was the pen name of (1829–1894), a Japanese author and journalist.

Career

Kanagaki Robun, the son of a fishmonger, was originally known for light fiction in the ''

gesaku is an alternative style, genre, or school of Japanese literature. In the simplest contemporary sense, any literary work of a playful, mocking, joking, silly or frivolous nature may be called gesaku. Unlike predecessors in the literary field, gesak ...

'' genre. He is said to have met painter

Kawanabe Kyosai Kawanabe may refer to: *Kawanabe (surname), a Japanese surname *Kawanabe Dam, dam in Kagoshima Prefecture *Kawanabe District, Kagoshima, a former district in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan *Kawanabe, Kagoshima was a List of towns in Japan, town loca ...

while writing an account of the

1855 Edo earthquake The , was the third Ansei Great Earthquake, which occurred during the late-Edo period. It occurred after the 1854 Nankai earthquake, which took place about a year prior. The earthquake occurred at 22:00 local time on 11 November. It had an epi ...

on the day after it happened. Kyosai's sketch of a

catfish Catfish (or catfishes; order Siluriformes or Nematognathi) are a diverse group of ray-finned fish. Named for their prominent barbels, which resemble a cat's whiskers, catfish range in size and behavior from the three largest species alive, ...

, accompanying Robun's text, was Kyosai's first single-sheet

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

woodblock print Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is create ...

. Its commercial success saw Robun producing a sequence of catfish pictures (known as

namazu-e In Japanese mythology, the or is a giant underground catfish who causes earthquakes. The creature lives under the islands of Japan and is guarded by the god Takemikazuchi enshrined at Kashima, who restrains the catfish with a stone. When ...

). In 1874 the pair collaborated to create what was effectively Japan's first

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

magazine, '' Eshinbun nipponchi'' (''Illustrated News''). In 1874 Robun turned to journalism, joining the ''Yokohama mainichi shinbun'' and going on in 1875 to found his own newspaper, the ''Kana-yomi shinbun'' (

Kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...

Newspaper). His newspaper pioneered the genre of "dokufu-mono," criminal biographies of female outlaws, and Kanagaki Robun's own ''Tale of Takahashi Oden the She-Devil'' (written rapidly after Takahashi Oden was beheaded for killing a man) is the most famous example of the genre. He also wrote illustrated biographies, including an adapted biography of

Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...

published for Grant's 1879 visit to Japan.

Works

* (1856) * (1856) * (1870–76), a parody of

Jippensha Ikku was the pen name of Shigeta Sadakazu (重田貞一), a Japanese writer active during the late Edo period of Japan. He was among the most prolific writers of the late Edo period — between 1795 and 1801 he wrote a minimum of twenty novels ...

Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige , abbreviated as ''Hizakurige'' and known in translation as ''Shank's Mare'', is a comic picaresque novel (kokkeibon) written by Jippensha Ikku (十返舎一九, 1765–1831) about the misadventures of two travelers on the Tōkaidō, the main ro ...

* (1871) * (1872) * (1872) * (1874) * (1879) * (1886)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kanagaki Robun 1829 births 1894 deaths Japanese journalists Japanese writers 19th-century Japanese novelists