 7) with such prejudiced beliefs could have some combination of the following implications:

1. Tintin does not share their view. Thus, he is constructed as distancing himself from his fellow Europeans. Such strategic distancing appears when he refers to his in-group as “the same stupid Europeans.” In this way, he excludes himself from this group.

2. He is (possibly) being self-critical. Such negative self-presentation could be related to a general strategy of politeness (GSP), called the “Maxim of Modesty” as proposed by Leech (1983, 2014. According to Leech, this maxim is a typical speech-event type of self-devaluation, which is used for politeness purposes (Leech 2014: 91, 94).

3. He is empathizing with Chang. This interaction ends in (lines 9–10) with the depiction of both characters as they burst into laughter while reflecting on such “crazy” European beliefs. Clear attempts are observed to discourage ignorant and racist remarks regarding Chinese characters in BL, as aforementioned.

5.3 Negative representations of Japanese characters in BL

In this section, I focus on the main East Asian villain character “Mitsuhirato,” who appears 115 times (22.9%) in total among East Asians in BL. To comprehend how this character is constructed and represented as the main non-European villain throughout the BL adventure, an extensive analysis is conducted in each sub-section. The analysis contains some of the interactions in which Mitsuhirato appears along with other characters (e.g. the hero). Following the storyline (see Appendix (B)), considering that Mitsuhirato is the villain, we can observe that he is not identified as a villain in his first appearance (Vignette 2). Due to word limitations and large amounts of data regarding Mitsuhirato’s speech, I include only the first interactions in each context where he appears. This will help us to deconstruct the mentioned character and exclude repetitive ones.

Vignette 2:

First appearance of the East Asian villain, Mr Mitsuhirato in BL, p. 8c © 1946, 1974, Casterman: Paris and Tournai; © 1983, 2007, 2011 Egmont.

A closer look at this Japanese character with his stretched-open mouth, stereotypical buck-teeth, and spiky hair marks him as distinctive from the other East Asians, i.e. the Chinese, who possess other visual features (see above). His European-style evening tailcoat, with a vest and a bow tie, suggests his taste in fashion and perhaps his wealthy background. Along with other Japanese characters, he is portrayed with a protruding nose like an animal snout in a rather bony-shaped head. Such animalistic depictions of the Japanese as also pointed out by Laser-Robinson (2005) serve to reinforce the idea that they are evil by nature and, therefore, not to be trusted. As Japan had invaded China at the time, such a dehumanization of enemies was also considered an act of “wartime propaganda” during the twentieth century (see Brcak and Pavia 1994; Laser-Robinson 2005). As Brcak and Pavia (1994: 675) write: “to fight a war, the enemy must be dehumanized, must be made threatening and evil.” In this vein, the allusions to the conflict are very precise, and, as will be discussed later in this paper, the visual and contextual propaganda on both sides reveals an undercurrent of racism regarding Japanese and Chinese national identities. The following excerpt is taken from the first encounter between Tintin and Mitsuhirato, who owns a clothing shop. In this context, “M” stands for “Mitsuhirato,” “S” for “the servant/the secretary” and “T” for “Tintin”:

Text 2

Description of context: Tintin enters Mitsuhirato’s clothing shop to meet him for the first time. A non-depicted servant/secretary announces Tintin’s arrival.

The interaction between Mitsuhirato and Tintin starts in line (3), following the servant’s announcement of Tintin’s arrival. In this excerpt, Mitsuhirato is constructed as friendly and polite, employing phrases such as please pardon me and assigning honorific attributes to Tintin, like honourable sir. This serves to accentuate his politeness (a stereotypical Japanese trait). In this way, he gains Tintin’s trust. In what follows, Mitsuhirato warns Tintin several times while using persuasive devices such as exaggeration (The Maharaja of Gaipajama is in great danger, my own life would be in danger, Beware of everyone here [lines 3, 7, 9]), an idiomatic expression (Your life hangs by a thread [line 9]), and rhetorical questions (Who knows what they will do in your absence? [line 5]). By employing such persuasive devices, and considering his social role as a clothes shop owner, he is constructed as a compelling character who attempts to encourage Tintin to return to India. Tintin’s rhetorical question in line 6 (Who are ‘they’?), as well as his emphasis on the pronoun “they” in scare quotes, suggests that he is not convinced and that his interlocutor’s utterance was not clear enough. Thus, he requires some more information. Mitsuhirato, however, withholds that information and the pronoun “they” remains anonymous for security reasons, as he explains in line (7). His use of negative attributes, such as Despicable creatures and such persons stop at nothing, obviously indicates that “they” are dangerous and not trustworthy. In this way, his explicit reference to “the Chinese” in line (9) could be seen as an implicit response to Tintin’s query in line (6). In line (11), notably, Mitsuhirato’s “hand-rubbing” gesture could convey his wickedness (see Richards 1998) and possibly his deceitful manner, which will be discussed in the following sections. Moreover, by employing a predication strategy and exaggeration (A true Japanese knows everything), he appears to be constructed as a nationalist “know-it-all” character, which can insinuate a sense of superiority. At the same time, this utterance can be a strategic announcement of his next “real” social role as a secret agent/spy.

5.3.1 A secret agent and spy in China

After his first meeting with Tintin, Mitsuhirato’s actions shape the trajectory of the narrative. The following fragment is a telephone conversation between Mitsuhirato and an unnamed character that provides credible evidence of Mitsuhirato’s transformation into another role, that of a “Japanese secret agent” and “spy.”

Text 3

Description of context: after bidding farewell to Tintin, who is supposedly convinced to return to India, Mitsuhirato (M) telephones an anonymous high-ranking character (A) in Tokyo.

This brief telephone conversation is a sequential interaction between two participants: Mitsuhirato, the caller, and an unknown recipient. Mitsuhirato’s repetitive deployment of the honorific reference “Excellency” three times (lines 14, 16) serves to reinforce the idea that the receiver is likely to be a high-ranking official in the government. In line (15), we can see that this person, who remains anonymous, has the power to offer the highest chivalry order in Japan, named as the Order of Fujiyama.^[12] Since such honors are usually granted by high-ranking members of the royal family or high-ranking officials to worthy individuals for their services and achievements for their country, it can be inferred that this anonymous character could be either the Japanese emperor or one of his family members. In the same vein, he hesitates and breaks his sentence, filling the gap by employing a predicate, you know what, which is also a vague referring expression that relies on the interlocutor’s ability to infer what referent he has in mind. This mitigating strategy suggests that he is withholding information and does not wish to mention the action explicitly, which is likely to be for security reasons. However, the success of this action deserves bestowment of a chivalry order, which denotes the significance of the action for the country. This interaction proves to be salient in the story, as will be seen below. Yet, understanding how this person encourages Mitsuhirato to do the unnamed task helps the reader to perceive the power relations and probably corruption in the upper levels of Japanese society. The following utterance sheds some light on this critical mission that is assigned to Mitsuhirato and specifically presents the gradual transformation of this character into a villain.

Text 4

Description of context: Mitsuhirato enters an opium den. A servant welcomes him and informs him that someone is waiting for him. He meets an unknown foreign agent, whose nationality is not stated.

It is clear from this context that Mitsuhirato is bribing his unknown interlocutor, who is likely to be a foreign agent, to do something for him for which he is making a pre-payment of 5,000 dollars. At the same time, he threatens to kill the interlocutor if he talks. This use of a conditional threat implies an extreme measure of violence. It seems like a “command,” in line with Culpeper et al. (2017), who state that “conditional threats are more like commands, controlling the addressee’s future action.” In this way, Mitsuhirato is commanding the addressee to take the action he wants. By employing a rhetorical question here, You understand?, Mitsuhirato manifests a kind of reinforcement device: what he commands should be implemented by the foreign agent. Thus, this small fragment reveals several significant multi-layered characteristics of Mitsuhirato: he is a manipulative character whose corruption can be inferred from his bad deeds, such as hiring and bribing someone to do something villainous.

5.3.2 A cunning saboteur and warmonger

Mitsuhirato and the unknown foreign agent leave the den and get into a car, while Tintin hides and clings to the back of the car to see where they are heading. The following Vignette 3 illustrates what happens next, which will yet again shape another route of the narrative in line with a “real” historical event.

Vignette 3:

Railway explosion scene in the BL, (p. 21b–j) © 1946, 1974, Casterman: Paris and Tournai; © 1983, 2007, 2011 Egmont.

Mitsuhirato orders the foreign agent to blow up the railway line. After the explosion, his use of an evaluative attribute, Perfect!, apparently expresses his satisfaction at the action being accomplished, which would be considered negative by most people. In the final panel (p. 21j), we can observe another feature of this character when he calls the police (Cheng Fu Station) to report the explosion.

Text 5

In this utterance, Mitsuhirato claims that Chinese bandits are responsible for the explosion. These false claims serve to reinforce the idea that he is an imposter and untrustworthy, someone who blames others for what he has caused himself. This incident is of significance here for its intertextuality links to Text 3, line (15), where the unknown character encourages Mitsuhirato, telling him that if he succeeds in this action, he will receive the Order of Fujiyama.

Moreover, it explicitly refers to a “real”-life historical event, and in particular to the “Manchurian Incident.”^[13] Therefore, it also shifts the attention from a mere fictional narrative to a historical fact. In other words, a new narrative of the past is being reformulated and recontextualized. In this regard, we encounter more explicitly an interface between fiction and reality in a much more obvious way than in previous volumes. In this story, as discussed, the above incident (blowing up the railway and invading China) is an allusion to the real Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. However, here, Mitsuhirato, a fictional character, is depicted as the mastermind of the recontextualized incident and a blatant liar. Similar to the real event, the Japanese government uses this false attack as an excuse to invade Manchuria and thus take Shanghai under their control.

5.3.3 A drug smuggler and accomplice to a supervillain

As the storyline goes, Mitsuhirato turns out to be a drug smuggler and a partner of the supervillain Rastapopoulos. The following fragment is taken from the final interaction between Mitsuhirato and Tintin to understand how Mitsuhirato is constructed as the most frequently occurring East Asian villain and how he is characterized in this context.

Text 6

Description of context: Mitsuhirato captures Tintin and presents him to his “Grand Master,” Rastapopoulos, the leader of a drug-smuggling gang.

While employing endearing terms usually serves to manifest affection for a person and can function as a politeness strategy, at the same time it can also be used as a means of insincerity and to patronize the addressee in some contexts. As such, Mitsuhirato’s choice to address Tintin as My dear Tintin may suggest insincere politeness to save face, considering the context of situation, where Tintin is his hostage. The use of the idiomatic expression Welcome to the end of the road serves to reinforce the idea that Tintin will die. By referring to the Blue Lotus, which is associated with an opium den, Mitsuhirato’s connection with the drug smugglers is revealed. He then prepares Tintin to meet someone whom he refers to as an old friend of Tintin’s, who does not want to miss his execution This utterance suggests that: a) he is aware of their acquaintance, b) this so-called “old friend” is clearly not the hero’s friend, as he wishes to see him die, and c) the hero is going to die. In the last line (35), Mitsuhirato’s explicit reference to Rastapopoulos as “Grand Master” indicates that he is working for him and that Rastapopoulos is the mastermind behind Tintin’s misadventures in this story. In this way, Mitsuhirato’s role as an East Asian villain, changes to that of an accomplice (i.e. helper) of the European supervillain, and thus a lesser villain.

5.3.4 A traditional Samurai

In the end, Tintin, with the help of Chang and the police, captures Rastapopoulos, Mitsuhirato, and their gang. As illustrated in Vignette 4, a newspaper article announces Mitsuhirato’s suicide in a headline.

Vignette 4:

Mitsuhirato’s obituary in BL, (p. 61g) © 1946, 1974, Casterman: Paris and Tournai; © 1983, 2007, 2011 Egmont.

This panel illustrates part of an article in a local newspaper, its place of publication, “Shanghai,” and the day it was published, “Saturday.” The main headline tells the reader about the Blue Lotus affair (an intertextual reference to the past events in the story), and the fact that Mitsuhirato’s picture is included in this article indicates his connection with this affair. The sub-headline, typed in bold capital letters and centered, serves to emphasize its salience to the reader. Thus, it can be considered as the main news as reproduced below:

MITSUHIRATO COMMITS HARA-KIRI^[14]

This sub-headline refers to Mitsuhirato committing suicide following the scandalous “Blue Lotus affair,” in which his connection with “the drug smugglers” and the failed “attack on Nankin Shanghai Railway” is promulgated in public. The failure of his evil plans evokes shame, persuading him to put an end to his life in a so-called “dignified” manner. The act of hara-kiri is an intertextual reference to what is part of the Samurai honor code, used either voluntarily to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of enemies or as a form of capital punishment for those Samurais who have committed serious crimes or brought shame on themselves (Rankin 2011). Mitsuhirato is thus constructed as a follower of this Japanese tradition, someone who considers himself a Samurai who, through his death, should pursue the honor code to restore the dignity he lost due to his past failures. This reference to the act of hara-kiri can be regarded as a cultural stereotype in this book.

5.4 Positive representations of the Japanese character in The Crab with the Golden Claws

Another Japanese character in the Tintin series which is worthy of our attention at this point is called “Bunji Kuraki” (see Vignette 5). He only appears eight times in The Crab with the Golden Claws (CGC). His limited appearance may suggest his insignificance in the story, but it is important to see how he is constructed in his brief appearance.

Vignette 5:

(a) The first appearance of Bunji Kuraki as an unknown passer-by (p. 5j); (b) his last appearance as a police agent (p. 61e) in CGC © 1953, 1981, Casterman: Paris and Tournai; © 1958, 2002, Egmont.

This character at first appears as a nameless, curious passer-by, who later follows Tintin to warn him about an international drug-smuggling organization, but he is kidnapped at the beginning of the story and only reappears toward the end when he is rescued and introduces himself to the hero. In this way, he is constructed as a character of trivial importance. Later, it turns out that he is a Japanese secret agent, similar to Mitsuhirato in the BL volume; but unlike him, Kuraki is working for the Yokohama Police force and against international drug dealers. In his first interaction with Tintin, which is his first and final encounter, he congratulates Tintin for his success while stretching his hand to shake the hero’s. Considering the context, this act, along with his slight bow, may suggest his sincerity and imply his politeness. Thus, the initial results suggest that wherever the East Asian ethnic group is represented negatively through their national identities, in another album they are slightly balanced and represented positively. However, I acknowledge the fact that within some ethnic groups, their negative traits seem to be maximized while their positive traits are minimized, and vice versa, especially when it comes to their nationalities. For example, as discussed in the first part of this analysis (see Section 5.1), the Chinese are negatively represented in TLS, being constructed stereotypically as torturers. Whereas in BL, they are represented positively (e.g. fighting against drug smugglers, helping the hero). They share characteristics identifiable with hero’s (e.g. wit, bravery, wisdom). Previous stereotypes about them are absent from this volume (see Text 1, the conversation between Tintin and Chang).

The Japanese, on the other hand, are dehumanized and represented negatively in BL. However, in CGC, the Japanese person is characterized positively in that he is constructed as a helper-victim. Even though their traits change, the stereotype regarding their physical appearance as Japanese characters remains the same as for Mitsuhirato and other Japanese characters.