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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

10. Crafting the Modern Word: Writing, Publishing, and Modernity in the Print Culture of Prewar Japan

Author : Andrew T. Kamei-Dyche

Published in: Comparative Print Culture

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter examines the print culture of prewar Japan as an arena in which various articulations of modernity struggled for influence. These included both Western models and a state-sanctioned attempt to construct a distinctly Japanese alternative. However, this arena also included a range of competing articulations developed by writers and publishers, many of which playfully questioned or undermined the official discourse. The chapter sheds light on a selection of these articulations from middlebrow and highbrow publishing and how they drew on distinct conceptions of categories, particularly “modern” and “traditional,” and “Western” and “Japanese,” to produce their own alternative perspectives. In doing so, the chapter also touches on debates in prewar literature over gender, canonization, and the nature of literature.

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previous chapter Fashioning the Self: Women and Transnational Print Networks in Colonial Punjab

next chapter “Books for Men”: Pornography and Literary Modernity in Late Nineteenth-Century Brazil

All Japanese names are given in Japanese order, with family name first, except for individuals publishing in English.

The marginalization of print in Japan during the medieval era marks an interesting point of contrast with China, where, as Daniel Fried illustrates elsewhere in this volume, a significant print culture was already flourishing.

Silverberg (2009) has demonstrated how mass culture had the potential to challenge state ideology, often with a self-aware ironic sensibility. On the transformative effects of technology on literature, see Gardner (2006) and Jacobowitz (2015).

The attempt to articulate an official discourse on modernity, and the complex role therein of a Japanese “tradition,” encompassed a broad range of political, social, and ideological components. These included a new calendar based on the Gregorian one but with seasonal events adapted from the lunar calendar, a standard language, a new nobility combining European and Chinese conventions, and new “national” customs. For more on various “invented traditions,” see Vlastos (1998).

Several scholars have noted the democratic potential of print culture at the time, such as Nagamine (2004) and Miyashita (2008).

Elementary schools were first implemented in 1872, and at first less than one-third of applicable children enrolled. By the turn of the century this had risen to more than 81%, and to 98% by 1910 (Monbushō 1967, 132). On state ideology and education, see Horio (1988); on readership, see Maeda (1973); on illiteracy, see Rubinger (2000).

This approach was also employed by officially-sanctioned works marketed at Western audiences, such as Ōkuma (1909).

While there is no complete set of Inoue’s works, there are partial compilations, notably Inoue Tetsujirō-shū (2003).

“Fushinchū” was published in Mita Bungaku (三田文學), a literary journal founded at Keio University that same year. For the collected works of Ōgai, see Ōgai Zenshū (1971–75).

For Sōseki’s collected works, see Sōseki Zenshū (1993–99).

Gakushūin was the Peers’ School, for children of the nobility. For Sōseki’s speech on 25 Nov. 1914, see Rubin (1979).

The gathering, called the Useikai (雨声会), met at Prime Minister Saionji Kinmochi’s residence in June 1907. The honorary doctorate was arranged in 1911, and Sōseki weathered considerable criticism in rejecting it.

On Ōgai and the state, see Hopper (1974), and on writers and state-building see Starrs (1998).

Particularly successful serial novels could become publishing sensations upon being republished as single-volume works, even running through hundreds of printings.

Sōseki’s column contributed to changing popular (generally negative) perceptions about journalism and fostered an environment in which influential writers were increasingly recruited by newspapers to write on not only literary but also social issues. Newspapers would also send writers on trips to produce exotic travel accounts, resembling the situation in other early twentieth-century contexts such as that of Argentina covered in Geraldine Rogers’ chapter in the current volume.

Yosano’s poetic style caused consternation among the literary establishment, while at times her themes incurred nationalist wrath, as was the case with her 1904 “Kimi Shinitamaukoto Nakare” (君死にたまふことなかれ, You Must Not Die), pleading with her younger brother to return from the Russo-Japanese War alive, which was interpreted as expressing an antiwar sentiment. For her collected works, see Teihon Yosano Akiko Zenshū (1979–81).

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Tanizaki set forth his ideas in In’ei Raisan (陰翳礼讃, In Praise of Shadows), serialized in 1933. For Tanizaki’s collected works, see Tanizaki Jun’ichirō Zenshū (1981–83).

Tanizaki’s blend of classical tropes with modern sexual mores never sat right with the authorities, although he was able to get a lot past the censors. See Rubin (1984), 137–41 and 235–245.

Since the 1870s, when translations of Western texts rapidly increased, the works chosen reflected the aspirations and concerns of intellectuals, ranging from Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days (translated in 1878), popular for its world adventure theme and emphasizing the power of technology to elevate some nations over others, to Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help (translated in 1871), which was read in a quasi-Confucian vein as a call to elevate the nation through individual effort. On the methods by which translators adapted Western works to the Japanese cultural context, see Miller (2001).

Japan has had eight historic women sovereigns, the last of which was Go-Sakuramachi (1740–1813, r. 1762–71), but even though male rulers had been preferred, there had never before been a legal apparatus in place to prevent women from ascending the throne.

On women writers in modern Japan, see Copeland (2000), Copeland and Ortabasi (2006), Suzuki (2010) and Tanaka (2000).

For the collected works of Higuchi, see Higuchi Ichiyō Zenshū (1974–81, 1994).

In seeking to craft a literary space for women Raichō reflected a similar concern to that of writers and readers in other nations. One such example was Gladys Ramokwena, the 1930s Johannesburg reader who, as Corinne Sandwith explains in her chapter in this collection, desired a space for women writers in her newspaper. In Japan at the time, however, women journalists were exceedingly rare and, rather than pushing the male-dominated newspapers to provide a female literary space, Raichō and her colleagues deemed it more practical to establish one themselves through their own journal.

For a partial collection of her works, see Hiratsuka Raichō Chosakushū (1983–84).

Raichō herself suggested the sun and moon imagery just spontaneously occurred to her rather than being based on careful reasoning (Hiratsuka 2006, 160), but such false humility was common in her personal writings. She poured tremendous effort into her work but was always quick to downplay it.

On publishers in the intellectual climate of the 1920s, see Takeuchi (2003) and Mack (2010).

On Sōseki’s favorite artists and their influence, see Yamada (2000).

340,000 people enrolled in the series when it began (Mack 2010, 120).

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Title: Crafting the Modern Word: Writing, Publishing, and Modernity in the Print Culture of Prewar Japan
Author: Andrew T. Kamei-Dyche
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Comparative Print Culture
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-36890-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-36891-3

Copyright Year: 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36891-3_10

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