[From “June 11, 2026: Re-imagining Villains 181”]
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Panel 1: in a Japanese-style room, a Tengu enters, holding a hinomaru while saying “Hey, fellow Japanese people”Banzai moshi moshi ichiban ”. Two Japanese are eating at a tablesaiko ”
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During the Biden administration, Tats had a running “gag” where a poorly-disguised FBI agent would be all “how do you do fellow kids” and then try to get MAGA types to do something morally/legally questionable, and the “punchline” would be the MAGAs calling out “Fed!”. This was based on actual paranoia which was going around at the time, which was that Biden’s FBI was infiltrating MAGA in order to spy on them and maybe destroy them from the inside. He only did that “gag” straight a few times, but after that he did increasingly questionable variations of it, including a Star Wars “parody”. Ever since Trump was re-elected, he’s stopped doing that… until this strip. It doesn’t work very well as either a continuation of a running gag or as its own thing, even ignoring that it was never funny to begin with.
So… Japan invading China was totally justified? seriously part of the reason why Japan went to war was in part because the US stopped selling them oil and the other half is entirely because of homegrown militarism and a sense of superiority to some extent, the Japanese Imperialists and fascists did not need a foreign group to get them to go to war with everyone because they already were planning to do just that, just as the Nazis planned to go to war with everyone as well, that’s the entire point of fascism ya idiot.
So, some interesting things I learned doing basic casual research in reaction to this:
Historically, Europeans have been caricatured as Tengu in Japan due to their comperatively big noses. Here, for instance, is a caricature of US Commodore Matthew Perry, who ended Japanese isolationism via gunboat diplomacy in 1854:image Speaking of which, while the first Jews to settle in Japan were Americans immigrating subsequently in 1861, the classical Tengu had already emerged by the 14th Century, and are believed to be a syncretism of the Chinese comet-demons known as sky-dogs (tiāngŏu ), which are the origin of the name (whereas the sky-dogs themselves became known as amakitsune , sky foxes), as well as possibly the Hindu bird-man guardian spirit Garuda, with local tradition, with some aspects and satire of the Shugendo mountain-monks thrown in for good measure.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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