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Article published In: Metaphor and the Social World
Vol. 10:1 (2020) ► pp.76–99

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Political cartoons portraying the Musha Uprising in Taiwan under Japanese rule

Use of the great chain multimodal metaphors and conceptual blending

 | University of California, Berkeley
 | National Taiwan University
Published online: 1 May 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/msw.19009.sai
Abstract
This study analyzes five political cartoons published in the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpo (Taiwan Daily Newspaper) depicting the Musha Uprising, an indigenous rebellion against Japanese colonial rule that occurred in Taiwan in 1930. The study has produced two important findings and theoretical implications. First, two of the political cartoons deployed The Great Chain of Being multimodal metaphor, and the artist’s conceptual blending of Japanese kabuki stories with the Musha Uprising dramatically portrayed the colonizers as humans and the colonized as animals. We analyze the social and historical context to explain why these cartoons used the boar as a metaphor representing the indigenous people. Second, our results reveal paradoxical and ambivalent perspectives in the cartoons. On one hand, the metaphor of Human vs. Animal reproduced the unequal hierarchical relations between the colonizers and the colonized. On the other hand, the cartoonist also portrayed the rulers in a critical and satirical way. Finally, the research relates the content of this analysis with the post-colonial theorizing of Edward Said. In sum, the study makes a contribution to interdisciplinary research by applying metaphor theory to the analysis of political cartoons and colonial discourse, as well as revealing the hierarchical colonial thinking and racial prejudice lurking behind the metaphors.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background information
    • 2.1Background of the Musha Uprising
    • 2.2About the cartoon, newspaper and artist
  • 3.Data analysis and its theoretical implications
    • 3.1The Great Chain multimodal metaphor and conceptual blending within the colonial context
    • 3.2The thought behind the human is animal metaphor
    • 3.3The paradoxical meanings of political cartoons in the Japanese colonial context
    • 3.4Facts missing from the cartoons
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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