"As to Japanese Exclusion" (Puck cover, 13 March 1907)
As to Japanese Exclusion, Puck's 1907 cover and its "real Undesirables"
Puck's 13 March 1907 cover by Frank A. Nankivell argues against Japanese exclusion and points instead at other immigrants as "the real Undesirables."
Techniques named on the archive record
Name-calling
Date
March 13, 1907
Made by
Puck magazine (Keppler & Schwarzmann); drawn by Frank A. Nankivell
Medium
Cartoon
Country
United States
Regime
Theodore Roosevelt Administration
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division , retrieved October 2, 2026
Source
Public domain (published in the U.S. in 1907; LOC: no known restrictions on publication) Frank A. Nankivell, "As to Japanese exclusion", Puck v. 61 no. 1567, 13 March 1907, cover (Keppler & Schwarzmann); LC-DIG-ppmsca-26148
Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.
As to Japanese Exclusion is Frank A. Nankivell's Puck cover of 13 March 1907. It argues against excluding Japanese immigrants by drawing ragged, bearded men in kimonos and geta being waved off at a dock, under the caption "Perhaps, If They Came in Kimonos, the real Undesirables Might also Be Kept Out."
The cover
Content note: the cover draws ethnic caricatures of immigrants. They are described here, not repeated.
A crowd of ragged, bearded men in kimonos and geta is being waved away at a dock, in the archive's description. The joke is in the caption, which speaks of "the real Undesirables." The archive's description pins that label on a caricatured group of European-looking immigrants.
VOL. LXI. No. 1567. PUCK BUILDING, New York, March 13th, 1907. PRICE TEN CENTS.
"What Fools these Mortals be!"
[...]
AS TO JAPANESE EXCLUSION.
Perhaps, If They Came in Kimonos, the real Undesirables Might also Be Kept Out.
Whose side it is on
On the question in its title, the cover takes the side against exclusion. Its point is that the Japanese are being singled out, and that the immigrants a nativist should worry about, if he worries about any, are someone else. Read that way, it defends one group from a policy aimed at it by ancestry.
It does that by aiming the same contempt at another group. The archive tags the cover for name-calling, and the label is "real Undesirables," pinned on a caricatured group of immigrants. The cartoon does not reject the idea that some people are undesirable by birth; it only argues about which ones. An argument against exclusion by ancestry that ends by proposing a different ancestry to exclude has not left the premise behind.
Nankivell's cover gives no figures on how many Japanese immigrants were arriving, or on anyone else. The record does not say which immigrants he had in mind beyond what the drawing shows, and this page does not name them.
The magazine
This issue of Puck, volume 61, number 1567, sold for ten cents under the masthead motto "What Fools these Mortals be!" The archive files the issuer as media, the purpose as persuasion, and the themes as migration and race. The Library of Congress copy carries a copyright stamp reading "Two Copies Received MAR 12 1907," the day before the issue date.
Related on this site
A Puck cover of 1880, Where Both Platforms Agree, drew both parties nailing an "Anti-Chinese" plank and drew the Chinese man in caricature while making its point. Sixteen years after this cover, the Klan's weekly Imperial Night-Hawk printed a call for Japanese exclusion. The internment propaganda page follows the same line by ancestry into the Second World War.
Sources
FRAME object record, "As to Japanese Exclusion" (Puck cover, 13 March 1907). Puck magazine (Keppler & Schwarzmann); drawn by Frank A. Nankivell.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-26148, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (published in the U.S. in 1907; LOC: no known restrictions on publication).
