Nanyo-Orientalism: Japanese Representations of the Pacific By Nao ...

In “Shucho no musume,” which is generally said to have been composed by Ishida Ichimatsu in 1926, a dancing Marshallese girl referred to as “my sweetheart” intends to marry the Japanese singer if he can perform a dance at a tribal headhunting feast. To the singer, the girl is both a source of sexual comfort and a cause of anxiety, since the interracial marriage might cause him to assimilate to the native culture more so than she will undergo Japanization. In the song, the girl is called “raba-san” (sweetheart)—“raba” deriving from the English word “lover”—which became a vogue word at the time, linking the exotic/erotic image of the primitive Pacific maiden to that of the modern free woman. This image of the chief's daughter reflected a famous character in a 1932 American cartoon, Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle. It was screened in Japan under the title of Shucho no musume, named after the popular song. Betty Boop, the protean “flapper” heroine, appears in this cartoon as a dark-skinned Pacific Islander (Samoan) who dances the hula wearing only a lei and a grass skirt.

As shown later, Betty Boop's Bamboo Isle and another 1932 Betty Boop cartoon called I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You (screened under the Japanese title of Betty no banchi tanken, or Betty's exploration of the bush) can be considered to have influenced the 1933–1939 serial comic strip by Shimada Keizo entitled “Dankichi the adventurous.” Its south island is analogous to the African scene in I'll Be Glad as well as the Pacific island in Bamboo Isle. With the deep crisis of the Great Depression and international tensions with the West, imperialism reappeared more clearly in Japanese colonial representations. This can be said of “Dankichi”: the natives in “Dankichi” first appear as horrible cannibals (just like the Africans in I'll Be Glad) before becoming Dankichi's loyal child-like disciples.