「日本万歳 百撰百笑」「木偶の坊 骨皮道人」

Carrying the subtitle 'Kuguri no bō' (The Wooden Puppet or Blockhead), this sheet from Nihon Banzai: Hyakusen Hyakushō uses the term for a wooden doll or marionette — a figure without agency or intelligence — as a satirical label for Chinese military command. The composition likely depicts a Chinese officer or soldier rendered as stiff, doll-like, and ineffectual, exploiting the visual language of bunraku puppet theater to imply mechanical incompetence. The series' caricature vocabulary draws on both Japanese comic traditions (kyōga, tobaeshōshi) and the Western newspaper illustration Kiyochika had studied. Puppet imagery carried particular satirical force as the Qing military was portrayed in Japanese press as hollow and without modern discipline. Flat, boldly applied color blocks fill the figure contours, with the comic effect deriving from distorted proportion rather than atmospheric rendering. This print is one of at least two in the series sharing this subtitle.