Tokio Jokio

Tokio Jokio is a 1943 Looney Tunes short planned by Norman McCabe and finished by Frank Tashlin.
==Plot==
A man announces that footage of Japannazis have been released to the public. The film footage then begins with a rooster who is about to crow. (an obvious spoof of Pathé) When he does, however, he changes into a vulture with glasses and buck teeth, while rubbing his hands. Behind him, the rising sun of the Japanese Rising Sun Flag appears. The voiceover says: "Ohh, cock-a-doodre-doo, prease!", in a further emphasis that this vulture is Japanese.
The first segment is "Civilian Defense". The voiceover proudly presents the Japanese air raid siren system, which turns out to be two Japanese wearing kimonos taking turns in pricking each other in the buttocks with a needle, a possible nod to the obscene Japanese hand gesture, kancho. A listening post is literally a pole with key holes in it, and an aircraft spotter is literally someone painting spots on a plane. The fire prevention headquarters have burned down to the ground. The surprised voiceover exclaims: "Ohh, Son a gun. Too rate!"
A lesson about incendiary bombs is given. The text states that one should never approach incendiary bombs for the first five seconds. A small Japanese man with an umbrella appears, reads the text, checks his watch (which is decorated with Nazi swastikas) to count the seconds, and roasts a sausage above the dynamite stick. He explodes and reappears out of the explosion pit without his face, but his glasses and hat still in the same place. The figure says "Oh, rosing face, prease! Rosing face!" as a pun on the Asian concept of "losing face" or shaming oneself in public.
In "Kitchen Hints", General Hideki Tojo stars as a cook. Tojo explains how a delicious Japanese club sandwich is made: a bread ration card is sliced in two, a piece of a meat ration card is put in between, then it is eaten and afterwards Tojo hits himself over the head with a club. With a large hump on his head, he starts playing with his lips.
The new Japanese victory suit is no cuffs, no pleats, no lapel and ... no suit! A small Japanese man shivers in diapers in the snow, while trying to warm himself to a candle.
Then "Red Toga-San" brings the highlights of today's Japanese sports, while talking out of an iris. Suddenly the iris closes and his false teeth get stuck into the circle. They clatter to the ground. The Japanese "king of swat", his head shaped exactly like his trophy, is shown in his baseball outfit. Suddenly he spots a fly, which he tries to kill with a fly swatter, but misses and spins around in a circle. The fly grabs the swatter and clobbers him down. Afterwards it takes his trophy and flies away.
A skull in the title changes into the face of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto sitting at his desk. He introduces himself and leaves his desk, while walking on stilts to look bigger. He says that he "will dictate peace time in the White House." An editor's note covers the screen informing the audience that: "this is the room reserved for Admiral Yamamoto." When the card is removed an electric chair is shown and Chopin's funeral march is quoted.
General Masaharu Homma, according to the voice-over, demonstrates "Japanese coolness and calmness during air raid attacks." Homma does however exactly the opposite and runs around in panic before ducking into a tree trunk. When he sticks his head out of the trunk, a skunk does the same. Disgusted by the smell of the Japanese he ducks and reappears with a gas mask on his head.
In "Flashes from the Axis", a monocled donkey called Lord Hee-Haw, a caricature of the American-British radio broadcaster and Nazi collaborator Lord Haw Haw, or possibly of Fred W. Kaltenbach, who was himself nicknamed Lord Hee-Haw, brays loudly before announcing that "the Führer had just received a postcard from a friend vacationing abroad". Adolf Hitler reads the message, "Wish you were here," and turns the card around to see the picture. It depicts Rudolph Hess in a prison camp. Hitler looks up in amazement and wiggles his nose. The next shot shows the "celebrated" ruins of ancient Rome and then cuts to Benito Mussolini sitting on a modern Roman ruin, with a sign titled "Ruin #1", all the while playing with a yo-yo with a sad look on his face.
A large submarine is "three weeks ahead of schedule", according to the voiceover. Indeed, they are still working on it while it sails under water. When the submarine sails out of sight a small worker hurries behind it, only to stop after a giant crash. He freezes, takes his hat off, and Taps is played. Then he shakes his shoulders and returns the way he came. After this, a group of Japanese submarine sailors are shown using "intricate and technical machinery", which are actually pinball machines, gambling machines, and a peep show machine.
A Japanese sailor pilots a Kaiten human torpedo on a dangerous mission. The voice-over says that the pilot doesn't care about the danger, but when he asks him if he has anything to say the pilot exclaims: "No, nothing, except...RET ME OUT OF HERE!", apparently stuck in the torpedo.
A plane is shot into the air with a large slingshot, another plane has tricycle landing gear, actually a small man riding a tricycle attached to the plane, an aircraft carrier is presented which carries remains of crashed planes, and a minesweeper has two hands operating a broom to sweep mines away. When this ship accidentally explodes, a buoy emerges from the sea with the note: "Regrettable incident please". 
== Caricatures==
*Isoruku Yamamoto
*Masaharu Homma
*Hideki Tojo
*Adolf Hitler
*Charlie Chaplin - Hitler twitches his mustache like Chaplin
*Benito Mussolini
*Rudolf Hess
*Lord Haw-Haw
==Notes==
*Though Nickelodeon had this cartoon in its library around the time the channel had the rights to air Warner Bros. shorts, this cartoon never aired on either the Nick at Nite or the daytime version of Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon.http://www.kevinmccorrytv.ca/tv/nick/
* Despite now being barred from airing on American television due to the highly offensive Japanese stereotypes, Cartoon Network aired clips of this short as part of their ToonHeads special about World War II-era cartoons, with narrator, Leslie Framm, reminding viewers that cartoons like this, "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips", and several WWII-era Popeye shorts, particularly "Seein' Red, White, 'n' Blue", contained a lot of unflattering depictions of Japanese people and featured violence against them that went beyond typical comic cruelty.
* This is Norman McCabe's final short, as he was drafted into the Armed Forces before its release (which explains why McCabe was credited as a "Corporal" in this short).
** After McCabe was drafted into the Armed Forces, Frank Tashlin returned to Warner Bros. Cartoons and took over McCabe's unit until Tashlin's departure in 1944. Tashlin was involved with finishing the short according to a list from Leon Schlesinger Productions, however McCabe ended up the only one credited as director.
*The credits are strangely placed before the title card. This would later be shown in cartoons like "This Is a Life?" and "Three Little Bops".
*One of those parodied in this short is Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who lead the Navy and lead many of the Japanese attacks in the early period of the Pacific war including the attack on the American base at Pearl Harbor in December, 1941. Admiral Yamamoto was shot down and killed on April 18, 1943, over Bourgainville in Papua New Guinea, less than a month before the premiere of this short.
*This cartoon entered the public domain in 1971 due to Warner Bros. failing to renew the copyright in time.
==Gallery==
Tojo.jpg|Lobby card
Tkjk.jpg|Lobby card
220px-Tokio_Jokio_clips.jpg|Original black and white title cards & film frame
==See also==
*"The Ducktators" (another World War II propaganda cartoon by Norman McCabe)
==References ==
 
Category:Shorts
Category:1943
Category:Looney Tunes Shorts
Category:Wartime Shorts
Category:Public domain films
Category:Black-and-white cartoons
Category:Cartoons directed by Norman McCabe
Category:Post-1935 Black & White Looney Tunes
Category:Cartoons written by Don Christensen
Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling
Category:Cartoons with layouts by David Hilberman
Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn
Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc
Category:Cartoons produced by Leon Schlesinger
Category:Caricatures of real people
Category:Cartoons in the Sunset Productions package
Category:One-Shot Cartoons
Category:Spot Gag Cartoons