Tôbaé

Georges Bigot’s Tôbaé was a pioneering satirical comic series published in Japan from 1887 to 1889, blending Western caricature with Meiji-era social commentary. Though it ran for no traditional issues, Bigot’s sharp, single-panel observations of Japanese life—from politics to fashion—made it a unique cross-cultural artifact. Its brief but pointed run matters as an early, outsider’s visual chronicle of a rapidly modernizing nation.