History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan: The State of
the Discipline
Andrew T. Kamei-Dyche
Book History, Volume 14, 2011, pp. 270-304 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/bh.2011.0008
For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bh/summary/v014/14.kamei-dyche.html
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The History of Books and

Print Culture in Japan
The State of the Discipline

Andrew T. Kamei-Dyche
The notion that Japan is a nation of readers has long been supported
by Japanese cultural critics and, unsurprisingly, publishing associations.1
Indeed, contemporary Japan represents a wonderland of books, where
reading remains one of the most popular pastimes.2 Best sellers and works
of scholarship alike are available in pocketbook (bunkobon) format for easy
reading on the daily train commute. One of the largest retailers to enjoy
enormous and consistent growth throughout Japans economic turmoil of
the past two decades is Book Off, a big box chain of used bookstores.3
Yet this state of affairs represents in many respects an outgrowth of the
publishing explosion and vibrant print culture of the early modern era,
while printing itself dates back almost as far as the written language. All
of this makes Japan fertile ground for the study of book history and print
culture, by Japanese and non-Japanese scholars alike.
A Legacy of Books and Printing

To trace the history of books one must first trace the history of writing, and
in the case of Japan this is fundamentally bound up with the cultural and literary inheritance from early imperial China. The ancient Japanese remained
without a written language until the arrival of written Chinese sometime
before the fifth century a.d.4 Adapting Chinese logographs to the radically
different grammar of ancient spoken Japanese necessitated the development
of particular methods of reading and writing, producing kanbun, a way of
writing Japanese completely in Chinese characters.5 The complexity of the
system meant that substantial time was required to achieve literacy. By the
end of the eighth century, two phonetic syllabaries called kana had been
The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan
271
developed from Chinese logographs, while the use of the logographs themselves (kanji) also continued. Tradition has associated the former with women and personal writings, and the latter with men and official records, or
public writings, but this is a broad generalization. Educated court women
knew Chinese characters; men produced works in kana; and works of literature continued to be produced in both. Subsequently, Japanese readers had
two types of work accessible to them: works from China and the Korean
kingdoms written in classical Chinese, and works produced in Japan written in either kanbun or kobun (classical Japanese, employing kana alone
or in combination with Chinese characters).6 This state of affairs remained
largely constant until the late nineteenth century, when kanbun ceased to
be viable as European languages came to the forefront during Japans modernization, and the classical literary language (now called bungo) gradually
gave way to the vernacular Japanese now considered the standard.
Writing became immensely important to the early Japanese court for several reasons. First, the Chinese written language was accompanied by the
canons of Chinese classics of philosophy, history, literature, and Buddhist
teachings. Second, both the Chinese intellectual tradition generally and Confucianism and Buddhism in particular were heavily text-based, necessitating
literacy. Third, Chinese learning and Buddhist teachings were introduced
through the Korean peninsula not so much as intellectual treasures than as
political tools that could be used to legitimate kingdoms, something that
obviously appealed to the leaders of the fledgling Japanese state.7 Moreover,
during the height of the Tang Dynasty (618907), the Tang Codes and their
attendant bureaucratic system were immensely influential across East Asia,
and Japan was no exception. From the late Asuka (ca. 550710) and Nara
(710794) periods, the economic-political system of ritsuryo, the court culture, and the layout of the capital cities were all inspired by Chinese models.
The cultural and political roles of Buddhist ideas and institutions, and the
courts orientation around Chinese politics and court culture, made literacy
and familiarity with the classics essential for all elites.
The earliest extant writings also date from this time, in the form of mokkan (thin wooden tablets),8 inscriptions on stone or metal artifacts, and the
first manuscripts, which were copies of Buddhist sutras and commentaries
thereon. As in the rest of East Asia, sutras were copied as a form of religious
practice and to invoke spiritual protection for the state. The large scale of
some copying projects, which were undertaken by government offices as well
as the major Buddhist institutions, is likely the reason for the considerable
number of texts that have survived.9 Literary or historical works, despite
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Book History
their importance, were not the subject of major state-sponsored copying

projects, and so their chances of survival were considerably less. This era,
when Japan transitioned from a primarily oral society to a primarily literary
one, saw the creation of pivotal early textssuch as the two major court-ordered chronicles, Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712) and Nihon shoki
(Chronicles of Japan, 720), and the first poetry anthologies, Kaifuso (Fond
Recollections of Poetry; Chinese-style poetry, 751) and Manyoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves; Japanese-style poetry, ca. 759)but the
oldest complete surviving copies of these masterpieces date from centuries
later.10 The standard form of manuscripts was the scroll (kansubon), consisting of a length of cloth or joined sheets of paper, the latter having been
introduced sometime during the Asuka period. Scrolls were used for written
manuscripts, for illustrations, and occasionally for printed works as well.
They continued to be used until the Edo period (16031868), when they
were gradually replaced by bound volumes (sasshibon).
The Nara period also witnessed the earliest Japanese printing, likely
introduced via the Korean peninsula, which represents some of the earliest printing in the world. At the command of Empress Shotoku (reigned
764770), a vast number of copies (according to the official chronicle of her
reign, 1 million) of a dharani (Buddhist invocation) text were printed, with
each put inside a miniature pagoda, and given to temples across the realm.11
While the form of printing that became dominant in later eras employed
xylography, scholars have tended to assume that the dharani were printed
with metal plates because the texts do not show much evidence of the deterioration that would be expected from repeated use of woodblocks. In any
event, this enormous undertaking would appear to be unparalleled in early
print history. In modern times, Japanese scholars celebrated the surviving
texts as the oldest printed items in the world,12 although still earlier examples have since been found on the mainland. Incredibly, Japan embarked
on this truly massive printing project only three centuries after developing
a written language.
However, these printed texts were intended not to be read, but to be produced and sealed in their containers as an act of religious faith, as in China
and Korea. Nor did Japan embark on a print revolution centuries ahead
of the rest of the world; rather, the technology languished, monopolized
almost entirely by Buddhist temples, and even they printed materials for
their own use rather than for a broad audience. Only in the early modern
era would a mass print culture finally emerge. In the meantime, manuscripts
remained the staple of the cultural and official world, and their production
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continued into the nineteenth century. This was not, contrary to one longrunning argument, simply because manuscripts were far cheaper to produce
than printed works. Rather, as Peter Kornicki has shown, it was primarily
because manuscripts continued to meet a need, be it for artistic qualities,
limiting access to a text, copying a borrowed printed text, or (perhaps most
important) circumventing official censorship.13
The Heian period (7941185), regarded as the apex of classical Japanese court culture, saw a flourishing of literature, producing many of the
most famous works in the classical literary canon. Murasaki Shikibus Genji
monogatari (The Tale of Genji) and Sei Shonagons Makura no soshi (The
Pillow Book) were both authored between about 1000 and 1010, and are
now well known around the globe.14 Like their Nara predecessors, these
works were not printed, but instead transmitted through manuscript. Writing was an integral part of court culture, where courtiers carried paper in
their sleeves ever ready to jot down a poem, and literary skill could help
advance ones political career and social standing. Paper had evolved into
a wide range of different types, with decorative styles and a range of colors
and textures, which were used depending on purpose, occasion, and taste.
Illustrated scrolls (emaki) also came into their own during this era. Printing, meanwhile, remained limited to Buddhist institutions, and content was
limited to the philosophy, history, and poetry of the Chinese intellectual
tradition.15
This situation continued into the medieval era, but there was an expansion of printing within those boundaries. Sects now printed works not only
as a devotional practice but also to instruct new recruits and aid in proselytization, most notably in the case of the Jodo-shu and Jodo-Shinshu sects of
Pure Land Buddhism. There was also geographic expansion, as more temple
complexes outside of the city of Nara took up printing, most notably the
Five Mountains cluster of Zen monasteries near Kyoto, which produced
works later called gozanban (Five Mountain editions). While temple complexes retained copies of printed works, and the palace library stored official
documents, works of literature produced in manuscript form were saved
by private book collectors, most famously the poet and scholar Fujiwara
no Teika (11621241). He worked furiously to produce manuscript copies,
which are now among the most celebrated in Japan.16
By the end of the fifteenth century, Japan descended into the Sengoku
(Warring States) era. The accompanying chaos, however, also saw the arrival of moveable type from two distinct sources at the end of the sixteenth
century, when a series of hegemons struggled to unify the country. When the
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Book History
great hegemon Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536/371598) launched an invasion

of Korea from 1592 to 1598, his forces captured a printing press and related
materials and brought them back to Japan, possibly along with captive Korean printers. Moveable type had a long history in Korea, beginning with
wooden type adapted from China, and culminating in the thirteenth-century
development of metal type forged from lead. Meanwhile, the Jesuits, who
beginning with Francis Xavier had established missions in Japan from the
mid-sixteenth century, brought with them European printed works, and in
1590 Alessandro Valignano arrived in Nagasaki with a press he had transported from Europe. The Jesuit missionary press, employing both a roman
character typeset and a kana one cast soon after arriving in Japan, produced
a wide variety of texts for the Jesuits and their Japanese converts, including
not only religious texts but also works of European and Japanese literature.
The press was shut down and its products scattered or destroyed during the
persecution of Christians in subsequent decades, but a significant number of
works survived and now represent a treasure trove for scholars.
Yet just as the early development of printing in Japan did not lead to a
flourishing print culture, so, too, did moveable type fail to have the effects
that one might expect based on the European experience. The Edo period,
which saw a relatively stable Japan cut off from most Western influences
develop under the centralized rule of the Tokugawa Bakufu (shogunate),
did undergo a profound printing revolution, but one based on woodblocks.
However, a brief but intense period of moveable type printing by the court
and bakufu, using the Korean technology, at the start of the seventeenth
century may have legitimized nontemple printing and inspired private individuals to become printers.17 Precisely why printers then reverted to the
older technology is not very well understood, although the fact that woodblock printing was well established and had continued during the Japanese
experiment with moveable type likely helps explain the phenomenon, as
might the complexity and cost of creating numerous calligraphic fonts for
both kana and large numbers of Chinese logographs.
With the advent of commercial printing by private individuals in the
seventeenth century, a wide range of texts, including classic Japanese literature and new works, were made available to urban audiences for the
first time. The chonin (townspeople, consisting primarily of merchants and
some urban craftsmen) drove the market with their demand for literary
entertainment, and new genres of literature developed to meet this need
and to appeal to merchant sensibilities. Prominent authors included Ihara
Saikaku (16421693), who started out writing poetry but expanded into
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popular stories of love and town life like Koshoku gonin onna (Five Women
Who Loved Love, 1685); the eccentric Jippensha Ikku (17651831), who
produced hundreds of stories about the pleasure quarters and the foibles
of daily life; and Kyokutei Bakin (17671848), best known for the enormous epic Nanso Satomi hakkenden (Chronicle of the Eight Dog Warriors
of the Satomi, 18141842).18 The expansion of literacy and development of
a popular market for literary entertainment in the towns in turn fueled the
emergence of a private commercial publishing sector.
The central element of this new print culture was the bound book, consisting of a stack of paper stitched together through a soft cover. In most
cases, these were not single-volume texts, but were spread across several
volumes that would be stacked together as a set. The format was also used
for handwritten books, forms of stitched manuscripts having existed since
the Heian period. Unlike the earlier printed works produced by Buddhist
temples, which had used illustrations only infrequently, Edo works often
sported impressive images. While beautiful painted illustrations tend to be
a fixture in the Western imagination of premodern Japan, these were prepared on scrolls, with illustration not being considered an important facet
of printing until the Edo period. Occasionally, illustrations were colored by
hand, most notably in the tanrokubon, which featured popular stories and
folktales.
Early modern print culture was not limited to books. News broadsides
called kawaraban (slate prints) were sold in the street. Sellers would read
them aloud to attract attention from passersby, giving rise to the term yomiuri (to sell by reading), which later gave its name to one of Japans biggest modern newspapers, Yomiuri Shinbun. It has been argued that kawaraban represented forerunners of the Western-style newspapers that developed
in the late nineteenth century.19 There were also numerous how-to books,
picture books, maps, city guides for visitors, advertisements, and, of course,
the beautiful artistic prints of people and landscapes that so bewitched
Westerners in later years. Such prints, known as ukiyo-e (pictures of the
floating world, a reference to the fleeting beauty and joy of life as represented by entertainment and the pleasure quarters), were transformed by
the mid-eighteenth-century development of multicolored woodblock printing, enabling truly stunning works of art to be mass-produced cheaply. The
print revolution was also bound up with cultural ferment, for intellectuals
were encouraged by the marketplace for ideas and the ready accessibility
of philosophical texts, even if much of their own scholarship was copied
by hand. Profound works on Neo-Confucian philosophy by thinkers like
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Book History
Fujiwara Seika, Hayashi Razan, and, most famously, Ogyu Sorai, as well as
detailed studies of topics in medicine and biology, circulated in manuscript
form, and some were printed as well. Lending libraries, which operated for
profit (and continued to do so into the late nineteenth century), enabled city
residents to read a wider range of works than they could afford to own.
There was thus greater access to knowledge among a wider range of people,
men and women, than at any prior time.
The role of the state in the print revolution was complex. On the one
hand, the Tokugawa Bakufu supported printing and encouraged the commercial printing sector. On the other hand, a severe censorship policy was
imposed, although in practice this was not uniformly carried out, and the
extent to which it was actually enforced has been overstated. For example,
it was forbidden to publish anything concerned with contemporary politics, even if it was in fact supportive of the government, but the kawaraban
printers were usually able to get away with their work, and writers of plays
or stories would use pseudonyms for political figures, often humorously.
There were also certain restrictions on importing foreign texts, primarily
aimed at preventing Christian proselytizing, but many foreign works were
imported from Europe by the Dutch (who alone out of the Europeans were
able to continue to trade with Japan during this period) and were important
in inspiring the work of Rangaku (Dutch studies) scholars.20 Some Japanese
works also found their way overseas, most notably via the travels of Isaac
Titsingh, who took to Europe several Japanese texts, including a work by
one of the famed Hayashi historians, a chronicle of Japanese sovereigns that
he translated into French.21
The Meiji Restoration of 1868, which saw the defeat of the Tokugawa
Bakufu and the establishment of a modern imperial system, is often treated
as a major turning point in Japanese history, but focusing on change and the
emergence of modernity can blind one to strong continuities, for Japanese
society did not transform overnight. A strong emphasis on the emergence
of modern fiction, for example, has obscured the fact that at the end of the
nineteenth century, many of the most popular books were still works of
literature from the Edo period or earlier. Perhaps these works were seen
as somehow more enduring than the modern fiction serialized in newspapers, which only gradually emerged to dominate the market at the start of
the twentieth century. The emergent popular press played a defining role in
Meiji politics, but only slowly came to resemble the sophisticated journalistic system in Europe and North America. The shift away from woodblock
printing was slow in coming, and it was only in the 1890s that industrialization took hold, with steam presses and modern moveable type based
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on Western models becoming standard. Moreover, the Meiji state, like its
Tokugawa predecessor, both encouraged the publishing industry and sought
to control it, but modern bureaucratic tools made Meiji prepublication censorship far more effective.
Meanwhile, book publishers fed an information-hungry market translations from European languages. The boom in Western learning, so often
compared to ancient Japans tutelage under China, covered not only science
and philosophy but also works of fiction from English, French, German,
and Russian.22 The establishment of Western-style universities, beginning
with Tokyo Imperial University in 1877, also created a demand for works
in the original European languages. Western scholars were recruited to
teach in Japan, and they and their Japanese students obtained key European
texts from specialist bookstores that sprang up in response. Many of these
Western teachers not only shaped the next generation of Japanese intellectuals and political and economic leaders but also played a role in conveying
knowledge about Japan back to the West.23
The desire to learn from the West, and the range of works available, has
contributed to the notion that the roots of modern Japan lay in importing
Western knowledge, but Japan was also a knowledge exporter. Japanese
rapidly became the lingua franca of the learned in East Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Students from China and elsewhere
studied Japanese in order to emulate Japanese success at modernization and
to discover literature and knowledge from the West, which was more easily
accessible to them in Japanese translation than in the original European languages.24 New words that Japanese had coined from Chinese characters to
represent novel Western concepts then passed back into China and became
part of the modern Chinese language.
By the 1920s, improved printing technology made mass-produced cheap
books and magazines possible for even the lower classes, and simultaneously the Kyoyoshugi self-cultivation movement directly associated culture
and character development with reading. While Kyoyoshugi has tended
to be treated as new, individualistic, and Western-focused, it in many respects represented continuity with Confucian ideals of personal cultivation
and community. Although Western works were an important part of the
Kyoyoshugi canon, it also included Japanese and Chinese classics. The most
popular works were those that fused the novel ideas of the West and the
established Japanese intellectual tradition, such as Natsume Sosekis novel
Kokoro, a landmark expression of the Meiji spirit in a form inspired by
modern English fiction, and Nishida Kitaros philosophy, which combined
German idealism and Zen Buddhism.25
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Book History
The literature boom accompanying the Kyoyoshugi movement buoyed

not only established mass-market publishers like Kodansha but also upstarts
focused on the intellectual market like Iwanami Shoten. Presenting its publications as a canon that no cultured individual could be without, Iwanami
became a fixture in modern Japanese intellectual culture. It developed bunkobon pocketbooks based on the German Reclams Universal-Bibliothek,
and shinsho (new softcovers), which quickly became standards across the
Japanese publishing industry.
The 1925 Peace Preservation Law and subsequent censorship crackdowns put pressure on book and magazine publishers, which peaked during
the war years (19371945).26 Some went out of business or were put out of
business; some resorted to only publishing works deemed nonpolitical or
innocuous; some attempted to resist the rising authoritarianism; and others
went along with the tide and enthusiastically endorsed imperial ventures
and the war effort.
The early postwar period under American occupation (19451952) saw
continued censorship but also the rumblings of a resurgent publishing industry, leading to a boom in popular and academic works. The 1960s witnessed the thorough modernization of the magazine trade and the expansion of the manga (comics) industry, which in the 1990s penetrated China,
Korea, North America, and Europe.27 Japanese publishers continued to play
a key role in academia, producing scholarship, zenshu (collected works) of
influential writers, and large standardized canons of primary texts in literature and philosophy.28 In contrast to North American practice, these canons
are almost always assembled and edited in-house by the publishers editorial
staff rather than by university scholars, a practice that has recently received
increasing criticism among Japanese academics.29 Japanese publishers have
also recently begun grappling with the issues posed by digitization and ebooks, debates that have inspired scholars to rethink the Japanese experience of books and printing.
Japanese-Language Scholarship
As long as there have been books, there has been writing about books, and
Japan is no exception. Court literature is alive with references to favorite
works and the joy of reading poetry and prose alike. In The Tale of Genji,
the titular character himself pokes fun at women for wasting their time with
their frivolous romances (which would include, naturally, the very work in
279
which he appears), before good-naturedly admitting that they have some

value after all.30 The daughter of Sugawara Takasue, in the early eleventh
century, wrote in her diary of adoring The Tale of Genji to the point of
praying to the Buddha for a complete set of its many volumes, and of her
unbridled joy when her aunt presented her with one. Having acquired her
hearts desire, she promptly sealed herself in her room to devour them, much
as present-day children do with Harry Potter.31 Other diaries mention reading groups, and readers often wrote of their favorite works and their responses to them.
Writing on the history of books per se is harder to pin down. A case could
be made that some of Fujiwara no Teikas writings, and those of his successors who worked to maintain his carefully cultivated manuscript collection,
represent early studies in bibliography.32 Certainly by the late medieval era
literary elites were becoming interested in the transmission of texts, and by
the end of the Edo period tracking textual descent had become a regular tool
in the box of literary scholars. One could argue that the sophisticated and
entrenched role of bibliography (shoshigaku) in classical Japanese literary
studies has shaped the development of book history by positing sharp academic divisions between the spheres of inquiry appropriate to historians and
literary scholars.33 Classical Japanese literary scholars even today clearly
demarcate literary texts (such as Tosa nikki and The Tale of Genji) from
historical texts (such as Nihon shoki and Azuma kagami), and claim that
the latter fall outside of their jurisdiction. Likewise, the identification of
good texts and bad (corrupted) texts is regarded as one of the major
roles of Japanese bibliography. Scholars of modern Japanese literature, on
the other hand, tend to lack strong bibliographic foundations and are more
open to Western theory and methodology.
The modern era saw the arrival of dedicated academic study of the history of books and printing earlier than in the West, and in a way quite distinct
from that established in the West by Lucien Febvre, Henri-Jean Martin, and
Robert Darnton. In Japan, the primary category of analysis has been shuppan bunka, literally publishing culture,34 as distinct from insatsu bunka
(print culture), a term that is little used. Shuppan bunka is understood to
cover the history of books and printing technology, publishing, bookselling, and the culture connected to these activities. Given this similarity to
Western conceptions of print culture, it is rational to render shuppan
bunka as such. Most Japanese scholars working on related topics situate
themselves within shuppan bunkashi, or the history of print culture. More
recently, works explicitly identified as the history of books (shomotsushi,
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or shosekishi) have begun to appear, but these remain a minority. Shuppan

bunkashi generally focuses on the evolving technology of printing, but incorporates an awareness of cultural context and the social role of printed
works, thus avoiding (usually) technological determinism. Case studies of
particular printed works constitute the bulk of the studies.
This approach has its share of conceptual problems. Because of the emphasis on printing and the act of publication, it normally excludes written
works, despite the long-running and important role of manuscripts in Japanese history. Some scholars are aware of this difficulty: Nakano Mitsutoshi
and his colleagues call for studies of books that include handwritten works,
address the gap in perceived value (handwritten works are treasured by bibliographers while woodblock printed works are valued far less), and warn
against the conflation of publishing as an economic activity and as a means
of cultural production.35 Another long-running problem is an emphasis on
works produced in Japan, meaning that books imported from China tend
to be overlooked.
One of the first full-length studies to emerge was Makino Zenbes A Consideration of Books from the Era of the Tokugawa Bakufu in 1912, but
in-depth academic study only began twenty years later with the work of
Kobayashi Zenpachi.36 Having completed a work on the general world history of printing techniques and technology in 1930, Kobayashi turned his
attention to Japan and how it had been shaped by printing technology from
both the Asian mainland and the West, publishing in 1938 his magnum
opus, A History of Japanese Print Culture.37 At well over a thousand pages,
Kobayashis work is a behemoth that covers almost every major work printed during every period from the inception of printing up through the end
of the Edo period. It also covers imported works (a relative rarity among
later scholars in the field), ink and paper, and historical issues that shaped
the development of printing. While the bulk of the work is dedicated to the
Edo period, it also has considerable coverage of the Meiji era. The extremely
wide coverage, including long sections just listing published works and authors, is necessarily superficial, but was clearly intended to enable the work
to function as a general overview. Kobayashi in effect set out to create a
foundation for a field of inquiry that would combine the history of printing
with a range of other issues in academia and society, and in so doing created
shuppan bunkashi.38
The new field began to attract attention from other literary scholars,
most notably Okano Takeo, whose studies of Meiji literature led him to
focus on books themselves as an object of scholarly inquiry.39 His landmark
work was published in 1954 under precisely the same title as Kobayashis, A
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History of Japanese Print Culture.40 Also like Kobayashi, he argued that the
history of printing in Japan was a synthesis of Western and Eastern culture.
However, Okanos approach significantly differed from that of his predecessor. First, his chronological coverage was much tighter, reflecting his modern
orientation: whereas Kobayashi focused on the Edo period but still invested
considerable time in premodern Japan, Okano began with Edo, seeking the
origins of modern print culture, and spent the most space on Meiji and, to
a lesser extent, the early twentieth century. Second, Okano concentrated
on key cultural developments rather than attempting to include as much as
possible: in place of Kobayashis extensive publication lists he recorded publications in annotations along the top of every page. He went beyond mere
chronology to employ categories of analysisbooks that were sold, books
that were read, books that were banned, and so onand he considered
other forms of print culture, such as translations and magazines.
In the wake of Okanos work, the field experienced its first (limited) blossoming in the mid-1950s and 1960s. Some of this reached a popular audience: the newspaper Asahi Shinbun published an accessible history of the
publishing industry by emerging scholar Sugimura Takeshi; the National
Diet Library held a 1956 exhibition on print culture; and works with a local industry focus were supported and/or published by publishing associations.41 These popular endeavors were mainly focused on the modern era.
Academic studies on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan continued to
appear, but the main scholarly thrust was focused on the Edo period.
When the field underwent a second, much larger expansion beginning
in the 1980s, the Edo period continued to attract attention, and particularly the city of Edo itself, which had served as the political center of the
Tokugawa order. Edo showcased a vibrant, multidimensional print culture
that flourished before the arrival of modern Western printing technology;
because the modern publishing industry was so heavily concentrated in Tokyo, the printing world of the citys early modern incarnation naturally attracted interest. Scholarship on the era therefore considered both how Edo
print culture differed from its modern counterpart and the ways in which
the former represented a foundation upon which the latter was constructed.
Nakamura Kiyozos pioneering work on printing laws was joined by Suzuki
Toshios study of bookstores, Konta Yozos
on banned books, and a selection of monographs covering printing in other major centers, such as Munemasa Isos study of print culture in Kyoto.42
In 1983, Kawase Kazuma published a set of introductory lectures on the
rapidly developing field of the history of print culture, now firmly established
as an area of scholarly inquiry at precisely the same time that the course of
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Book History
book history was being transformed in the English-language world by the

work of Robert Darnton and others.43 Kawases lectures shifted attention to
premodern printing, despite the dearth of full-length studies. Bucking the
trend in general works, he began with Nara printing, spent as much time on
the medieval era as the early modern, and ended before reaching the modern
era. Kawase discussed the economic and material aspects of printing, and
he cautioned against reading too much into publication dates, particularly
in the premodern era when the canon of works printed by temples was relatively constant. In this regard he sought to warn young arrivals to the field
of the danger of seeing the content of early printed works as directly linked
to the cultural or economic circumstances of the era.
This did not mean that scholarship on modern print culture had been
marginalized. Rather, by the late 1980s and early 1990s the field had begun to develop in new directions, with studies appearing on topics such as
best sellers and advertisements, while the marketing and selling of books
received more sophisticated treatments.44 Shiozawa Minobu completed
what was in all likelihood the first monograph on the history of postwar
print culture.45 Much as the 1868 Meiji Restoration was long understood
to represent a clean break with the past, the end of the Pacific War in 1945
has been treated as a breakwater through which little of prewar Japan penetrated. Modern historians have had to struggle against these assumptions,
uncovering the often deep and multilayered continuities that underlay these
pivotal turning points in political history. This is no less true in historical
studies of print culture, where scholars have been at pains to locate the key
turning point in the modern transformation of printing technology, shifting
attention from the Restoration to the end of the nineteenth century when
industrialization became widespread.
Increasingly, scholars working on both the early modern and modern
periods together shaped the field, most notably Yayoshi Mitsunaga. Yayoshi
had begun working on the history of late Edo and Meiji print culture in the
mid-1950s when he was already middle-aged, which was not unusual since
the field was still relatively new and depended on drawing recruits from bibliography and literary studies. His early work was primarily concerned with
book collections and libraries, and already by the late 1970s a festschrift
had been published in his honor.46 In the 1980s, he was recognized as the
leading scholar of the day, proving himself a worthy successor to Kobayashi
and Okano through a barrage of important publications.
One of Yayoshis major contributions was to shift the focus to the popular experience of print in everyday life, in People and Printing in the Edo
Period (1980) and People and Printing in the Meiji Period (1982).47 He
283
followed these up with several other studies, while also compiling key documents in the history of printing, producing reference works, and editing
classic works of scholarship for republication in order that newcomers and
students might gain a sense of how the field had developed.48 Some of these
were extensive series, such as the eight-volume Japanese Print Culture According to Unpublished Historical Documents. By the time of his death in
1996, Yayoshi had invigorated the field with a wide range of studies, primary materials, and classic works of scholarship.
Since the late 1990s the field has expanded rapidly. Local studies on the
early modern era have continued to flourish,49 as have investigations of libraries and readership, while some literary scholars are now incorporating
print culture into their own studies.50 Scholarship on the modern era now
includes topics such as womens history and editing.51 A number of essay
collections have been published, such as Meiji Print Culture (2002) and Edo
Printing (2005).52
Relevant to the history of print culture proper is a broad and growing interest in the history of mass media and mass culture. Studies of the history of modern newspapers produced in the prewar and immediate postwar
eras were largely disconnected from the history of print culture, with major
works by scholars like Ono Hideo, Nishida Taketoshi, and Oka Minoru
leading the field in the 1960s.53 While there was a recognition of historical
antecedents to newspapers, they did not receive much attention from writers on newspapers, and there was little effort to link up these studies with
work being done by historians of print culture. More recent years, however,
have seen the history of newspapers situated under the framework of media
studies. Arguing that printing technology and widespread literacy represented something akin to an information revolution, scholars now see in early
modern print culture a precursor to modern mass mediafor example, Fuji
Akio in Edo Literature and Print Media (2001) and Kan Satoko in The Age
of Media: The Situation of Meiji Literature (2001).54 There are even collections of reproduced materials, such as Yoshida Yutakas reading guide for
kawaraban news broadsheets, which feature modern transcription and annotations to assist contemporary readers.55 The spread of literacy plays an
important role in several of these studies. For example, Yoshida describes
the temple schools (which taught kana reading and writing) as contributing
to the development of mass literacy in the late Edo period, providing the
groundwork for modern mass culture. Meanwhile, Sato Takumi and Takeuchi Yo have studied connections between print culture and intellectual life
in the twentieth century.56
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A second development to consider is the recent emergence of works specifically concerned with the history of books as opposed to the history of
print culture. A leading figure here is Nagatomo Chiyoji, whose Books and
Reading in the Edo Period (2001) is representative of this trend.57 For Nagatomo, the production of books is just one element of a broader picture,
rather than the central element. He considers printing as a business, and
examines the role of books in study, entertainment, and lifestyles. He retains
the focus on particular works from the history of print culture scholarship,
but spends as much time considering how these were received at the time,
and articulates the varied and at times conflicting roles and images of different books rather than positing a single social space for print. While his approach comes off as somewhat scattershot, it more closely resembles recent
European and American studies in book history than it does prior Japanese
scholarship on the history of print culture. Nagatomo has also produced
breakthrough work on topics like book circulation.58
While Nagatomo and others like Wakao Masaki have forged a Japanese
history of books for the early modern and modern eras, there have been
similar studies of the premodern era as well.59 Tono Haruyukis A History
of Ancient Writing (1994), one of the first, considers a range of early written
sourcesmokkan, manuscripts, and especially inscriptionsand what they
can collectively tell us, while touching on comparisons with other ancient
civilizations such as Persia.60 Gomi Fumihikos Medieval History through
Books (2003) broadly examines books in the medieval era and their historical development.61 Gomis approach is innovative because, by his own
admission, the study of books as a whole has been hindered in Japanese academia by the long-entrenched genre categories, which (as discussed above)
are linked to sharp divisions between academic fields.62 Arguing that this
has obscured the connection between books, Gomi attempts to examine the
various types of books produced and read during the medieval era, and the
social forces at work behind them.
As evidenced by the range of popular works available, the history of
books and printing in Japan is not a closed academic enterprise, but rather
an arena in which intellectuals from outside the academymost prominently, perhaps, Oda Mitsuocan influence debate, and in which publishers
and publishing associations undertake their own historical projects.63 Much
of the trailblazing historiography of modern print culture was initiated by
nonacademics, and organizations like the Japanese Association of Book
Publishers (Nihon Shoseki Shuppan Kyokai) continue to both encourage
and carry out historical research studies.64 The premier forum for the study
of books and publishing, the Japan Society for Publishing Studies (Nihon
285
Shuppan Gakkai), was founded through the efforts of publishers, and the
organization contains numerous industry employees alongside scholars and
interested third parties. Moreover, the field enjoys popular support, not the
least because of the aesthetic appeal of scrolls and bound books as material
objects.
In sum, recent Japanese scholarship has not only witnessed the continued
expansion of the established field of the history of print culture but has also
seen attempts to correct the limitations of that field. It seems likely that in
the near future there will be a more substantial role in Japanese academia
for scholars aware of trends in international scholarship on the history of
the book and working to a considerable extent within a similar framework.
Japanese scholars have written on print culture and the history of books in
other countries, first and foremost China but also Europe and elsewhere.65
Given that the most recent generation of Japanese scholars continues to
work on topics abroad and is aware of developments in the history of the
book elsewhere, Japanese scholarship should continue to develop in innovative directions.
English-Language Scholarship
Almost as soon as Westerners arrived in Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, they developed a fascination with Japanese books and printing. Pursuing traces of traditional Japanese culture, but for the most part unable
to read the language, they approached books as aesthetic items. They were
interested not in print culture or the role of books in Japanese society, but
rather in the history of books and other printed items as material objects.
Though paper and bindings were considered, by far the primary interest was
in illustration, particularly the impressive ukiyo-e woodblock prints with
their evocative imagery of people and places.66 While for foreigners ukiyo-e
represented an image of a traditional Japan now disappearing before the
forces of modernization, contemporary Japanese understood them as cheap,
disposable, mass-produced entertainment, and were originally befuddled by
Western interest. They happily sold them to foreign visitors, and as a result
today the vast majority of these often exquisite prints are held in overseas
collections.67 The central position of ukiyo-e prints in the Western imagination of Japanese printing at the time is evident in the earliest writings from
the late nineteenth century, such as Edward F. Stranges Japanese Illustration: A History of the Arts of Wood-Cutting and Color Printing in Japan
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(1897) and Wm. Dallam Armess The Color-Prints of Old Japan (1901).68
The topic has continued to fascinate up to the present day, in David Chibbetts The History of Japanese Printing and Book Illustration (1977), Allen
Hockleys The Prints of Isoda Koryusai (2003), and Andreas Markss Japanese Woodblock Prints (2010).69
The first scholarly treatment of Japanese books and printing was almost
certainly Ernest M. Satows short monograph The Jesuit Missionary Press
in Japan (1888).70 Like their Japanese colleagues, Western scholars recognized the significance of the Jesuit press in the history of Japanese publishing
(though Japans brief early modern flirtation with moveable type had been
carried out with Korean rather than European technology), and they were
also no doubt inspired by the early example of East-West cultural exchange
that it represented. An ongoing interest in the mission press is manifest in
the work of Johannes Laures and others, encouraged by the Jesuit-founded
Sophia University in Tokyo.71
For the most part, however, early Western studies of Japanese printing
focused less on books than on print journalism, perhaps influenced by Japanese scholars who had emphasized the political role of the press in the Meiji
period. The first monograph, Kawabe Kisaburos The Press and Politics in
Japan (1921), considered Meiji newspapers as both tools of communication
and a political force.72 Kawabe explained how newspapers shaped public
opinion, examined relations between political figures and the press, and
discussed specific commercial and independent newspapers, ending with a
chapter celebrating the press as an agent of progressive social change. While
Kawabes work was the only book-length academic treatment of Japanese
newspapers for many decades, the issues he emphasizedthe effect of the
press on political discourse, and conversely government attempts to control
the pressbecame established concerns that continued to inform historical
writing on newspapers.73
While scholarship on print journalism continued to emerge over subsequent decades,74 the next book-length treatments did not appear until 1980,
in the form of two biographies of major Meiji figures: John D. Piersons
study of the famous journalist Tokutomi Soho, and James L. Huffmans
study of newspaper editor Fukuchi Genichiro.75 Both continued the focus
on the relationship between politics and journalism, charting how these individuals recognized the potential of the press to shape public opinion but
were frustrated in putting their ideas into practice. These works were followed by a range of studies on the modern Japanese press and its political
and social roles, while the technological development of newspaper print-
287
ing, circulation patterns, and other issues were largely ignored.76 The longrunning concern with the power of the state to control journalism was the
focus of an important study by Gregory J. Kasza, The State and the Mass
Media in Japan, 19181945.77 Kasza examined the relationship between the
established mass media and an increasingly authoritarian state in the early
twentieth century. While he incorporated book and magazine publishing,
along with radio and other forms of media, he largely focused on the press.
In fact, the two key themes of most English-language scholars working on
the history of the Japanese media were the press and the context of state
power.
More recent work on print journalism has shifted attention from politics
to society. Huffman, now the leading English-language expert on Japanese
print journalism, took the lead in Creating a Public (1997), which examines
the emergence of the modern Japanese public sphere and the role of the
press in creating informed citizens.78 There has also been renewed work on
antecedents to the modern press, like kawaraban.79
The historiography of books and print culture has also intersected with
the historiography of education. Many studies in the latter field touch on
the books used for teaching students and the role of reading in student culture. In addition to major works on Edo and Meiji education, such as those
of Donald Roden, Richard Rubinger, Marleen Kassel, and Benjamin Duke,
there have been studies of reception, canon formation, and textbooks.80 The
last are a particularly important subject, not only because of their role in
shaping young minds to fit the needs of the modern state but also in light of
vitriolic public debates (involving Chinese and Koreans as well as Japanese)
over the portrayal of Japans wartime activities in textbooks.
Like their Japanese counterparts, Western book scholars have published
little specifically on the ancient and medieval eras, although there are some
recent exceptions on topics like orality and book collecting.81 Understandably, in light of the Edo print revolution, which began in the seventeenth
century, much of their scholarship has focused on the early modern era. The
1970s and 1980s saw a smattering of articles on books and publishers, and
studies of Japanese book collections abroad.82 There was also a work on
tanrokubon, those colorful printed versions of popular tales, though it was
a general introduction to the genre rather than a detailed study.83
The field lacked a cohesive framework or clear sense of direction until
the 1990s, beginning with a breakthrough 1994 piece by Henry D. Smith
comparing the history of the book in early modern Edo and Paris.84 Recognizing the value of comparative studies, and concerned that historians of the
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European book would universalize characteristics of print culture and its

social role drawn only from the European experience, Smith reminded these
historians to consider East Asia, where the flourishing early modern print
culture surely rivaled that of Europe. He drew several parallels between Edo
and Paris: effective central government, the initial influence of religious institutions over printing, and a print revolution. He also noted distinct points
of contrast, primarily the writing systems and printing technologies (moveable type in France versus woodblock printing in Japan), before turning to
issues such as piracy and the culture and practice of readership.
Crucially, Smith argued that the case of Japan could serve as a corrective
for certain assumptions among Western scholars, such as that print fuels the
emergence of a vibrant public political sphere, something which was institutionally impossible within the Tokugawa framework. Only a few years
later, Mary Elizabeth Berry wrestled with this issue in an article concerning
the nature of public life within the authoritarian system of early modern Japan.85 Berry challenged conventional thinking concerning the public sphere
by questioning whether it had to be democratic, for while Edo Japan was
governed by an authoritarian state, it appeared in every other respect to
have a vibrant public sphere.86 Turning to consider print culture, Berry argued that the explosion in printing served to create a public united through
informationin other words, a sense of national consciousness could be
rooted in the shared experience engendered by print culture.87
Thus, by the mid-1990s a groundwork of sorts had been established, but
the major turning point came in 1998 with the publication of Peter Kornickis The Book in Japan, the first comprehensive study of Japanese book
history in English.88 Kornicki chose his title carefully, at pains to include not
only books produced in Japan but those imported from abroad as well. His
coverage was impressive, stretching from the earliest writings up through
modern texts, although focused on the Edo period. At the same time, he
strove to avoid some of the pitfalls of conventional Japanese scholarship. In
addition to covering works from China and their history in Japan (rather
than prioritizing books of Japanese origin), he also avoided the privileging of print inherent in the standard Japanese approach, instead covering
both handwritten and printed works. Finally, while some Japanese scholars
had begun to situate the history of Japanese print culture in the broader
East Asian context, Kornicki went further and considered parallels with not
only China and Korea but also Europe and elsewhere, seeking to integrate
the Japanese case into a worldwide discussion on the history of books and
print culture as Smith had urged. In this way, Kornickis work was clearly
289
designed to introduce the Japanese case to the broader Western debates on

the history of the book, with sections covering the key issues of concern
to Western historians: books as material objects, printing technology, the
publishing trade, authorship and readership, textual transmission, censorship, libraries, and bibliography. Each section functions as an independent
unit with a historical overview of the issue, although to some extent this
may weaken the cohesiveness of the volume. The divide between late Meiji
and modern industrial publishing leaves the story incomplete, although Kornicki may be right that the latter deserves its own detailed study. In any
event, Kornickis work is valuable for its encyclopedic coverage. It not only
introduces Japan to English-language debates on the history of the book and
printing but also offers an alternative perspective to Japanese scholarship
orientated toward the history of print culture.
Nearly ten years later, a second significant monograph appeared. Mary
Elizabeth Berrys Japan in Print (2007) built on the elements of print culture
she had articulated in her earlier article, and the connection between the
exchange of information and the emergence of modern national identity.89
In this study of the Edo period, she argued that print culture linked people
together through the sharing of information, whether in the form of maps,
travel guides, and reference books, or in the form of popular stories and
literature. Berrys approach differed significantly from Kornickis in that she
placed much more emphasis on people and social context, with the work
reading like a tour through the world of early modern Japanese society in
which the ubiquitous presence and meaning of print is pointed out at every
stop. Indeed, in her introduction she invited the reader to put on the mantle
of a clerk visiting the capital, and described what would one read and experience. To read Kornickis detailed sketches of the Edo period and then
Berrys portrayals of the social landscape of print culture is to conjure the
world of early modern books and then take a stroll through it. Other recent
scholarship on this period includes Kornickis article on Edo manuscript culture, the essay collection The Female as Subject (2010) on women readers
and writers, translation studies, and monographs on early modern culture
that accord books and print culture a considerable role, most notably Marcia Yonemotos Mapping Early Modern Japan (2003).90
In contrast, books and print culture in modern Japan have received scattershot attention. There has yet to be a work comparable to those of Kornicki and Berry. This is not to say that there have been no significant milestones. One of the earliest works was a translation of Kodansha founder
Noma Seijis autobiography in 1934.91 G. R. Nunns 1964 study of modern
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Book History
Japanese publishing was particularly significant, not only because it was

one of the first academic treatments of the subject but also because the
contemporary data he collected now offers valuable insight into the early
postwar publishing system.92 One of the only full-length studies on modern publishing is Matthi Forrers book on provincial publisher Eirakuya
Toshiro (1985), which reminds readers that while Tokyo came to dominate
the industry, there was publishing activity elsewhere.93 From the 1990s there
have been numerous shorter studies, such as Richard Rubingers on modern
literacy and Gerald Figals on the production and marketing of personal histories.94 There have also been articles on particular aspects of print culture
(Rachel DeNitto), on reading (Susan Townsend), and on specific publishers
such as Hakubunkan (Giles Richter) and Iwanami Shoten (Vanessa Ward
and Andrew Kamei-Dyche).95 There has been a study of modern libraries
and studies in cultural history that discuss print culture to some extent.96
Literary scholarship that considers the role of publishing can also shed new
light on print culture, as in the case of Sari Kawanas studies of the role of
editors and publishers in producing and selling early-twentieth-century fiction.97 While the field has developed substantially in the past ten years, a
comprehensive study of modern Japanese print culture is still sorely needed.
Future Directions
The trajectory of the history of print culture in Japan, and the recent trend in
Japanese scholarship toward an inclusive form of book history more akin to
that familiar to Western scholars, bodes well for the future. There is much to
be gained by cooperative research between Japanese and Western scholars,
and something resembling a shared concept of book history is a good place
to start. Meanwhile, English-language scholarship on the history of books
and print culture in Japan can offer Japanese scholars a fresh perspective,
and take in new directions debates in book history in the West that have
remained largely focused on Europe and North America. The multidimensional effect of print in various locales, the transformative power of early
modern print culture, and the relationship between publishing, the state,
and the public sphere are all areas in which scholars working on Japan can
make valuable contributions to the broader discipline. While this essay has
treated Japanese-language scholarship and English-language scholarship as
running along distinct trajectories driven by their own concerns, there are of
course numerous points of intersection, and perhaps the greatest potential
291
of the field can only be realized when they begin to converge. In this regard,
scholars of Japan both within and outside the country should consider the
recent work being done on China and the excellent scholarship being produced by Chinese and non-Chinese scholars alike, often in tandem, on that
countrys long history of books and printing.98
Chinese book history is also significant in another way. Given that numerous Japanese scholars have contributed to that field over the years, there
is already a strong foundation in place for comparative studies between Japan and China. Here again cooperative ventures between English-language
scholars, who are more familiar with comparative approaches, and Japanese scholars with longer experience in the field, may offer exciting new
insights. Studies of Japanese history have been invigorated in recent years by
rich comparisons with China, Korea, and Europe, and studies that employ
a similar approach to the history of books and print culture would stand to
contribute much to our understanding of Japan.
Notes
I would like to thank Jonathan Rose for giving me the opportunity to write this article;
Armadio Arboleda, Gordon Berger, Roger Brown, Clinton Godart, Annie Johnson, and Sari
Kawana for their helpful comments on the draft; and, as always, my partner Rieko KameiDyche for her advice and encouragement.
1. Japanese names in this article are rendered according to standard Japanese practice
(that is, family name first), except in cases where the individual in question is publishing in
English. For an overview of books and publishing in Japan, see Amadio Arboledas Japan
entry in Philip G. Altbach and Edith S. Hoshino, eds., International Book Publishing: An
Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 1995), 487498; and Peter Kornicki, Japan, Korea and
Vietnam, in A Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose
(Malden: Blackwell, 2007), 111125. For more on the contemporary situation, see Japan Book
Publishers Association, An Introduction to Publishing in Japan, 20102011 (Tokyo: Japan
Book Publishers Association, 2010). The Introduction to Publishing in Japan is updated every
two years, and is available for download at the associations Web site, http://www.jbpa.or.jp/
en/.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the notion of Japan as a nation of
readers was deployed as a point of cultural pride by Japanese intellectuals. Yuhara Motoichi
(18631931), head of the Tokyo School of Music, wrote that no matter which country you
go to, there is no place where the newspapers have advertisements for books as huge as in
Japan. From this perspective, we could say there are no people that love books as much as the
Japanese. Yuhara-sensei Kinenkai, ed., Ekisui soha: Yuhara-sensei kinen shuppan [Thinking of the Waters of the River Yi: Published in Commemoration of Yuhara-sensei] (Tokyo:
Kaiseikan, 1928), 180. Historian Enoki Kazuo believed that the Japanese are naturally a
people with inquiring minds, and especially love books. Enoki Kazuo, Toyogaku, toyobunko
[Oriental Studies, Oriental Book Collections], in Enoki Kazuo Chosakushu [Collected Works
of Enoki Kazuo], ed. Collected Works of Enoki Kazuo Editorial Committee (Tokyo: Kyuko
Shoin, 1994), 9. An early example in English came from the journalist Harold Bolce: Japan
is a nation of readers. More than a thousand newspapers and magazines are published in the
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Book History
empire. Harold Bolce, What the Japanese Are Reading: The Literature of a Serious-Minded
Nation, Booklovers Magazine 4, no. 5 (November 1904): 657669. This was echoed not long
ago by Victoria Lyon Bestor: Though Japanese publishers bemoan declines in readership, even
in the age of the cell phone, the palm pilot, and the game boy, Japan is still a nation of readers,
and publishers rapidly produce an enormous range of books on any topic imaginable. Victoria Lyon Bestor, Toward a Cultural Biography of Civil Society in Japan, in Family and Social
Policy in Japan: Anthropological Approaches, ed. Roger Goodman (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 43.
2. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2006 Survey on
Time Use and Leisure Activities, Web site of the Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs
and Communications, http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/shakai/2006/pdf/koudou-a.pdf, 14.
By gender, reading books for pleasure ranked second among women (behind only listening to
music), and fourth among men (behind listening to music, watching movies on DVD or video,
and playing video/computer games).
3. Book Off is itself the object of critical attention among Japanese writersfor instance,
Oda Mitsuos criticism of the company as feeding off the publishing industry, in Oda Mitsuo,
Bukkofu to shuppan gyokai: Bukkofu bijinesu no jitsuzo [Book Off and the Publishing Industry: The Reality of Book Offs Business] (Tokyo: Ronsosha, 2008). The Off refers to a
discount.
4. There has been considerable debate among archaeologists over precisely when writing
first began to be used on the archipelago. Chinese logographs found on ancient swords, armor,
and other grave goods testify to the use of some degree of writing in the late fourth and fifth
centuries, although characters may have been used for largely symbolic value, and likely were
initially written by scribes of Korean extraction; see William Wayne Farris, Sacred Texts and
Buried Treasures: Issues in the Historical Archaeology of Ancient Japan (Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 1998), 9899. Chinese dynastic records convey diplomatic exchanges with
the early Japanese kingdom of Wa, which saw numerous bronze mirrors bestowed on the
Japanese ruler known as Himiko. Most famously, they record receiving a letter from King Bu,
who was most likely Great King Yuryaku, in 478; see Joan R. Piggott, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 44, 47. This, too, was likely
drafted by Korean scribes, although by the end of the following century literacy would have
been more common among elites.
5. The precise relationship of kanbun (literally, Han Chinese writing) to classical Chinese is an issue hotly contested among linguists, literary scholars, and historians. On one side
are those scholars who assert that kanbun, regardless of how it was written and read, was essentially still classical Chinese; on the other are those who assert that they are almost separate
languages, with kanbun being understood as classical Japanese written with, or even translated
into, classical Chinese characters (that is, as a mode of writing Japanese, with other possible
modes being kana or a combination of kana and Chinese characters). Most scholars sit somewhere on a scale between these two perspectives. Kanbun has frequently been compared to the
role of Latin in medieval Europe, although this is somewhat problematic, and scholars have
suggested Sino-Japanese or pseudo-Chinese as alternative English renderings. On various
aspects of the debate, see John Timothy Wixted, Kanbun, Histories of Japanese Literature,
and Japanologists, Sino-Japanese Studies 10, no. 2 (April 1998): 2331; and Kurozumi Makoto, Kangaku: Writing and Institutional Authority, trans. David Lurie, in Inventing the
Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature, ed. Haruo Shirane and Tomi
Suzuki (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), 201219.
6. Modern vernacular Japanese, which was developed during the prewar era and was
firmly established by the postwar education system, continues to use kanji and kana together.
The ways in which the two types of kana, hiragana and katakana, are employed varied historically, but modern convention uses the latter for foreign loan words (normally of twentieth-
293
century vintage) and the former for grammatical structures such as particles and suffixes, while
kanji are used for nouns and the roots of verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. While it is possible
to write Japanese exclusively using one form of kana, this is impractical because of the lack
of spaces between words and the large number of homonyms. One is therefore unlikely to see
kana-exclusive writings outside of classical texts, or childrens books with simple vocabularies.
For an accessible overview of the Japanese language and its development, see Amalia E. Gnanadesikan, The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2009):
113132, although Gnanadesikans grasp of historical context (such as the lives of women in
Heian Japan) is somewhat unreliable.
7. Classical Chinese ideas, whether truly ancient concepts such as the Mandate of Heaven and five-phase theory, or the association of the political order of the ruler with the natural
order of the cosmos in Han Confucianism, and Buddhist notions such as the chakravartin
(wheel-turning monarch) leading the people spiritually as well as politically were immensely
powerful tools of statecraft in East Asia.
8. Mokkan were often used to practice writing and were discarded. As with scraps of
paper later used for wrapping items, and sheets of paper recycled into scrolls and reused, the
rubbish of ancient Japan has often proved a valuable source of information.
9. The lack of dynastic upheaval or anti-Buddhist movements, in contrast to China, may
also have played a role in enabling these early printed texts to survive.
10. On the transition from a primarily oral to primarily literary society, see Gary L. Ebersole, Ritual Poetry and the Politics of Death in Early Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), esp. 8, 1719; and Christopher Seeley, A History of Writing in Japan (Leiden:
Brill, 1991). The myths and early history chronicled in the Kojiki were passed down from oral
tradition and first written down in this era. Likewise, unlike the Kaifuso, which contained
contemporary poems, the Manyoshu contained many poems of much older vintage, some
purported to date from as far back as the end of the fourth century. English translations of the
Kojiki and Nihon shoki (also called Nihongi) exist: Donald L. Philipi, trans., Kojiki (Tokyo:
University of Tokyo Press, 1977); and W. G. Aston, trans., Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from
the Earliest Times to AD 697 (Boston: Tuttle, 1972; originally printed by the Japan Society
in 1896). Unfortunately, the Kaifuso has yet to be translated. There are several partial translations of the Manyoshu; the most important is Ian Hideo Levy, The Ten Thousand Leaves:
A Translation of the Manyoshu, Japans Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981). Alexander Vovin has recently undertaken a complete
multivolume translation, publication of which is ongoing; see Alexander Vovin, Manyoshu: A
New English Translation Containing the Original Text, Kana Transliteration, Romanization,
Glossing and Commentary (London: Global Oriental, 2009).
11. Supposedly, a tenth of the pagodas were distributed to the main temples around the
capital, Nara, and the rest to temples outside of the capital region, as recorded in the lateeighth-century chronicle Shoku Nihongi. See Kuroita Katsumi, ed., Shoku Nihongi (Kokushi
taikei series), vol. 2: 376 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1981). There has been debate over
whether the figure of 1 million dharani is believable, but even if, as some have suggested, only
a tenth of these were produced, the number is still impressive. There are numerous surviving
examples, both in Japan and other countries. While there is yet no in-depth study in English of
this pioneering print project, there have been some brief articles, such as Brian Hickman, A
Note on the Hyakumanto Dharani, Monumenta Nipponica 30, no. 1 (Spring 1975): 8793.
12. See, for example, Okano Takeo, Nihon shuppan bunkashi [A History of Japanese
Print Culture], 2 vols. (Muromachi Shobo, 19541955).
13. Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the
Nineteenth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 99104. In Japanese court
society, calligraphic style was seen as an expression of the writers inner character. When copying a manuscript, collectors would often try to hew as closely as possible to the original cal-
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ligraphic style, copying the form as well as the content of the writing. The inability of print to
do this, as well as its intrinsically impersonal nature, may have played a role in elites refusal to
abandon manuscripts for print.
14. By the mid-twelfth century these texts and their contemporaries had become classic
works that were widely read and discussed in court society. The Tale of Genji has seen three
English translations: Arthur Waleys (London: George Allen & Unwin, 19261933), Edward
G. Seidenstickers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), and Royall Tylers (New York: Viking,
2001). The Pillow Book has seen two, by Ivan Morris (New York: Columbia University Press,
1967) and Meredith McKinney (London: Penguin, 2006).
15. Because of the strong textual basis of Buddhism, and the fact that most doctrinal texts
arrived in Chinese from the mainland, monks had frequent opportunities to access other Chinese texts on a range of subjects. Their writing skills and familiarity with Chinese knowledge,
particularly on matters such as law, bureaucracy, and technology, led to monks being recruited
to perform scribal and bureaucratic work. By the time of the later shogunates this had become
a norm, and temples in turn stressed Chinese learning for their adherents in order to make them
employable, and thereby bring increased wealth and prestige to the temples.
16. It is important to note the role of private individuals like Teika in preserving Japans
literary heritage. Some Japanese scholars have suggested that Japan represents a special case
in that its literary heritage was preserved not by agents of the state, but by private collectors,
and indeed many of the most important extant collections of texts, like Kanazawa Bunko, were
private collections. See Yamamoto Nobuyoshi, Kotenseki ga kataru: shomotsu no bunkashi
[The Classics Speak: A Cultural History of Books] (Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 2004).
17. Some scholars have suggested that this was in fact the casefor example, Kornicki,
Book in Japan, 135.
18. Ihara Saikakus Five Women Who Loved Love has been translated into English: Wm.
Theodore de Bary, trans., Five Women Who Loved Love: Amorous Tales from 17th-Century
Japan (North Clarendon, Vt.: Tuttle, 1956); for Jippensha Ikku, see Thomas Satchell, trans.,
Shanks Mare: Japans Great Comic Novel of Travel and Ribaldry (North Clarendon, Vt.:
Tuttle, 1960). Bakins masterpiece Nanso Satomi hakkenden has exerted an enduring influence
on Japanese popular culture, spawning numerous novel, film, manga, and animated adaptations, although far fewer Japanese have read the original 106-volume work. It unfortunately
remains untranslated.
19. While the notion of kawaraban as forerunners to the modern press is not new, increasingly historians have also come to recognize the value of kawaraban for doing social history;
see, for example, M. William Steele, Alternative Narratives in Modern Japanese History (London: Routledge, 2003), esp. ch. 1.
20. On Rangaku, in which foreign books played such vital roles, see Marius B. Jansen,
Rangaku and Westernization, Modern Asian Studies 18, no. 4 (1984): 541553; Annick
Horiuchi, When Science Develops Outside State Patronage: Dutch Studies in Japan at the
Turn of the Nineteenth Century, Early Science and Medicine 8, no. 2 (2003): 148172; and
more specifically on the role of books, J. MacLean, The Introduction of Books and Scientific
Instruments into Japan, 17121854, Japanese Studies in the History of Science 13 (1974):
968; and W. F. Vande Walle and Kazuhiko Kasaya, eds., Dodonaeus in Japan: Translation and
the Scientific Mind in the Tokugawa Period (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001).
21. On Titsingh, see Timon Screech, Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and
Japan, 17791822 (New York: Routledge, 2006), a collection of Titsinghs writings with an
extended introduction. One of the books Titsingh took to Europe was Nihon Odai
Ichiran, a
chronicle of rulers by the historian Hayashi Gaho (Hayashi Razans son), published in Japan in
1652. Titsinghs posthumously published translation of the work into French introduced it to
a wide audience in the early nineteenth century, and as the first Japanese-authored history of
Japan available in Europe it enjoyed substantial recognition.
295
22. A fitting image is offered by translator Konosu Yukiko, who refers to the era as a
wonderland of translations. Meiji Taisho honyaku wondaarando [The Meiji-Taisho Wonderland of Translations] (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2005).
23. Today the most well known of these teachers is probably Lafcadio Hearn (18501904;
known in Japan as Koizumi Yakumo), who wrote about Japanese culture and folk tales. Another well-known figure in Japan, if not abroad, is Raphael von Koeber (18481923), who
taught philosophy in Japan for twenty years and who counted among his students many notables, such as the writer Natsume Soseki and the philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro. As for the
university libraries, the catalog of European holdings compiled by Tokyo Imperial University
in 1891 ran to 630 pages and listed thousands of works. Tadano Akira, ed., Author Catalogue
of the Library of Teikoku-Daigaku (Imperial University) (Tokyo: Imperial University Library,
1891).
24. On this issue, see Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture,
and Translated ModernityChina, 19001937 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
1995). The access to Western works and scholars enjoyed by Japanese intellectuals gave them
far more opportunities to develop translations and scholarship than their Chinese colleagues,
who additionally suffered from an unstable regime and economy, and imperialist incursions.
25. Natsume Soseki, Kokoro [Heart/Essence], trans. Edwin McClellan (Washington, D.C.:
Regnery, 1957); Nishida Kitaro, Zen no kenkyu [An Inquiry into the Good], trans. Masao Abe
and Christopher Ives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990).
26. The Peace Preservation Law was intended to deal with the perceived threat of socialism and the radical workers movement. Because it increased the powers of the police and
placed significant limits on intellectual freedom, it has conventionally been seen as heralding
the end of the liberalism of the Taisho period (often called Taisho democracy, although it
was less than democratic) and the beginning of the road to militarization and war in the early
Showa period (19261945).
27. The popular appeal of manga cannot be overstated: in contrast to the limited range of
contemporary Japanese fiction available in translation, many major manga series are available
abroad in many languages. Since the late 1990s, both Japanese- and English-language scholars
have become increasingly interested in studies of manga (along with anime and video games,
which together comprise the three pillars of Japanese otaku subculture). Representative works
in Japanese include Shimizu Isao, Manga no rekishi [A History of Manga] (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1991); and Kusaka Midori, ed., Manga kenkyu e no tobira [The Door to Manga Studies] (Fukuoka: Azusa Shoin, 2005), which looks at comics around the world, particularly in
East Asia. While the field still awaits a comprehensive historical treatment of the subject in
English, there have been several meaningful studies, including Anne Allison, Permitted & Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996);
and Sharon Kinsella, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Culture
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000). On early modern predecessors to manga, see
Adam L. Kern, Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyoshi of Edo
Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University East Asia Center, 2006). The fact that in Korea,
North America, and elsewhere those inspired by manga have taken up producing their own
art in a manga-style has raised important questions about, for example, the conventional
dichotomies between manga and American comics, as well as terminological issues (manga
in Japanese simply refers to any type of comic artwork, whereas in North America the term
has been adopted to refer to Japanese-style comic artwork). The English-language world has
recently seen everything from manga mathematics textbooks to manga renditions of Shakespeare, suggesting an insatiable audience demand for the medium. The developing field of
manga studies also brings into question dichotomies such as comics/literature and may shape
how print culture is perceived in the future, particularly in light of the long history and wide
variety of manga.
296
Book History
e Kenzaburo and Murakami Haruki have

28. While famous and established writers like O
seen their works translated, by far the majority of critically acclaimed Japanese fiction remains
untranslated. The situation for scholarship is even worse, with very few Japanese academic
works being translated. In contrast, virtually every popular British or American best seller and
a wide range of scholarship is available in Japanese translation.
29. For example, see Yamashita Hiroshi, Soseki zenshu wo megutte [On the Complete
Works of Soseki], Soseki kenkyu [Soseki Studies] 3 (1994): 184204.
30. Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, 2 vols., trans. Royall Tyler (New York: Viking
Penguin, 2001), 1:460461.
31. Ivan Morris, trans., As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in
Eleventh-Century Japan (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 5455.
32. Teikas copying efforts, which were frequently aided by his female servants (who
themselves left traces of their work on the copied texts), produced a collection that today represents a rich literary heritage. According to his diary, Meigetsuki, Teika copied the Tale of Ise
over three days in 1231, and spent another day or two to revise it. He recorded on the sixteenth
day of the second month in 1225 that his female servants had completed their work copying all
fifty-four scrolls of the Tale of Genji, which they had begun in the eleventh month of the previous year. In the following year he copied three scrolls from the Genji himself at the request of
a royal princess, and was ordered to copy two more in 1230 despite suffering from fever and
toothache at the time. Meigetsuki, transcribed at Fujiwara Teika no chosaku to Heian-cho
kotenjaku no shoshakokan ni kansuru sogo detabesu [Comprehensive Database Concerning
Transcripted Items of Fujiwara Teikas Works and Classics of the Heian Period], http://www.
takachiho.ac.jp/~eshibuya/kenkyukai.html.
33. While often rendered in English simply as bibliography, shoshigaku is an inclusive
category that may include textual criticism and editing.
34. Shuppan literally means putting out/producing han. The han originally referred to the identifying label or board of a text, and evolved to mean a given instance of a
text, akin perhaps to edition or version. Shuppan originally meant, then, producing the
spines of texts (that is, printing books), and evolved to mean printing reproductions of a given
version of a text.
35. Nakano Mitsutoshi, ed., Edo no Shuppan [Edo Printing] (Tokyo: Perikan-sha, 2005),
78.
36. Makino Zenbe, comp., Tokugawa bakufu jidai shoseki ko: fu kankei jiko oyobi shuppanshi [A Consideration of Books from the Era of the Tokugawa Bakufu: With Related Matters and a Publication History] (Tokyo: Shosekisho kumiai jimusho, 1912). While the original
work is somewhat rare (but held by both Tokyo University and the National Diet Library), it
was republished by Yumani Shobo in 1976 with commentary by the scholar Yayoshi Mitsunaga.
37. Kobayashi Zenpachi, Sekai shuppan bijutsushi [A World History of the Printing
Craft] (Tokyo: Bungeisha, 1930); Kobayashi Zenpachi, Nihon shuppan bunkashi [A History
of Japanese Print Culture] (Tokyo: Society for Publishing A History of Japanese Print Culture,
1938). Nihon shuppan bunkashi was republished by Seishodo Shoten in 1978.
38. This is a point echoed by Yayoshi Mitsunaga in his afterword to Kobayashi Zenpachi,
Nihon shuppan bunkashi (Tokyo: Seishodo Shoten, 1978), 16. Yayoshi emphasizes how shuppanshi (history of printing) requires the consideration of copied texts in many fields, presenting
a formidable challenge, and how Kobayashi met this challenge through looking at the connection between publishing and scholarship, blending together the disciplines of bibliography and
the history of printing to develop shuppan bunkashi. In other words, Yayoshi, a major scholar
in his own right, credits Kobayashi with inventing the field of the history of print culture.
39. Okano Takeo, Shomotsu kara mita Meiji no bungei [The Art of Meiji as Seen through
Books] (Tokyo: Toyodo, 1942).
297
40. Okano, Nihon shuppan bunkashi. It was later republished in a one-volume format by
Shunpodo in 1959, and then by Hara Shobo in 1981.
41. Sugimura Takeshi, Kindai nihon dai shuppan jigyoshi [Great History of the Modern
Japanese Publishing Industry] (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1953); Meiji iko shuppan bunka
shiryo ten: mokuroku to kaisetsu [Exhibition of Materials on Print Culture since Meiji: Catalog and Commentary], National Diet Library, 1966 (National Diet Library holdings). Writings on the history of local printing industries evolved out of pamphlets and short publications,
often connected to local industry leaders or boosters. One early work was Takakura Shinichi,
Hokkaido shuppan shoshi [A Short History of Printing in Hokkaido] (Sapporo: Hokkaido
Branch of the Japanese Publishing Association, 1947); another was Wakisaka Yotaro, Osaka
shuppan roku-ju-nen no ayumi [Sixty Years of Osaka Publishing Progress] (Osaka: Osaka
Publishing Cooperative, 1956).
42. Nakamura Kiyozo,
Kinsei shuppanho no kenkyu [A Study of Early Modern Printing
Laws](Tokyo: Maruzen, 1972); Suzuki Toshio, Edo no honya [The Bookstores of Edo], 2 vols.
(Tokyo: Chuko Shinsho, 1980); Konta Yozo,
Edo no kinsho [Prohibited Books of the Edo Era]
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1981); Munemasa Iso, Kinsei Kyoto shuppan bunka no kenkyu
[A Study of Print Culture in Early Modern Kyoto] (Kyoto: Domeisha Shuppan, 1982).
43. Kawase Kazuma, Nyumon kowa Nihon shuppan bunkashi [Introductory Lectures on
the History of Japanese Print Culture] (Tokyo: Nihon Edita Sukuru [Japan Editors School],
1983).
44. For example, on best sellers, see Shiozawa Minobu, Showa besutosera sesoshi [The
History of the World of Showa Best Sellers] (Tokyo: Daisan Bunmeisha, 1988). On advertising
by publishers, see Ishikawa Hiroyoshi and Ozaki Hotsuki, Shuppan kokoku no rekishi, 1895
1941 [A History of Publishers Advertising, 18951941] (Tokyo: Shuppan News, 1989). On
bookselling and the economics of publishing, see Ozaki Hotsuki and Munetake Asako, Nihon
no shoten hyakunen: Meiji, Taisho, Showa no shuppan hanbai shoshi [A Hundred Years of
Japanese Bookstores: A Short History of the Publishing Trade in the Meiji, Taisho and Showa
Eras] (Tokyo: Seieisha, 1991). An earlier work to consider on this topic is Hashimoto Motomu,
Nihon shuppan hanbaishi [A History of the Japanese Publishing Trade] (Tokyo: Kodansha,
1964).
45. Shiozawa Minobu, Sengo shuppan bunkashi [A History of Postwar Print Culture], 2
vols. (Tokyo: Ronsosha, 1987).
46. Yayoshi Mitsunagas early work included guides for libraries, such as Shinbashi tosho no sentaku [Choosing New Books] (Tokyo: Risosha, 1961), and studies like Hyakkajiten
no seirigaku [A Bibliographic Study of Encyclopedias] (Tokyo: Takeuchi Shoten, 1972); the
festschrift was Toshokan to shuppan bunka: Yayoshi Mitsunaga-sensei kiju kinenronbunshu
[Libraries and Print Culture: A Festschrift in Honor of Yayoshi Mitsunaga-sensei on His 77th
Birthday] (Tokyo: Group to Commemorate Yayoshi Mitsunaga-senseis 77th Birthday, 1977).
47. Yayoshi Mitsunaga, Edo jidai no shuppan to hito [People and Printing in the Edo
Period] (Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 1980); Yayoshi Mitsunaga, Meiji jidai no shuppan to hito
[People and Printing in the Meiji Period] (Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 1982).
48. Yayoshi Mitsunagas other major studies include Edo shuppanshi: bungei shakaigakuteki ketsuron [The History of Edo Printing: Litero-Sociological Conclusions] (Tokyo: Yumani Shobo, 1989), and Kindai shuppan bunka [Early Modern Print Culture] (Tokyo: Yumani
Shobo, 1990). His document collections include Bakumatsu Meiji shuppan shiryo [Historical
Documents Pertaining to Printing in the Bakumatsu and Meiji Eras] (Tokyo: Yumani Shobo,
1993), and Mikan shiryo ni yoru Nihon shuppan bunka [Japanese Print Culture According to
Unpublished Historical Documents], 8 vols. (Tokyo: Yumani Shobo, 19881993). This latter
series collectively comprises part 26 of Yumani Shobos extensive Shoshi shomoku [Catalog of
Bibliography] series, which also includes many republished classics of bibliographic scholarship. Yayoshis early scholarly writing was also compiled into a six-volume series, Yayoshi Mit-
298
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sunaga chosakushu [Collected Writings of Yayoshi Mitsunaga] (Tokyo: Nichigai Associates,

19811983). Obviously, it does not include his later significant works.
49. In local studies of early modern Japan, the unit of focus is normally the domain (han),
a quasi-feudal territory headed by a lord (daimyo) and his retainers. Lords were subject to bakufu laws and regulations, had restrictions imposed on their military capability, and generally
acknowledged the bakufus monopoly on foreign affairs, but could have a considerable degree
of local autonomy. The early modern domains, with considerable adjustment, became the basis
Masahiros
for the modern prefectures. A good example of a local study of print culture is Ota
study of Owari Domain, Owari shuppan bunkashi [A History of Print Culture in Owari] (Jinbei: Rokko Shuppan, 1995). There have also been studies of local printing industries from the
perspective of multiple domains, such as Asakura Haruhiko and Owa

Hiroyuki, eds., Kinsei
chiho shuppan no kenkyu [Studies on Early Modern Regional Printing] (Tokyo: Tokyodo Shuppan, 1993).
50. On libraries and book collectors, see, for example, Okamura Keiji, Edo no zoshoka
[The Book Collectors of Edo] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1996). Libraries were a perennial favorite
among research topics scholars carried over from literary studies. Yayoshi Mitsunagas early
scholarship was also heavily oriented toward libraries. See also Kawasaki Yoshitaka and Tsuda
Sumiko, Library History Studies in Japan and the Japan Society for the Study of Library History (JSSLH), Libraries and Culture 25, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 130137. For a literary treatment of print culture, see Ichiko Natsuo, Kinsei shoki bungaku to shuppan bunka [Literature
and Print Culture in the First Half of the Early Modern Era] (Tokyo: Wakakusa Shobo, 1998).
51. On women, see, for example, Ikeda Emikos edited volume on women in modern
journalism, Shuppan joseishi: shuppan janarizumu ni ikiru josei-tachi [Womens History of
Print: Women Who Lived on Print Journalism] (Kyoto: Sekai Shisosha, 2001). On editing,
see Matsumoto Masashigu, Sengo shuppan to henshusha [Editors and Postwar Publishing]
(Tokyo: Ichiyosha, 2001); and Sugatsuke Masanobu, Tokyo no henshu [Tokyo Editing (with
an English subtitle, Visionary Tokyo Editors: Their Lives and Works)] (Tokyo: Pie Books,
2007). On the editing of some of the great compilations of classic texts, see Kumata Atsumi,
Sandai hensanbutsuGunshoruiju, Kojiruien, Kokusho somokusono shuppan bunkashi [A
History of the Print Culture of Three Great Compilations: The Gunshoruiju, Kojiruien, and
Kokusho somokuso] (Tokyo: Bensey Shuppan, 2009).
52. Kokubungaku Kenkyu Shiryokan [National Institute of Japanese Literature], ed.,
Meiji no shuppan bunka [Meiji Print Culture] (Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten, 2002); Nakano, Edo no
shuppan.
53. Ono Hideo, Nihon shinbunshi [A History of Japanese Newspapers] (Tokyo: Ryosho
Fukyukai, 1949); Nishida Taketoshi, Meiji jidai no shinbun to zasshi [Newspapers and Magazines in the Meiji Period] (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1961); Oka Mitsuo, Kindai Nihon shinbun shoshi:
sono tanjo kara kijoka made [A Short History of Modern Japanese Newspapers: From Inception to Commercialization] (Tokyo: Minerva Shobo, 1969). Ono (18851977) was one of the
earliest scholars in the field, whose first study was Nihon shinbun hattsushi [A History of the
Development of Japanese Newspapers] (Osaka: Osaka Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1922). Nishida
and Oka represented the next generation, which entered the field after the war.
54. Fuji Akio, Edo bungaku to shuppan media: kinsei zenki shosetsu wo chushin ni [Edo
Literature and Print Media: With a Particular Focus on Novels in the First Half of the Early
Modern Era] (Tokyo: Kasama Shoin, 2001); Kan Satoko, Media no jidai: Meiji bungaku wo
meguru jokyo [The Age of Media: The Situation of Meiji Literature] (Tokyo: Sobunsha Shuppan, 2001). One accessible and frequently reprinted discussion piece is that of Kato Hidetoshi
and the literary theorist Maeda Ai, Meiji media ko [Considering Meiji Media] (Tokyo: Chuo
Koronsha, 1980).
55. Yoshida Yutaka, Edo no masukomi kawaraban: terakoyashiki de genbun kara
yondemiru [Kawaraban, Edo-era Mass Communication: Lets Read Original Terakoya
299
Documents] (Tokyo: Kobunsha Shinsho, 2003). See also the beautifully illustrated Uchida Keiichi, Edo no shuppan jjo [The Publishing Situation in Edo] (Kyoto: Seigensha, 2007). As for
terakoya, these were temple schools that taught reading, writing, and other subjects to commoners in the Edo period. They have been understood as both early agents of mass literacy and
forerunners of the modern education system begun in the Meiji era.
56. For example, Sato Takumi, Kingu no jidai: kokumin taishu zasshi no kokyusei [The
Era of King [Magazine]: Mass Magazines and Community] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002);
and Takeuchi Yo, Kyoyoshugi no botsuraku: kawariyuku eriito gakusei bunka [The Downfall
of Kyoyoshugi: Changing Elite Student Culture] (Tokyo: Chuo Koron Shinsha, 2003).
57. Nagatomo Chiyoji, Edo jidai no shomotsu to dokusho [Books and Reading in the Edo
Period] (Tokyo: Tokyodo Shuppan, 2001).
58. The first full-length study of book circulation in early modern Japan appears to be
Nagatomos Edo jidai no tosho ryutsu [Book Circulation in the Edo Period] (Kyoto: Bukkyo
University Correspondence Division, 2002).
59. In addition to his own scholarship, such as Shomotsu kara jidai wo yomu: dokusho
kenkyu no sususme [Reading an Era through Books: Suggestions for Reading Studies], Hitotsubashi Ronso [Hitotsubashi Review] 123, no. 4 (2000): 670687, Wakao Masaki also
oversees the journal Nihon ni okeru shomotsu/shuppan to shakai henyo [Books/Publishing and
Social Change in Japan].
60. Tono Haruyuki, Sho no kodaishi [A History of Ancient Writing] (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1994).
61. Gomi Fumihiko, Shomotsu no chuseishi [Medieval History through Books] (Tokyo:
Misuzu Shobo, 2003).
62. Ibid., esp. introduction.
63. Oda Mitsuo has written extensively on many aspects of print culture, past and present, in Japan and Europe. For example, see Shoten no kindai: hon ga kagayaiteita jidai [The
Modern Experience of Bookstores: An Era when Books Flourished] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2003),
and Furuhon kenkyu [Studies on Second-hand Books] (Tokyo: Ronsosha, 2009).
64. An example of a recent study produced by a publishing association is Editorial Committee for the History of Print Culture in Hokkaido, ed., Hokkaido no shuppan bunkashi:
Bakumatsu kara Showa made [A History of Print Culture in Hokkaido: From the Bakumatsu
Era to the Showa Period] (Sapporo: Hokkaido Publishing Project Center, 2008).
65. In terms of comparative scholarship, Takamiya Toshiyuki and Harada Noriyukis Hon
to hito no rekishi jiten [Encyclopedia of Bookmanship] (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobo, 1997) is a
good place to start, particularly for students. Well illustrated and focusing on European history,
it covers a range of issues such as forms of printing, bookstores, women readers, and libraries.
On China, consider Inoue Susumu, Chugoku shuppan bunkashi: shomotsu sekai to chi no fukei
[A History of Chinese Print Culture: A Landscape of World Books and Knowledge] (Nagoya:
University of Nagoya Press, 2002); and Miya Noriko, Mongoru jidai no shuppan bunka [Print
Culture during the Age of the Mongols] (Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press, 2006). On Europe, recent scholarship includes Takano Katsuya, Yoroppa no shuppan bunkashi [A History
of Print Culture in Europe] (Tokyo: Robundo, 2004).
66. In 1871, the British consul to Japan, Sir Harry Parkes, prepared a report on Japanese
papermaking for the British government, complete with hundreds of samples from across the
country. The Parkes Collection is now stored at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
See Pauline Webber, The Parkes Collection of Japanese Paper, V&A Conservation Journal
15 (April 1995): 59.
67. In fact, even ukiyo-e themselves were affected by Western demand. As Japanese artists
and printers came to recognize the size of the potential market offered by Westerners, and the
profits that could be generated, they began to produce works designed to appeal to Western
sensibilities and images about Japan. The most significant development in this regard was
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Book History
initiated by Watanabe Shozaburo (18851962), who recruited artists to produce ukiyo-e using
traditional methods and depicting traditional subjects, but incorporating stylistic innovations
from Western painting. This new generation of prints, called shin hanga (new prints), were,
unlike their predecessors, intended primarily for the Western market.
68. Edward F. Strange, Japanese Illustration: A History of the Arts of Wood-Cutting and
Colour Printing in Japan (London: George Bell and Sons, 1897); Wm. Dallam Armes, The
Color-Prints of Old Japan (Berkeley, Calif.: University Press, 1901). Another early work of
note is W. von Seidlitz, A History of Japanese Colour-Prints (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott,
1910). While these were scholarly treatments, many works, and indeed the earliest works on
prints and illustrations, tended to be produced by private art clubs. One of the first of these
was the Catalogue of Prints and Books Illustrating the History of Engraving in Japan (London:
Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1888), produced by a British gentlemens club of art enthusiasts.
69. David Chibbett, The History of Japanese Printing and Book Illustration (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1977); Allen Hockley, The Prints of Isoda Koryusai: Floating World
Culture and Its Consumers in Eighteenth-Century Japan (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 2003); Andreas Marks, Japanese Woodblock Prints: Artists, Publishers and Masterworks, 16801900 (North Clarendon, Vt.: Tuttle, 2010). See also the following essay collections, which cover a range of topics related to the art, production, and context of prints:
Amy Reigle Newland, ed., The Commercial and Cultural Climate of Japanese Printmaking
(Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2004); Susanne Formanek and Sepp Linhart, eds., Written
TextsVisual Texts: Woodblock-Printed Media in Early Modern Japan (Amsterdam: Hotei
Publishing, 2005); and Julia Meech and Jane Oliver, eds., Designed for Pleasure: The World of
Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 16801860 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008).
Scholarship also continues on specific artists, such as Hokusai (David Bell, Hokusais Project:
The Articulation of Pictorial Space [Kent: Global Oriental, 2007]), and Utamaro (Julie Nelson
Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty [London: Reaktion Books, 2008]). A good source
for scholarship on prints is William Green, Japanese Woodblock Prints: A Bibliography of
Writings from 18221992, Entirely or Partly in English Text (Leiden: Ukiyo-e Books, 1993).
In addition to the large number of studies and print catalogs available, there is also the journal
of the Japanese Art Society of America (formerly the Ukiyo-e Society of America), Impressions.
Needless to say, there is also considerable Japanese scholarship on ukiyo-e; a landmark work
is Kodanshas eight-volume Nihon hanga bijutsu zenshu [The Art of the Japanese Print] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 19601962), and there is also the long-running journal of the Ukiyo-e Hogo
kenkyukai (Ukiyo-e Preservation Society), Ukiyo-e.
70. Ernest M. Satow, The Jesuit Missionary Press in Japan, 15911610 (privately printed, 1888), also available from Doshisha University at http://elib.doshisha.ac.jp/denshika/jesuit/139/imgidx139.html.
71. Johannes Laures, Kirishitan Bunko: A Manual of Books and Documents on the Early
Christian Missions in Japan (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1940). The first part is devoted to the
Jesuit mission press. See also Johannes Laures, Second Supplement to Kirishitan Bunko,
Monumenta Nipponica 7, nos. 12 (1951): 269299; Joseph K. Yamagiwa, Revisions in the
Rakuyoshu at the Time of Its Printing in 1598, Monumenta Nipponica 11, no. 2 (July 1955):
185194; Richard L. Spear, Research on the 1593 Jesuit Mission Press Edition of Esops
Fables Monumenta Nipponica 19, nos. 34 (1964): 456465; and Diego Pacheo, Diogo
de Mesquita, S.J. and the Jesuit Mission Press, Monumenta Nipponica 26, nos. 34 (1971):
431443.
72. The notion of newspapers as harbingers of democracy may also have inspired Western
scholars interested in Japanese modernization. Among the earliest accounts available in English
were a section in Okuma Shigenobu, Fifty Years of New Japan, trans. Marcus B. Huish (London: Smith, Elder, 1909), which discussed the emergence of daily newspapers and the political
press along with a brief treatment of modern book publishing (2:393420); and Frank L. Mar-
301
tin, The Journalism of Japan, University of Missouri Bulletin 19, no. 10 (April 1918), Journalism Series 16. Kawabe Kisaburos The Press and Politics in Japan: A Study of the Relation
between the Newspaper and the Political Development of Modern Japan (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1921) was the first in-depth treatment.
73. Kawabe was followed by several other books, but most of these were short works
written by Japanese journalists. Most significant among these were two books by Hanazono
Kanesada, The Development of Japanese Journalism (Osaka: Osaka Mainichi Shinbunsha,
1924), and Journalism in Japan and Its Early Pioneers (Osaka: Osaka Shuppansha, 1926).
74. In particular, see Albert A. Altman, The Emergence of the Press in Meiji Japan
(Ph.D., diss., Princeton University, 1965); and Leon Zolbrod, Mass Media of the Tokugawa
Period: Background of Japanese Popular Literature and Journalism, East Asian Occasional
Papers II (Asian Studies, University of Hawaii) 4 (1970): 123143.
75. John D. Pierson, Tokutomi Soho, 18631957: A Journalist for Modern Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980); James L. Huffman, Politics of the Meiji Press:
The Life of Fukuchi Genichiro (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1980). Tokutomi Soho
also featured prominently in Kenneth B. Pyle, New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of
Cultural Identity, 18851895 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969). As an aside,
a former assistant to Tokutomi became a master traditional bookbinder and wrote a book on
the subject: see Ikegami Kojiro, Japanese Bookbinding: Instructions from a Master Craftsman,
trans. Deborah Kinzer, adapted by Barbara B. Stephan (New York: Weatherhill, 1986). The
Japanese original (Hon no tsukurikata) was published in 1979.
76. See, for example, Albert A. Altman, The Press and Social Cohesion during a Period
of Change: The Case of Early Meiji Japan, Modern Asian Studies 15 (1981): 865876; Albert
A. Altman, The Press, in Marius B. Jansen and G. Rozman, eds., Japan in Transition: From
Tokugawa to Meiji (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986): 231247; Ito Takeshi
and George Akita, The Yamagata-Tokutomi Correspondence: Press and Politics in MeijiTaisho Japan, Monumenta Nipponica 36, no. 4 (Winter 1981): 391423; and Brian Bridges,
The Japanese Press Abroad: The Case of the Singapore Herald, Publishing History 19
(1986): 8593.
77. One early treatment of freedom of the press and related issues is James L. Huffman,
Freedom and the Press in Meiji-Taisho Japan, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan
(III) 19 (1984): 137171; see also Gregory J. Kasza, The State and the Mass Media in Japan,
19181945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
78. James L. Huffman, Creating a Public: People and Press in Meiji Japan (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1997); see also James L. Huffman, Commercialization and the
Changing World of the Mid-Meiji Press, in New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, ed.
Helen Hardacre and A. L. Kern (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 562-580; and James L. Huffman, A Yankee in Meiji Japan: The Crusading Journalist Edward H. House (Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2003). Other recent work includes studies such as Kakegawa Tomikos The Japan
Chronicle and Its Editors: Reflecting Japan to the Press and the People, 18911940, Japan
Forum 13 (2001): 2740.
79. For example, see Gerald Groemer, Singing the News: Yomiuri in Japan during the
Edo and Meiji Periods, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 54, no. 1 (June 1994): 233261;
and Sepp Linhart, KawarabanEnjoying the News When News Was Forbidden, in Formanek and Linhart, Written TextsVisual Texts, 231250.
80. On the history of education in Japan, see Ronald P. Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965); Donald Roden, Schooldays in Imperial Japan: A Study in the Culture of a Student Elite (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980);
Richard Rubinger, Private Academies of Tokugawa Japan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982); Marleen Kassel, Tokugawa Confucian Education: The Kangien Academy of
Hirose Tanso (17821856) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Margaret
302
Book History
Mehl, Private Academies of Chinese Learning in Meiji Japan: The Decline and Transformation
of the Kangaku Juku (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2003); and, most recently, Benjamin Duke, The History of Modern Japanese Education: Constructing the National
School System, 18721890 (Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009). On reception,
see Joseph K. Yamagiwa, Regional Differences in Literary Tastes and Reputations in Japan,
Occasional Papers: Center for Japanese Studies (University of Michigan) 4 (1953): 5175; Earl
H. Kinmonth, Fukuzawa Reconsidered: Gakumon no Susume and Its Audience, Journal of
Asian Studies 37, no. 4 (August 1978): 677696; Michael C. Brownstein, Jogaku Zasshi and
the Founding of Bungakukai, Monumenta Nipponica 35, no. 3 (Autumn 1980): 319336;
and Peter Kornicki, Unsuitable Books for Women? Genji Monogatari and Ise Monogatari in
Late Seventeenth-Century Japan, Monumenta Nipponica 60, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 147193.
On canon formation, see Michael C. Brownstein, From Kokugaku to Kokubungaku: CanonFormation in the Meiji Period, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47, no. 2 (December 1987):
435460; and Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki, eds., Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000).
Finally, for the textbook debates, the best-known example is the lengthy struggle of historian
Ienaga Saburo to overturn textbook censorship. See John Caiger, Ienaga Saburo and the First
Postwar Japanese History Textbook, Modern Asian Studies 3, no. 1 (1969): 116; and Randy
Huntsberry, Suffering History: The Textbook Trial of Ienaga Saburo, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44, no. 2 (June 1976): 239254. See also Alexander Bukh, Japans
History Textbooks Debate: National Identity in Narratives of Victimhood and Victimization,
Asian Survey 47, no. 5 (SeptemberOctober 2007): 683704. On textbooks used during the
Meiji period, see E. Patricia Tsurumi, Meiji Primary School Language and Ethics Textbooks:
Old Values for a New Society? Modern Asian Studies 8, no. 2 (1974): 247261.
81. For example, on orality, see Ebersole, Ritual Poetry; Edwina Palmer, The Wom-No
Poem of Harima Fudoki and Residual Orality in Ancient Japan, Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London 63, no. 1 (2000): 8189; and Ross Bender,
Performative Loci of the Imperial Edicts in Nara Japan, 749770, Oral Tradition 24, no. 1
(March 2009), http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/24i/bender. On writing, see Seeley, History of Writing in Japan; Edward Kamens, Terrains of Text in Mid-Heian Court Culture, in
Heian Japan: Centers and Peripheries, ed. Mikael S. Adolphson, Edward Kamens, and Stacie
Matsumoto (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 129152; and David Lurie, The
Subterranean Archives of Early Japan: Recently Discovered Sources for the Study of Writing and Literacy, in Books in Numbers: Conference Papers, ed. Wilt L. Idema (Hong Kong:
Chinese University Press, 2007), 91112. On printing, see Kenneth B. Gardner, Centres of
Printing in Medieval Japan: Late Heian to Early Edo Period, Japanese Studies (British Library
Occasional Papers 11) (London: British Library, 1990): 157169. On book collecting, see Ivo
Smits, China as Classic Text: Chinese Books and Twelfth-Century Japanese Collectors, in
Tools of Culture: Japans Cultural, Intellectual, Medical, and Technological Contacts in East
Asia, 10001500s, ed. Andrew Edmund Goble, Kenneth R. Robinson, and Haruko Wakabayashi (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Association for Asian Studies, 2009), 183210.
82. See G. Raymond Nunn, On the Number of Books Published in Japan from 1600 to
1868, in East Asian Occasional Papers 1 (Asian Studies at Hawaii 3) (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1969): 110119; Tasaburo Ito, The Book Banning Policy of the Tokugawa
Shogunate, Acta Asiatica 22 (1972): 3661; MacLean, Introduction of Books and Scientific Instruments. The early work of Peter F. Kornicki includes The Publishers Go-Between:
Kashihonya in the Meiji Period, Modern Asian Studies 14 (1980): 331344; Obiya Ihei, a
Japanese Provincial Publisher, British Library Journal 11 (1985): 131142; and Provincial
Publishing in the Tokugawa Period, Japanese Studies (British Library Occasional Papers 11)
(London: British Library, 1990): 188197. Kornicki was one of several scholars who worked
on collections of Japanese books in the United Kingdom; see, for instance, Hayashi Nozomi
303
and Peter Kornicki, Early Japanese Books in Cambridge University Library: A Catalogue of
the Aston, Satow and von Siebold Collections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
and Kenneth B. Gardner, Descriptive Catalogue of Japanese Books in the British Library
Printed Before 1700 (London: British Library, 1993). A decade later saw Japanese scholars
assessing the collection of Japanese works held by the Library of Congress, although they produced none of the extensive catalogs of their British colleagues. See the symposium Collecting
Books, Accumulating Knowledge in Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12,
no. 1 (Spring 2004).
83. Yoshida Kogoro, Tanrokubon: Rare Books of Seventeenth-Century Japan, trans.
Mark A. Harbison (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1984). The work contains numerous fullcolor illustrations and even a paper sample.
84. Henry D. Smith II, The History of the Book in Edo and Paris, in Edo and Paris:
Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era, ed. James L. McClain, John M. Merriman,
and Ugawa Kaoru (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 332352.
85. Mary Elizabeth Berry, Public Life in Authoritarian Japan, Daedalus 127, no. 3
(Summer 1998): 133165.
86. Postwar scholarship on Japan increasingly had to wrestle with the conflation of popular representation with democracy, since prewar Japan had the former but lacked the latter
until the end of the American occupation in 1952.
87. Berry, Public Life in Authoritarian Japan, 151152.
88. Kornicki, Book in Japan. See also Smiths thoughtful reflections on Kornickis book
in his review, Japaneseness and the History of the Book, Monumenta Nipponica 53, no. 4
(1998): 499515.
89. Mary Elizabeth Berry, Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern
Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
90. Peter F. Kornicki, Manuscript, not Print: Scribal Culture in the Edo Period, Journal
of Japanese Studies 32, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 2352; Peter F. Kornicki, Mara Patessio, and G.
G. Rowley, eds., The Female as Subject: Reading and Writing in Early Modern Japan (Ann
Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, [University of Michigan], 2010); Vande Walle and Kasaya,
Dodonaeus in Japan; Marcia Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place, and
Culture in the Tokugawa Period, 16031868 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
91. Noma Seiji, The Nine Magazines of Kodansha: The Autobiography of a Japanese
Publisher, unknown trans. (London: Methuen, 1934).
92. G. R. Nunn, Modern Japanese Book Publishing, Occasional Papers: Center for
Japanese Studies (University of Michigan) 8 (1964): 5994. Also helpful is Natsuko Y. Furuya,
Postwar Publishing Trends in Japan, Library Quarterly 32, no. 3 (July 1962): 208222.
93. Matthi Forrer, Eirakuya Toshiro, Publisher at Nagoya: A Contribution to the History
of Publishing in 19th-Century Japan (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1985). During the Edo period,
there were three major print centers (Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka), but both then and now important publishers on the periphery warrant attention.
94. Richard Rubinger, From Dark Corners into The Light: Literacy Studies in Modern
Japan, History of Education Quarterly 30, no. 4 (Winter 1990): 601612; Richard Rubinger,
Who Cant Read or Write? Illiteracy in Meiji Japan, Monumenta Nipponica 55, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 163198; Gerald Figal, How to jibunshi: Making and Marketing Self-Histories
of Showa among the Masses in Postwar Japan, Journal of Asian Studies 55, no. 4 (November
1996): 902933. Rubinger followed up his articles with a full-length study, Popular Literacy in
Early Modern Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007). See also J. Marshall Unger, Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading between the Lines (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996).
95. Rachel DeNitto, Return of the Zuihitsu: Print Culture, Modern Life, and Heterogeneous Narrative in Prewar Japan, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 64, no. 2 (December
304
Book History
2004): 251290; Susan Townsend, Lost in a World of Books: Reading and Identity in Prewar
Japan, Literature Compass 4, no. 4 (2007): 11831207; Giles Richter, Enterpreneurship
and Culture: The Hakubunkan Publishing Empire in Meiji Japan, in Hardacre and Kern,
New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, 590602; Vanessa Ward, The Spectre of the Left:
Iwanami Shoten, Ideology and Publishing in Early Postwar Japan, Japanese Studies 26, no.
2 (September 2006): 171184; Andrew T. Kamei-Dyche, The Making of Taisho Intellectual
Culture: Iwanami Shoten and the Canonization of Nishida Kitaro, in Japan and Its Eventuality: Pushing the Envelope Further, ed. Norio Ota (York, Canada: York University, forthcoming). Also in relation to Iwanami Shoten, see J. Thomas Rimers treatment of founder Iwanami Shigeo, Iwanami Shigeos Meiji Education: Encounters, Transmissions, in Hardacre
and Kern, New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan, 136150. There is also considerable
Japanese scholarship on company founders like Iwanami Shigeo: see Abe Yoshishige, Iwanami
Shigeo den [A Biography of Iwanami Shigeo] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1957); and Murakami
Ichiro, Iwanami Shigeo (Tokyo: Sunagoya Shobo, 1982). For Iwanamis intellectual networks,
see Andrew Kamei-Dyche, Iwanami Shigeo to senzen no chishikjin to no kankei ni tsuite
[Concerning Relations between Iwanami Shigeo and Prewar Intellectuals], Kokushigaku [Journal of Japanese History] 200 (April 2010): 284.
96. Theodore F. Welch, Libraries and Librarianship in Japan (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997); for works of cultural history that touch on print culture, see, for example,
Miriam Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); and Michiko Suzuki, Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese Literature and Culture (Stanford. Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 2009).
97. See Sari Kawana, Murder Most Modern: Detective Fiction and Japanese Culture
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).
98. The recent burst of English-language scholarship on books and print culture in China,
both modern and premodern, is particularly important. See, for example, T. H. Barrett, The
Woman Who Discovered Printing (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008); Lucille
Chia, Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th17th Centuries) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003); Joseph McDermott, A Social History of the Chinese Book: Books and Literati Culture in Late Imperial China (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 2006); Christopher Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print
Capitalism, 18761937 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005); and especially Cynthia Brokaws groundbreaking Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the
Qing and Republican Periods (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007).

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The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan: The State of

Book History, Volume 14, 2011, pp. 270-304 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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The State of the Discipline

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The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

their importance, were not the subject of major state-sponsored copying

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

great hegemon Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536/371598) launched an invasion

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

The literature boom accompanying the Kyoyoshugi movement buoyed

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

which he appears), before good-naturedly admitting that they have some

or shosekishi) have begun to appear, but these remain a minority. Shuppan

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

book history was being transformed in the English-language world by the

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

European book would universalize characteristics of print culture and its

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

designed to introduce the Japanese case to the broader Western debates on

Japanese publishing was particularly significant, not only because it was

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

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e Kenzaburo and Murakami Haruki have

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sunaga chosakushu [Collected Writings of Yayoshi Mitsunaga] (Tokyo: Nichigai Associates,

perspective of multiple domains, such as Asakura Haruhiko and Owa

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The History of Books and Print Culture in Japan

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