The Imperial Japanese Army is a major antagonistic organization from the WWII propaganda-era of Popeye the Sailor Man. They represent the real-world Imperial Japanese Army, who fought against America in World War II, working for Japan's Axis Powers leader, Hideki Tojo, and to a lesser extent, Hirohito but overall, they worked ultimately for Hitler. They appeared as the villains of several of Popeye's cartoons, as World War II was happening in real life and these cartoons were especially topical at the time.

Nowadays, the Japanese army never make appearances on television anymore, due to their references to Nazism being outdated (with The Holocaust ending and the fall of their army happening in 1945) as well as them being offensively stereotypical portrayals of Japanese people.

Biography[]

In "Blunder Below", Popeye's naval vessel was attacked by a submarine, piloted by a Jap. The Jap would fire dive bombs at them and Popeye would jump into the water himself to fight back. Every time the Jap landed a strike on either Popeye or the vessel, he would stick his head out of the submarine and mockingly say "So sorry." with a big toothy grin on his face. Popeye grabbed some of the bombs fired at him and threw them back at the submarine but the submarine moved out of the way, dodging every single counterstrike. After dodging all the attacks, the Jap got cocky and once again stuck his head out of the submarine to say "So sorry." but just as he did, Popeye punched him in the face and then started beating his submarine. Popeye tied the front of the submarine in a knot and threw it onto the shore, where it was implied that the Jap inside had either died or at least admitted defeat, given that the flag depicting his rising sun sank, was flushed with whiteness, and resembled the iconic white flag of surrender.

In "You're a Sap, Mr. Jap", Popeye spotted a wooden boat with some Japs on it, going fishing. Popeye went up to them to attack them but before he could even start, the Japs gave him a peace treaty and asked him to sign it. Although skeptical at first, Popeye eventually agreed to sign it and bury the hatchet with the Kamikazes. However, as he was signing the apparently false peace treaty, one of the Japs slipped a stick of dynamite into his shoe and blew his foot up. Popeye looked back at the Japs in anger, presuming they attacked him but the duo smiled all innocently and made Popeye think they were innocent, so he went back to signing the treaty, only for one of the Japs to stomp all over his foot. Popeye got mad and was about ready to let them have it but then the Japs gave him a bouquet of flowers for him to smell. Popeye wasn't falling for their tricks so he forced one of the Japs to smell the flowers himself, which got him to fall into his own trap and have his hair pinched off by a lobster hidden in the flowers. Popeye went to beat up the Jap but the Jap slid and hid inside of his jacket and then somehow disappeared. The Jap blew his trumpet to sound an alarm, to alert the other Japs to rise the rest of the boat out of the water, revealing their boat to be a lot bigger than it looked. Popeye's own boat was caught on part of the ship and so he jumped on it, which made his boat fall down into the water. When Popeye landed in the water, a cannon was fired at the boat, blowing it up, and leaving behind only the mast, which Popeye hung onto. A pair of Japs rose from some submarines and sawed the mast down, sending Popeye falling into the ocean. Underwater, Popeye used his spinach to power up and attack the Japs. Popeye knocked the two Japs over and then invaded their boat, beating them all down, one by one and dismantling their weapons. When Popeye defeated everyone else on the crew, the Naval Commander admitted defeat and killed himself by swallowing gasoline, dynamite, and a lit match, claiming "If Japanese boy don't win, he lose face." Popeye evacuated the ship just as it blew up.

In "Scrap the Japs", an ariel Kamikaze flying a plane disguised as a cloud went up to Popeye and dropped a few bombs on his head, before Popeye figured out he was a Jap. When Popeye discovered he was being targeted by a Jap, he fired a few bombs at his plane engine, blowing it up and eventually leaving the Jap with nothing but his parachute to get back down to the Jap Scrap Repair Ship, where a bunch of Japs rebuilt his ship. Popeye's parachute, (which was just an old boot) broke, causing him to plummet to the scrap ship and launch everything off the boat, as well as destroying the newly repaired plane. A swarm of Japs all huddled around Popeye and started beating him silly. While getting attacked, Popeye grabbed his can of spinach and ate it. He also threw the empty spinach can into the ocean. The Japs, now completely free of scraps, all lept into the water to get the can, as it was the only scrap they could get their hands on. Just then, another Japanese warship fired two missiles at Popeye. Popeye grabbed some ropes on the scrap ship and tilted it so that the missiles would hit the bottom two corners of the ship and instead of blowing up, they would serve as boosters so that Popeye could ride the scrap ship and use the ropes to turn it back around to the enemy ship and blow that up. A bunch of Japs on board the rickety old nearly destroyed ship, started chasing Popeye and trying to kill him. Popeye ripped open part of the floor and started running on it, tearing up more floor so that it would form a coil and eventually open the entire deck of the boat so that all of the Japs would fall in. Later, Popeye had retooled the two destroyed ships into a giant cage, which he used as a holding cell for the remaining Japs, who all scurried around the cage and eventually started resembling rats.

In "Seein' Red, White, & Blue", Bluto tried to dodge the draft by crippling himself but Popeye, who was working as the guy signing him up for the war, wasn't going to allow it. Bluto tried to crush himself with a safe but Popeye pushed him out of the way and stupidly got himself crushed by the safe. Popeye broke through the floor of the safe and ended up inside of it and Bluto threw the safe into an orphanage, which was actually a military planning base for a few extremely short Japs. When the safe crashed through, the Japs all disguised themselves as babies in a daycare center. When Popeye came out, he adored the baby Japs in their cuteness. While Popeye was distracted, one of the Japs broke out of his costume with a knife and attacked Popeye. While Popeye was under attack, the rest of the Japs all jumped on him. Bluto came in, happily telling Popeye that he had broken both of his arms but when he saw that Popeye was under attack, he couldn't stand to see a fellow naval soldier get attacked, even if it was his own worst enemy so he went to attack them, even though he was injured. A Jap noticed Bluto and activated a nazi-saluting jack-in-the-box and stuffed it with a bomb so that when Bluto jumped on the Jap, he got himself blown up. The Japs all laughed at Popeye and Bluto, who were both unconscious but then Popeye took out his spinach and ate half of it and gave the rest to Bluto. The two former enemies teamed up to fight a greater enemy together. Popeye got a trio of Japs in a stranglehold and told them that their emperor in Japan would be feeling this one, as he punched them all in the faces with one swing of the fist, which also set a giant American fist, flying through the skies, all the way to Japan, where it punched Emperor Hirohito out cold. The fist would later travel to Germany and punch out Hitler. Later, the Japs were all imprisoned in Popeye's holding cell and Bluto had a change of heart and decided to sign up for the war. Bluto (possibly jokingly) asked how to spell his name, prompting the incarcerated Japs to sing the letters of his name to the tune of the then relevant, JELL-O commercial jingle.

Although none of the Japs actually appeared on screen, they were mentioned in "A Jolly Good Furlough". Upon returning from the war, Popeye's Nephews asked him if he fought any Japs in the war. As they asked this, Pupeye made Japanese eyes, while Pipeye pretending to shoot him down with a gun.

A Jap made a brief cameo in "Rocket to Mars", where Popeye went into outer space, where he found a giant magic 8 ball floating in space. Behind the magic 8 ball, there was a Jap hiding and cowering in fear. This was the first appearance of a Jap both in a color cartoon and in a cartoon that aired after the war ended in real life, as well as the final appearance of a Jap, overall.

Appearances[]

• Blunder Below
• You're a Sap, Mr. Jap
• Scrap the Japs
• Seein' Red, White, & Blue
• A Jolly Good Furlough (Mentioned)
• Rocket to Mars (Cameo)

Gallery[]

"So Sorry."

Little Japanese boat.

Popeye facing off against a pair of Japs.

Japanese Imperial War Vessel.

Two Japs sawing Popeye's boat apart.

Jap (dis)honor killing himself.

An ariel Kamikaze tricking Popeye.

Kamikaze army attacks Popeye.

Japs trapped in a cage.

Japs in disguise as babies.

Jap opens a Nazi-in-the-box.

Emperor Hirohito.

A Jap makes a late cameo in "Rocket to Mars".

Trivia[]

• Due to the stereotypical nature of these characters, in that they portray Asian people, specifically Japanese people, as squinty-eyed, buck-teethed, yellow-skinned Kamikazes, the cartoons they appear in have been either banned from syndication on network television or edited so that their scenes get cut or censored. However, their full, uncut cartoons are still available in their purest form, on DVD.
• In the episode "Rocket to Mars", a Jap was seen hiding behind a giant Magic 8 Ball in outer space for some reason. This cameo is not only the only time in the series a Jap had ever appeared in a color cartoon, but also the only time a Jap appeared in the show, after the fall of the real world Imperial Japanese Army, (with this cartoon airing in 1946).
  • Given that this was the first color cartoon to depict a Jap, this episode also revealed that the Japs are drawn with yellow skin.