was the pen name of (9 February 1829 – 8 November 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, gesa ...

'' genre. He is said to have met painter Kawanabe Kyosai while writing an account of the 1855 Edo earthquake on the day after it happened. Kyosai's sketch of a

catfish Catfish (or catfishes; order (biology), order Siluriformes or Nematognathi) are a diverse group of ray-finned fish. Catfish are common name, named for their prominent barbel (anatomy), barbels, which resemble a cat's whiskers, though not ...

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

ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock printing, woodblock prints and Nikuhitsu-ga, paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes ...

woodblock print. Its commercial success saw Robun producing a sequence of catfish pictures (known as namazu-e). In 1874 the pair collaborated to create what was effectively Japan's first

manga 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 history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

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 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 published for Grant's 1879 visit to Japan.

Works

* (1856) * (1856) * (1870–76), a parody of Jippensha Ikku's

Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige , abbreviated as ''Hizakurige'' () and known in translation as ''Shank's mare, 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 Tōka ...

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

References

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