[Humorous pictures showing the Chinese mode of transportation (four men harnessed to a carriage by their long pigtails) and a scene depicting the silk industry]

A two-scene satirical print presenting Chinese cultural practices as objects of mockery for Meiji Japanese audiences. The upper or first scene depicts four men harnessed to a carriage by their queues — the long braided pigtails mandated by Qing dynasty decree — using a physical feature of Chinese ethnic identity as a literal yoke. The second scene addresses silk production, depicted with comic exaggeration. Both vignettes draw on Orientalist tropes circulating in Meiji popular culture that characterized Chinese society as simultaneously exotic and backwards. The queue, which Qing subjects were required to wear as a sign of subjugation to Manchu rule, was a recurring motif in Japanese wartime caricature as a shorthand for Chinese servility. Kiyochika's compositional approach here is purely diagrammatic, sacrificing atmospheric depth for flat graphic legibility suited to the constraints of newspaper supplement printing.