Tokyo Puck

In 1905 Kitazawa Rakuten founded *Tokyo Puck*, the landmark color satirical magazine that stands as a turning point in the birth of manga. Where earlier *ponchi-e* had circulated in modest black-and-white sheets, *Tokyo Puck* was ambitious, colorful, and commercial — the first genuinely successful color satire magazine of its kind in Japan, reaching a wide readership across the country and beyond. Its success did more than entertain. It helped fix *manga* in its modern meaning as the name for this popular cartoon art, and it proved that a mass cartoon readership existed and could be served. With recurring characters, sharp political and social commentary, and vivid color printing, *Tokyo Puck* built the audience and the industry model on which twentieth-century Japanese comics would grow.