is a term that covers various genres of popular woodblock-printed illustrated literature during the Japanese

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

(1600–1868) and early

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

. These works were published in the city of

Edo Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...

(modern

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

). In its widest sense, the term includes the genres of , , , and ; in the narrow sense it may refer uniquely to .Earl Miner, Hiroko Odagari and Robert E. Morrell, ''The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature'' (286): Princeton University Press, 1985 belong to the group of works of popular fiction known as .

Early (up to )

Characteristics of early

The term ''early'' usually refers to , and , all of which were published before 1775. At this period the pictures were considered to be of more importance than text. The text itself was mainly written in

hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...

, although some

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

also appear. These early works are not of a high literary value, and are often derivative. However, they are often of interest to scholars from other fields as they provide a unique insight into the life, customs, and interests of the ordinary people of the time. The size of is referred to by the term , similar to the modern B6 size of paper. The volumes are made up of pieces of folded paper bound together, and each piece of paper is known as a . It is thought that these early works were enjoyed by a wide readership, and were especially appreciated by women and children.

Later

's entitled marked a new era in the development of . developed out of the earlier , and in fact the form of the books of these two genres is exactly the same. Works of these genres are conventionally categorised by the date of publication, with works dated before 1775 deemed and those published in or after 1775 . At first sight, appears to be a simple retelling of the Chinese tale of Lu Sheng (, in Japanese: ), a young man who falls asleep in the Zhao capital of

Handan Handan is a prefecture-level city located in the southwest of Hebei province, China. The southernmost prefecture-level city of the province, it borders Xingtai on the north, and the provinces of Shanxi on the west, Henan on the south and Shando ...

, and dreams of glory but wakes to find that the millet at his bedside has not even begun to boil. However, in the manner of a

roman à clef A ''roman à clef'' ( ; ; ) is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people and the "key" is the relationship between the non-fiction and the fiction. This m ...

the reader is given visual and textual clues that the characters actually represent contemporary figures such as the

kabuki is a classical form of Theatre of Japan, Japanese theatre, mixing dramatic performance with Japanese traditional dance, traditional dance. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily stylised performances, its glamorous, highly decorated costumes ...

actor , and these figures' personal lives are parodied. This is a development which changed the course of the genre profoundly, and henceforth it is thought that the works were increasingly read by educated male adults.

were longer works, published from around 1807 until 1888.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kusazoshi Printmaking Graphic design Woodcut designers Cultural history of Japan Literary genres Edo period Japanese words and phrases