A Collection of Korekushon

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artists' books, これくしょん, イラスト, 版画, editorials, 雑誌, 豆本, 趣味本, Gohachi, ＰＲ誌, Japan, japanese artists, Japanese magazines, limited editions, mingei, PR-shi, used bookstores, 古書, 吾八, 山内神斧, 山内金三郎, 挿絵, 民芸, 今村秀太郎

For libraries large and small, one of the most routinely challenging tasks is dealing with resources that can seem prosaic or even occasionally expendable: periodicals. For some of us, the word alone conjures up the image of unvisited library spaces desperate to be populated with “real books”; for others among us, it serves as shorthand for a cumbersome search and retrieval process followed by laborious photocopying that we’d rather someone else do for us. On the backend of the library, periodicals prevent a whole different series of frustrations: title changes, hiccups in numbering schemes and publication frequencies, and numerous special issues and supplements that defy tidy organization. But these difficulties can also serve as a fascinating view into the histories of publishers, and of the intellectual and economic trends that shaped their publications.

Select issues of the first three runs of Korekushon, housed in official portfolios.

Korekushon これくしょん (from the English word collection), the little journal that could, serves as both a worthy exemplar of how the histories of publishers are encoded in their products, as well as a practical primer in the complex interrelationships among periodicals and their makers. Spanning some 66 years and four separate attempts to reboot the title, the history of Korekushon is also the story of its editors, Yamanouchi Kinzaburō 山内金三郎 (1886-1966) and Imamura Hidetarō 今村秀太郎 (1907-1994), and their half-century quest to connect art lovers with objects of beauty and the exquisite artists’ books that they helped produce.

The Birth of the Gohachi Brand: 1911-1937

The son of Osaka lumber dealer Yamanouchi Nakagobē 山内中五兵衛, Kinzaburō’s own interest in wood products veered towards the art objects that could be created from it. In 1910, at the age of 24, Kinzaburō graduated from the now-defunct Tokyo Fine Arts School 東京美術学校 (the current Department of Fine Arts of Tokyo University of the Arts), and in the following year, he established the art shop Gohachi 吾八, named in honor of his paternal grandfather. Gohachi dealt in all sorts of Japanese folk arts such as ōtsu-e folk illustration and traditional toys like kokeshi dolls こけし. In 1912, Kinzaburō turned his hand to publishing with the release of Ōtsu-e-shū 大津絵集, a compilation of ōtsu-e owned by numerous art lovers. Just two years later, under his artist’s moniker “Yamanouchi Shinpu” 山内神斧, Kinzaburō released what would become the first installment in a multivolume artist’s book, Jūjū 寿々(from the French word jou-jou, “toy”), a lovely compendium of illustrations of traditional toys from around the world.

By 1919, Kinzaburō had closed up Gohachi and began freelancing as an illustrator for the monthly women’s magazine Shufu no tomo 主婦の友, until eventually gaining full-time employment as a chief editor there. In 1936, at the age of 50, Kinzaburō retired from the company; in April of the following year, with the help of Shufu no tomo junior editor Imamura Hidetarō, he re-opened Gohachi in Ginza, Tokyo. To commemorate this occasion they launched the first issue of their PR-shi PR誌 (“house organ”) Korekushon with Kinzaburō as editor-in-chief.

The “Pre-War” Korekushon: 1937-1944

Known among collectors as the senzen-ban 戦前版 or “pre-war” edition, the first run of Korekushon lasted for 64 numbers, with the inaugural issue (no. 1, April 1937) coinciding with the opening of Gohachi.

Two spreads from “paid edition” of the pre-war Korekushon, no. 18 (Sept. 1938). Top: Drawings of German folk toys from Saxony; Bottom: Playing card theme bookplate sample insert next to first page of glossy “advertising edition”.

Korekushon rode the wave of limited edition books (genteiban 限定版) and miniature books (mame-hon 豆本, literally “bean books”) that had begun to wash over Japan in the 1930s, just as the fervor for enpon 円本—the cheaply priced 1-yen books that drove the market of multivolume sets like zenshū 全集 (“complete works”)—began to ebb. In contrast to the mass-produced “collect ’em all” visual uniformity of enpon series, the special edition books of the 1930s encouraged collectibility by limiting their numbers. This first iteration of Korekushon not only advertised such books (some produced in-house at Gohachi), but also served as a limited edition collectible itself. Nominally marked as “not for sale” (hibahin 非売品), issues of Korekushon were initially printed in runs of 500 copies, and offered for sale in subscriptions of 5 issues for 50 sen (equal to half a yen).

Despite these relatively large production numbers, the 1937 Korekushon has a charming handcrafted feel to it. The covers and select pages are printed on Japanese paper (washi) and are untrimmed with a deckle edge. These washi pages feature hand-pasted inserts of full-color paper samples and unsigned woodcut prints of what was likely Kinzaburō’s own art. Interleaved with these are glossy black-and-white pages containing photographs of other artworks for sale. By Korekushon no. 16, Gohachi had implemented a new strategy: the glossy portions would serve as a self-contained catalog and be offered for free as the “advertising edition” (senden-ban 宣傳版); for a semiannual 1.5 yen subscription, however, readers could purchase six issues of the “paid edition (yūryō-ban 有料版), limited to 200 copies. These “paid editions” contained the entire glossy “advertising editions,” stapled into deluxe printed washi pages replete with content: original art by people like literatus Mushanokōji Saneatsu 武者小路實篤 (1885-1976); articles and serialized content like Kawaguchi Eizō’s 川口栄三 seventy-page bibliography on toys and figurines, Gangu ningyō bunken no shiori 玩具人形文献の栞 (included in no. 45-53); hand-inserted samples of the stationery and bookplates that Gohachi offered for sale; and, of course, the monthly editorial corner that kept fans and customers up to date on shop happenings.

Illustrations of folk dolls from Korekushon (1937)’s “paid edition”. Right: Stuffed “older sister” dolls ane-sama ningyō 姉様人形 from Miyake Island (no. 34, Jan. 1940); Left: Korean female doll kaksi 閣氏 or 각시 (no. 35, Feb. 1940)

After five years of publication, Korekushon no. 64 (June 1943) was announced as the final issue, citing difficulties with the printers in a time when paper was seen as a wartime necessity and not a hobbyist’s frivolity. Not to be defeated, however, Gohachi’s final editorial announced a plan for a smaller, ostensibly less luxurious 4-8 page booklet to be distributed for free. Gohachi’s noble intentions notwithstanding, this short-lived sequel Gohachi dayori 吾八信り is no less attractive than its predecessor, but after a delayed no. 2 (December 1943), subscribers eager to read a third installment were instead greeted with a joint letter from Kinzaburō and Hidetarō, dated April 1944, announcing both the dissolution of Gohachi and a full refund on subscription fees—paid in the form of postage stamps.

Korekushon Goes Osaka: 1947-1955

Although Gohachi was the brainchild and brand of Kinzaburō, it was Hidetarō who took care of the store’s day-to-day operations. By Korekushon no. 5, Hidetarō was listed as the representative editor and publisher in the colophon. In actuality, just months after founding Gohachi, Kinzaburō was already living a bimetropolitan life, serving as the silent partner of Gohachi in Tokyo but spending most of his time in hometown of Osaka, where he dealt art objects in Hankyu Department Store 阪急百貨店. Ever the publisher, Kinzaburō served as editor of Hankyu’s newly-launched art-themed PR-shi Hankyū bijutsu 阪急美術 (later spelled 汎究美術), a little magazine that would eventually evolve into the commercially produced Nihon bijutsu kōgei 日本美術工芸 and cease in 1997 after a whopping 700 issues.

Back in Tokyo, the editorial column of Korekushon no. 47 (April 1941) announced that a new “Gohachi” was being planned as part of Hankyu Department Store. This store would instead launch under a new brand, Umeda Shobō 梅田書房 (“Umeda Booksellers”), and it would continue operations throughout the war, even as Gohachi went under in 1944. Although Kinzaburō’s flagship store had shuttered, his commitment to publishing continued. In February of 1947, taking advantage of a new post-war boom in the used book market, Kinzaburō rebooted Korekushon as the catalog of Umeda Shobō.

Kinzaburō’s flair for design is on full display in this 1947 edition of Korekushon. Almost every number of Umeda Shobō’s Korekushon is hand-written and mimeographed, with a zine-like feel absent from its 1937 predecessor. Only one issue is in typeset: no. 93 (August 1955), the auction catalog of Hankyu’s 18th Used Book Fair. An editorial in the following issue, no. 94 (October 1955), announced a glorious return to handwritten mimeography, due to vocal reader feedback.

Front and back covers of Korekushon (1947). Top: spread of no. 8 (Sept. 1947); Bottom: kokeshi dolls on no. 12 (Jan. 1948).

Despite the differences in textual flavor, and a stock list more naturally geared toward books than objets d’art, the content is a natural progression of the 1937 Korekushon, with preoccupations on folk craft (mingei 民芸) at the forefront. Besides features like the colorfully illustrated, 20-installment column “Meika junrai” 名菓巡礼 (“A Pilgrimage of Notable Confections”), the work of artists like of artists like illustrator Kawakami Sumio 川上澄生 (1895-1972) and textile designer Serizawa Keisuke 芹沢銈介 (1895-1984) begin to feature prominently in editorials and advertisements.

It’s difficult to say what inspired Korekushon to once again stop publishing: The Penn Libraries does not own the final issue, no. 102 (February 1957), so there is no farewell missive to consult. But this wasn’t the last that people would see of Korekushon.

Japanese Lucky Almanacs and Their Knockoffs

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divination, ephemera, 高島嘉右衛門, 高島易断, 高島暦, fortune-telling, I Ching, Japan, Japanese almanacs, Japanese astrology, Japanese books, Japanese calendars, Kaemon Takeshima, knockoffs, lucky almanacs, lucky calendars, Nine Star Ki, Rev. Shojo Honda Collection, Takashima Kaemon, 占い, 暦, 本田正静, 九星気学

Earlier this year, the Penn Libraries began accessioning the collection of the late Reverend Shojo Honda (1929-2015), generously donated to the University of Pennsylvania by his son Tamon Honda. Rev. Honda’s collection is a mix of Japanese and English publications focusing largely on Shin Buddhism, but it also covers topics as diverse as Sanskrit language study, Japanese flower arrangement (ikebana), the works of author Shiba Ryōtarō, and local histories of Takatsuki, Osaka—the city in which Rev. Honda spent part of his youth. Many of these books are owned by no other library in the world. Some, like his mimeographed adaptations of short stories by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Ogawa Mimei, are not just unique bibliographic treasures, but also a direct window into Rev. Honda’s life and interests. And some of the items from the Reverend’s library were utterly unanticipated.

Covers and sample spreads from Rev. Honda’s lucky almanacs, opened up to his Nine Star Ki profile, “Eight White Soil Star”.

Among these are two fortune-telling almanacs (koyomi 暦), dating from 1995 and 2011 respectively. These almanacs are filled with precise and elaborate octagonal diagrams outlining the lucky and unlucky directions of the compass rose according to one’s “Nine Star Ki” profile—something like a zodiac sign determined by the year of one’s birth—and daily calendars listing the luck predictions for those zodiac signs. The earlier work Heisei 7-nen Takashima-reki 平成七高島暦 [“1995 Takashima almanac”] has a quasi-religious copyright holder (or zōhan 蔵版) declared on the cover: Shinseikan 神正館, perhaps anglicizable as “The Hall of Divine Righteousness”. The latter Heisei 23-nen unseireki 平成二十三年運勢暦, or 2011 Calendar of Good Fortune, on first glance appears to be the work of a more academic institution, Kōzan Rekishokan 黄山歴書館, or the “Huangshan Historical Library”. The names of their editorial bodies are also similar, invoking the family name Takashima. Despite their visual similarity, the economic forces behind the books appear vastly different. The 1995 Takashima-reki is a 32-page book that looks more like a giveaway than anything else; the 2011 Unseireki is an unmistakably commercial publication with a product code and a price of ¥100 published by Daiso, a well-known chain of 100-yen shops.

As with our recent collection of Japanese cruise books, we knew there was a hidden history here, and we immediately set out to acquire more exemplars of these fortune-telling almanacs: 33 in total. Curiously, none of these were published for years earlier than 1946, the first calendar year after Imperial Japan’s surrender to the Allies of World War II. But the history of almanacs in Japan dates back centuries (if not quite millennia).

Along with the increasing spread of print culture in the Edo period (1600-1868), so grew the means to publish calendars of practical information like the months and tides, and of less practical information like which days were lucky for what events. Writing about the illustrated ukiyoe almanacs (egoyomi 絵暦) of the Edo period in a 1929 issue of the Apollo, William H. Edmunds provides the following eurocentric takedown of their content:

[…] how little importance was time in the olden days of Japan. Second or minutes were unknown, […] days pass, but there were no weeks, and the months were just moons, numbered and named after the zodiacal signs, or by fanciful names indicative of a seasonal or festive observance […]. Years were not counted in continuous sequence, but according to certain nengō, or year names, appointed by the Emperors arbitrarily, sometimes to commemorate an auspicious occasion or to ward off some malign influence; hence none could answer off-hand the number of years that had intervened between one period and another.

Assuming the purpose of almanacs is simply to provide the mathematical precision required to calculate dates, then Edmunds is correct in his assessment. But the “fanciful names” and “seasonal observances” are essential to Japanese calendars and their various overlapping customs and superstitions. In a far less judgmental tone, Edmunds notes that official almanacs (honreki 本暦) were published in Ise, the seat of one of Japan’s most important Shinto shrines. Outside of the Ise region, specially licensed printers allowed to produce and distribute these products throughout the country. These honreki, however, did not suit everyone’s purposes. For one, they required a level of literacy not widespread. Secondly, they didn’t include information necessary for certain types of divination necessary for folk customs.

Thus underground presses secretly publishing obakegoyomi お化け暦, or “ghost almanacs” also operated. Some of these ghost almanacs were purely visual for the illiterate, like egoyomi featuring illustrations by the likes of artist Suzuki Harunobu 鈴木春信 (1725?-1770). While Harunobu seems to taken advantage of a period in which publishers of ghost almanacs were tolerated, by the early years of the Meiji period (the mid-1870s), the Japanese government had renewed their commitment to a standardized almanac, this time based on the solar calendar. In eliminating the lunar calendar upon which so much of farm policy and folk custom relied, the Meiji government’s monopoly on calendar production once again invoked the specter of ghost almanacs. Titles like Nōka benran 農家便覧 [“The Farmer’s Handbook”] (1894) bundled in Nine Star Ki and lucky day divination. Publishers like Fukunaga Kahē 福永嘉兵衛—a name as fictitious as it is auspicious—began haunting the world of underground publishing.[1]

 

Six postwar lucky almanac titles published from 1946 through 1962. Five different publishers are represented.

The official adoption of the solar calendar was just one of many steps Japan took to place itself on equal footing with the industrializing West. But modernization didn’t reject the custom and superstition wholesale. In fact, some profited immensely from it. Enter Takashima Kaemon 高島嘉右衛門 (1832-1914), an entrepreneur who would effectively become a patron saint of fortune-telling. Takashima’s lifetime interest in fortune-telling was centered largely around the I Ching, or Book of Changes, and the interpretation of its 64 hexagrams. Takashima profited from his successful predictions, investing heavily in timber before the great earthquake of Ansei 2 [1855]. His fortunes didn’t last long, as heavy debts and his attempts to overcome them through illegal dealings with foreigners landed Takashima in prison for seven years. During his imprisonment, he redoubled his commitment to studying the I Ching. After his release from prison, Takashima’s fortunes once again grew, and he found himself financially supporting the ambitions of men in high places like Itō Hirobumi, a statesman who would go on to become Prime Minister.

Financial support wasn’t Takashima’s only goal. In Meiji 19 [1886] he had self-published a ten-volume edition of his own interpretation on the I Ching called Takashima ekidan 高島易断 [“Takashima’s Judgements on the Book of Changes”]. Several revised editions followed. An English translation, The Takashima ekidan, was published in 1893. The book was clearly a hit, and people of influence sought advice from Japan’s preeminent fortune-teller, who divined everything from cholera outbreaks to colonial upheaval through I Ching cleromancy. In his dual position as industrialist and soothsayer, Takashima never profited directly by selling his fortunes as a trade. His name has become associated with the playful aphorism Uranai wa uranai 占いは売らない: “Fortune-telling is not for sale”.

Japanese Naval Cruise Books and the Renshū Kantai

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commemorative publications, cruise books, cruisebooks, 練習艦隊, Japan, Japanese books, Japanese in Philadelphia, Japanese-Americans, Kaigun, memorabilia, Navy, Pacific War, Rafu Shinpo, Renshū Kantai, scrapbooks, Training Fleet, Training Squadron, World War, 写真集, 写真帳, 帝国練習艦隊渡米資料, 海軍

Some of the Penn Libraries’ unique Japanese holdings, like our set of Okinawan Bibles or our collection of early 20th century pulp historical fiction, are legacy items donated decades ago and just recently rediscovered. Others, like the corporate history resource Mieki (a magazine dedicated to a brand of industrial soy sauce additive), have been purchased specifically for our community of researchers. But rarely do we have the opportunity to work directly with those researchers to acquire bibliographic treasures that document Japanese history.

“Scrap book: Teikoku Renshū Kantai Shōwa 11-nen Tobei Shiryō”　帝国練習艦隊昭和十一年渡米資料 (“Resources from the Imperial Training Fleet’s Trip to the Americas, 1936”)

In 2015, Penn Ph.D. candidate Robert Hegwood, a scholar of Japanese/American cultural relations in the mid-20th century, purchased a rather innocuous looking “Scrap Book” at a used book store during a stay in Tokyo. Inside this commercially-produced scrapbook is a collection of postcards, welcome booklets, travel ephemera, and training documents collected by an unidentified Japanese sailor of the Renshū Kantai 練習艦隊, the Japanese Imperial Navy’s Training Fleet, during a 1936 voyage to the United States. From 1903 to 1940, the Renshū Kantai took such training deployment cruises almost every year, with graduates of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy, the Naval Engineering Academy, and the Naval Paymasters Academy spending several months traveling around the Pacific Ocean, occasionally venturing as far as the Mediterranean Sea or the East Coast of the United States. The 1936 cruise (lasting from June 9 to November 3) saw Vice-Admiral Zengo Yoshida commanding the ships Yakumo and Iwate as they sailed across the Pacific Ocean from Yokosuka to Seattle, down along the West Coast and up through the Panama Canal as far as New York City.

Unfolding “Scrap book: Teikoku Renshū Kantai Shōwa 11-nen Tobei Shiryō”. Photography and animation courtesy of Chris Lippa.

The scrapbook is a fascinating specimen of early 20th century history and militarism, and of cultural relations between Japanese living in the United States and those in Japan. We just had to find more to contextualize this one-of-a-kind item. After a targeted shopping spree on Nihon no Furuhon’ya, one of the best places to find used and rare Japanese books, we found ourselves in possession of 21 new titles relating to the Renshū Kantai. Most of these are well-preserved “cruise books,” defined in the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials as “pictorial publications that document a voyage of a particular ship and are distributed to the ship’s crew.” The same record includes a source note that they are “usually amateur in nature.”

Selected pages from USS Marcus Island (CVE 77) World War II Cruise Book, 1944-45, hosted at navysite.de.

This certainly seems true of cruise books produced by ships of US Navy. Thoralf Doehring’s US Navy Cruise Books, a massive digital trove of over 900 US Navy cruise books, asserts that “[t]his tradition dates back to the late 1800s” and that “10,000 different US Navy cruise books have been published.” The oldest item on Doehring’s site is the cruise book of the USS Marcus Island from 1944-1945—right in the thick of World War II—which nevertheless aims not to “cramp anyone’s style when telling ‘sea stories.’” The book is indeed charmingly amateurish and light-hearted, with illustrations and photo layouts not unlike those of a student-produced yearbook.

But the cruise books of the Renshū Kantai are much more official in tone, featuring celebratory calligraphy commissioned for the publication, staid portraits of commanding officers, and decorated gilt edges. The colophons of these books generally lack formal publishing statements in favor of printing statements, a technique common in Japanese self-published works. Many declare themselves hibaihin 非売品—“goods not for sale”. It’s unclear how these books were financed and distributed, but perhaps like shashi, Japanese corporate history books, they were part of the fleet’s budget and even purchased by the sailors themselves as souvenirs.

Cruise books like the 1936 edition are certainly detailed, official-enough records of the Renshū Kantai’s annual itineraries, highlighting milestone events at different ports-of-call with photographs of ceremonies and reprints of speeches of dignitaries. The 1936 book even shows some photographs of the ship’s physician in action, and of a line-crossing ceremony held at the Antimeridian. But these books don’t show the full scope of life on on the sea for newly-minted Japanese Naval cadets. They don’t reprint, for example, selections from “ship newspapers” like the Yakumo Shinbun, an internal newsletter produced in new editions each time a ship was deployed.[1]  They also don’t attempt to capture the experience of being a tourist abroad.

Selected pages from cruise book Shōwa Jūichinendo Renshū Kantai Junkō Kinen (1937). Note the appearances of West Point and Philadelphia’s Independence Hall as tourist destinations during the fleet’s stopover at New York in late summer, 1936.

The 1936 scrapbook, on the other hand, is a snapshot of what might be a typical sailor’s experience as told through ephemera. Picture postcards of scenic and historic sites are interspersed with commercial guidebooks and even mimeographed documents to teach sailors about Cuban culture. Of particular note, are the Japanese-language welcome materials produced by local Japanese associations in the US to celebrate the arrival of the fleet, like Renshū Kantai Kangei Seito Sakubunshū 練習艦隊歡迎生徒作文集—collected student compositions of the Tacoma, Washington Japanese Language School—or Teikoku Renshū Kantai Kangei Kinen 帝国練習艦隊歓迎紀念—a guide to the history of Los Angeles and a directory of Japanese citizens living there.[2]  The bilingual Rafu Shimpo: L.A. Japanese Daily News 羅府新報, released a commemorative number welcoming the Renshū Kantai, also revealing some of the cultural misunderstandings their arrival created. Prominently featured on page one of the July 15, 1936 issue is a brief article about how American women invited to tour the Yakumo and Iwate had mistaken the uniformed sailors as “elevator boys, chauffeurs, and houseboys,” even trying to offer the sailors cash tips.[3]

For many of these Japanese living in the United States, the chance to mingle with compatriots from abroad would be irresistible, as the Immigration Act of 1924 had prohibited Japanese immigration to the US. Barred from citizenship because of their race and separated from their homeland by the immensity of the Pacific Ocean, local Japanese gave the best welcome they could to the men of the Renshū Kantai. These enclaves of the Japanese in the US, in fact, almost appear as quasi-colonies in the Renshū Kantai’s cruise books. Los Angeles is often represented in Chinese characters as “Rafu” 羅府, and San Francisco as “Sōkō” 桑港, somewhat akin to how the Japanese Empire had redubbed Seoul, Korea as “Keijō” 京城.

“Welcome Midshipmen of the Japanese Training Squadron”. Headline from the Californian newspaper Rafu Shimpo, July 15, 1936. Image courtesy of Robert Hegwood; original material from the Kasai Family Papers held at UCLA Library.

These fledgling cultural colonies were soon to be abandoned by their empire. The year 1936 would be the last visit of the Renshū Kantai to the continental United States, though the Iwate and Yakumo would return to the pre-statehood Hawaiian Islands in late 1939 in the fleet’s penultimate cruise. The final voyage of the fleet occurred between August 7 and September 28 of 1940, concluding just one day after the Tripartite Pact was signed by Germany, Italy, and Japan. With the Axis now fully tilted against the Allies, there was no time for training cruises or tourist scrapbooking for Japan’s naval forces.

Meanwhile, many of the Japanese who had so warmly welcomed their compatriots in previous decades would soon become prisoners of war, stripped of their property and placed in internment camps—citizens of nowhere. While the imprisonment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans is a dark and shameful chapter in American history, those interned were far from broken. They even compiled scrapbooks of their own experiences, like the Kooskia Internment Camp Scrapbook held at the University of Idaho Library.

After Japan’s defeat at the end of the Pacific War, the Navy and its Training Fleet were officially abolished, with Japan renouncing “war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes” in Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution. This did not, however, prohibit the creation of a well-trained military force for defense purposes, and in 1954 the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, or Kaijō Jieitai 海上自衛隊, was formally established. This new not-quite-Navy has its own “Renshū Kantai,” which as of this blog post’s publication is on its 60th voyage. Their 20th anniversary publication, Enkō Nijūnenshi 遠航二十年史 (“Twenty Years of Voyages”), makes no reference to their imperial predecessor, rewriting the history of Japan’s military presence on the seas as one of a peacekeeping force. The Penn Libraries, however, will continue to expand this unique collection, and make the history of the Renshū Kantai accessible for generations to come.

Mieki and Japanese Corporate Magazines (PR-shi)

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Ajinomoto, 社史, 雑誌, house organs, ＰＲ誌, Japanese magazines, Mieki, PR-shi, shashi, 味の素, 味液

While many among us have transitioned to reading news and feature articles online, the print magazine persists. As libraries too have exchanged print journal subscriptions for electronic, we nevertheless remain committed to collecting a number of magazines and other periodicals in print. This is especially true when it comes to serial items published in Japan, a country slow to abandon print for digital options. As we both maintain and expand our print acquisitions, we find ourselves looking into the past, searching for and acquiring back issues for numerous titles. It is this sense of completism that had led us to collect and to document near-obsessively such rarities as almost every single issue of the long-running men’s lifestyle magazine Brutus (1980-present), the entire run of Japanese hanga art periodical 21 Prints (1990-2012), and today’s unique title, Mieki 味液 (1956-1978), a magazine published by food and chemical corporation Ajinomoto, and dedicated almost entirely to the eponymous Mieki (“flavor liquid”) a hydrolyzed vegetable protein and industrial soy sauce additive.

(top) Ajinomoto PR-shi Mieki in original string-bound file; (bottom) Mieki no. 1, no. 30, and contemporary information booklet included in Penn’s acquisition.

Mieki is an exemplar of a two long-lived genres of Japanese periodicals, both of which can be essential elements of the growing discipline of the study of shashi, or Japanese company histories: shanaihō (internally aimed company periodicals) and PR-shi (externally aimed “public relations magazines”). These publication types are ubiquitous, hazily defined, and share a significant overlap, but they not too difficult to identify once you’ve got one in front of you. If you’ve ever thumbed through an issue of American Airlines’ American Way during a flight, or through a copy of Red Bull’s The Red Bulletin at your gym, you’ve had your hands on a PR-shi. Two salient features of PR-shi can be observed:

1. They are more interested in creating positive awareness of corporate brand than in direct advertising (and as such, feature editorial content not typically present in catalogs or circulars).
2. They are generally issued outside of traditional magazine distribution models, often for free or for a nominal price (the latter option often employed as a loophole to take advantage of discounted mailing rates).

Finding the progenitor of Mieki and other PR-shi in Japan is no easy task, and numerous candidates have been identified, such as the pharmacy-sponsored digest of pharmaceutical news Hōtan Zasshi 芳譚雑誌 (1878-1884), Maruzen Publishing Company’s Gakutō 學鐙 (begun in 1897 under the title Manabi no Tomoshibi 學の燈, and still in publication today), and Hanagoromo 花衣, begun in 1899 as both a seasonal catalogue of the Mitsui Draper’s Shop (now the international department store chain Mitsukoshi) and a literary magazine featuring Meiji literati like Ozaki Kōyō and Izumi Kyōka penning stories whose content resonated with the goods offered for sale. Hanagoromo would give rise to a series of Mitsui/Mitsukoshi PR-shi, including the monthly Jikō 時好 (1904-1908), which notably featured author Mori Ōgai and which claimed to have had a circulation of 16,000 copies. Not to be outdone, competing dry-goods seller Shirokiya Gofukuten released their own series of PR-shi like Katei no Shirube 家庭のしるべ (1904-1905), which serialized Russo-Japanese War tales, and its followup Ryūkō 流行 (1906-1918), which shifted focus from the domestic onto the stylish, and featured prominent authors like Yamada Bimyō and Shimazaki Tōson.

Front and back covers of 1982 reproductions of the first issues of two of Japan’s oldest PR-shi, Hōtan Zasshi (left) Gakutō (right). Reproduced in Fukkoku Nihon no Zasshi.

Just as Shirokiya was retiring Ryūkō to launch its successor title The Shiroki Times, so were Americans coming to grips with their own PR-shi crisis. Here in the United States, so called “house organs” had enjoyed their own history, largely as advertising arms of publishers to increase book sales. Robert E. Ramsay notes “that is how such magazines as Harper’s, Collier’s, Scribner’s, and others started.” More ecumenical histories of American house organs will note, as George Dallas Newton does, “the patent medicine almanac[s] […] between 1830 and 1870,” and earlier, “the flourishing almanacs of the makers of sarsaparilla and stomach bitters.” Looking even further back, neither Newton nor Ramsay hesitate to suggest that Ben Franklin’s famous Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732-1758) was a house organ for Franklin’s printing office here in Philadelphia. But in October 1918, with a wartime need to reduce paper consumption, the United States War Industries Board drew a firm line between periodicals approved for paper use, and for house organs and other “periodicals that are not entitled to, or do not enjoy, second class mailing privileges.” By the second World War, however, house organs seemed to boom, with the 1944 Printers’ Ink Directory of House Organs listing more than 5,100 titles, some of which were even house organs about creating other house organs.

Advertisements from the 1944 Printers’ Ink Directory of House Organs.

World War II was less kind to Japanese house organs (and to magazines in general), with resource rationing and destructive air raids disrupting the market. It wasn’t until the 1950s that Japan’s PR-shi industry would boom again with Japan’s “economic miracle”—the period of rapid economic growth between 1955 and 1961. So flourished titles aimed to look like a hybrid of popular magazines and art magazines, like the jazz-martini-age-inspired Yōshu Tengoku 洋酒天国 issued by Suntory Whiskey (1956-1964), helmed for the first 30 issues by author Kaikō Takeshi, who imbued it with a palpably Playboy aesthetic. It is a stark contrast to Mieki, launched in the same year. The disparate content of these magazines reflects not only their audiences but their methods of distribution. Yōshu Tengoku was only available at Suntory-affiliated bars, and its contents were shaped around the interests of customers: alcohol, nude women, and gambling. Repeat customers became collectors; collecting encouraged repeat business. Mieki, meanwhile, is an admixture of technical documentation, interviews, and product history. Its role in Ajinomoto’s business strategy is less clear, but the technical-yet-general nature of contents suggest that the magazine was partially aimed at in-house consumption as a shanaihō as well as semi-external PR-shi sent to wholesalers and dealers of Ajinomoto products. Still other titles like Exxon’s art-heavy Energy (1964-1974) were sent directly by its editors to “the ten thousand opinion leaders,” a mix of authors, cultural figures, and tastemakers whose addresses were gleaned from public directories.

Given these nontraditional channels, it isn’t difficult to imagine why many PR-shi are difficult to locate today. Part ephemera and part grey literature, these materials resist traditional collection strategies. No other library seems to own Mieki, and Penn could only obtain numbers 1-30 of the magazine (except for number 18). Even Ajinomoto itself doesn’t seem to own the magazine, or at least a complete run of it, as they were unable to tell me what number the final issue was. On the other hand, some PR-shi practically throw themselves at libraries. Yasuko Isono’s 1963 article describes a situation in which publishers’ PR-shi and dealers’ catalogs arrived at libraries in batches, eventually accumulating into piles destined to be thrown into the trash.

Publisher PR-shi from Japan: (top) B5-sized PR-shi; (bottom) smaller PR-shi distributed within books.

The situation is largely the same at Penn, even over 50 years later. Monthly advertising bundles from our chief vendor of Japanese books are full of publishers’ PR-shi, which have historically carried the literary flavor established by their late 1800s forebears. Authors like Mishima Yukio and Enchi Fumiko, for instance, had appeared in publisher Shinchōsha’s Nami 波, founded in 1967 and still in print today. Many of these generally monthly titles are published in B5 size format, bearing a superficial resemblance to typical Japanese academic journals. But unlike those journals, PR-shi generally eschew scholarly articles for breezier features, and embrace serially published articles written by single authors as well as “relay articles,” in which a serial column passes the baton (so to speak) to a new author each issue. Some of these serial articles are eventually collected and published as single books.

It is unclear how other readers in Japan might obtain these publisher PR-shi, though some like Yoshikawa Kōbunkan’s Hongō 本郷 (1995-present) or Minerva Shobō’s Kiwameru 究 (2011-present) offer cheap annual subscriptions. Still others are dependent on physical books as their mechanism of distribution: Readers wanting to collect Fujiwara Shoten’s Ki 機 (1990-present) or Nihon Keizai Hyōronsha’s Hyōron 評論 (1976-present) must commit themselves to buying titles published monthly by those publishers, as the issues can only be found tucked within the pages of new books along with advertising circulars. These latter types of PR-shi overlap significantly in function and purpose with another uniquely Japanese periodical genre, geppō 月報, journal‐like pamphlets issued within monographic sets. Like geppō, they are easily mistaken for advertisements and often discarded by libraries, whether by accident or design.

Just as the global destruction of the 20th century World Wars hit PR-shi on both sides of the Pacific hard, so has the World Wide Web done significant damage to the house organ industry. Fumiko Sakuma narrates the decline in PR-shi since 2008 and into late 2013 concurrent with a growth in web-delivered content, but digital options are not perfect substitutes of published issues, nor do they have the trusted physicality of print magazines. That physicality, on the other hand, may be PR-shi’s greatest undoing, since corporate magazines less fortunate than Mieki may end up lost to history forever. While Penn cannot hope to collect every print title that comes our way, we can do our part to save unique titles for future scholars.

A “Loochooan” New Testament

Tags

ベッテルハイム, ルカによる福音書, B. J. Bettelheim, Bernard Jean Bettelheim, Bettelheim, Bible, Christianity, East Asia, Edo period, 路加傳福音書, Gospel of Luke, Gospels, Japan, Japanese books, Okinawa, Ryukyu, translations, 伯徳令

Okinawa conjures up many images for people in the 21st century. To mainland Japanese, it might be an exotic vacation destination in their own backyard, a place to feel both at home and abroad at the same time. For some Americans, who have our own colonized Pacific paradise in Hawaiʻi, it is a snapshot of patriotic WWII bravery. A truer picture of the island might lie somewhere in between these two idylls, as Okinawa Prefecture remains a tourist destination still marked by significant American military presence. An image rarely associated with the seat of the former Ryukyu Kingdom, however, is Christianity. However, a discovery in Penn’s special collections opens up a fascinating window into this aspect of Okinawan history.

As readers of this blog may remember, The Penn Libraries’ Japanese Studies unit has enjoyed rediscovering unique snapshots of Japanese bibliographic history. But this most recent find came from an unexpected place: Penn’s Evans Bible Collection. Within this collection are five books of the New Testament from the 1850s, previously cataloged with brief titles like “Luke Loochooan” and even more confusingly, “Japanese Romans.” Seen together, these five items reveal trends in 19th century imperialism and missionary culture, and help to tell the story of one cantankerous evangelist, Bernard Jean Bettelheim (1811-1870).

Born into a Jewish family in Hungary, Bettelheim traveled the Mediterranean, where he encountered, and soon converted to, Christianity. He made his way to London, where he became a British national. In his youth, he was an accomplished student with a talent for linguistics and a bent for medicine. Both of these skills, along with his zeal for Christianity, would position Bettelheim to be an ideal candidate as the first Protestant missionary to “Loochoo” (Ryukyu), sponsored by Herbert John Clifford’s Loochoo Naval Mission.

“Parting Scene at Loo Choo” from Hall’s account.

Along with his wife Elizabeth Mary (neé Barwick, d. 1872) and daughter Victoria Rose—and later a son, Bernard James Gutzlaff (1845-1910), born along the voyage and named after Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff (1803-1851)—Bettelheim landed in 1846 at Hong Kong, which had recently been annexed by the British. Bettelheim used his time in Hong Kong to study Mandarin Chinese as well a bit of the “Loochooan” language and culture, using knowledge compiled by Clifford during his earlier expedition to East Asia in the 1820s with Basil Hall [1].

In the 1840s, the Ryukyu Kingdom was already under the influence of Japan, itself still operating largely under the sakoku policy of isolationism. And while two French Catholic missionaries had already managed to find their way onto Okinawa, they were heavily monitored and guarded. Despite the fact that Ryukyuans were not eager to receive foreign visitors, Bettelheim was not to be dissuaded. Bribing some British crewmen to help ply Ryukyuan sailors with alcohol, Bettelheim smuggled his family and their possessions onto boats heading for the island. While the scheme was uncovered during the voyage to the city of Naha, it was too late to turn back. Taking pity on the Bettelheims (who now had an infant to care for), priests of the nearby Gokoku-ji allowed the stranded family to stay in their temple overnight. The next morning found the Bettelheims adamant about remaining there, and this small family (along with third newborn daughter, Lucy Lewchew Bettelheim, named after the islands) would occupy the temple for the next several years.

This first night would mark the first of numerous clashes between Bettelheim and the Ryukyuans. The sakoku policy enforced by mainland Japanese agents prevented local markets from selling anything to the Bettelheims. Unable to purchase goods, the Bettelheims survived on charity and by taking what they pleased (or leaving a token payment behind) from abandoned stalls—the mere sight of his family would cause some sellers to run away. Further, despite local opposition to Christianity (made illegal and punishable by death in Japan), Bettelheim refused to cease spreading the word of God, employing such stratagems as bribing locals to read some of his roughly “1,200 Tracts in Chinese and English,” and even breaking into homes. In his diary, Bettelheim writes:

To the rolls of tracts which I colported through the streets I added a good bagful of cakes… Those who refused a tract were frequently less rigorous toward my cakes… Even after […] nobody cared for either my tracts, or my bag, or my cakes […] nothing remained but boldly to venture into people’s houses […] I was little moved with the cries of the women of frightened at the screams of the children, but seated myself in the first room I could get access to.

More cautious locals barred their doors to the foreign invader, but Bettelheim “found [his] way in through the deep gaps in dilapidated back walls.” In an amazing bit of self-centered cognitive dissonance, Bettelheim considered his breaking and entering as a service to homeowners for exposing weak points in their homes, and to local masons for giving them employment.

Bettelheim’s unpleasant encounters with the Naha locals caused the Ryukyuan officials at the capital Shuri to keep close watch on Bettelheim, employing guards to be stationed around Gokoku-ji and to accompany Bettelheim and family on their travels. Nevertheless, Bettelheim turned this to his advantage, and used his forced government sponsorship as an opportunity to improve his fluency in Chinese, Japanese, and Ryukyuan. Besides compiling grammars and dictionaries of the language, Bettelheim co-opted his Chinese classics tutors into helping him translate portions of the New Testament into the local language. While some reports of Bettelheim’s activities claim that he had translated the whole of the New Testament, there is little evidence that he ever got beyond the sixth book, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Manuscript versions of his translations of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark have since been reprinted in Japan, but Bettelheim only lived to see five editions of his translations reach publication.

Title page of Bettelheim’s Gospel of Luke (1855).

By 1855, Bettelheim and his family had left their post at Naha, having been transported back to China under the auspices of the Matthew Perry Expedition, to which Bettelheim had served as both helper and general nuisance. In that year, the crumbling Loochoo Naval Mission paid for the printing of Bettelheim’s translations of the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of John, the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul’s Epistle to the Romans in Hong Kong.

These four stitch-bound, folded-leaved volumes, all measuring 29.5 x 15.5 cm, are a curious piece of linguistic history. Their title pages are in Chinese, each bearing the date of woodblock carving 1855 (“乙邜年鐫”), and each with the Chinese exhortation “往普天下傳福音與萬民” (Wang pu tian xia chuan fu yin yu wan min), a snippet from Mark 16:15 (the King James version of the Bible has “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature”). Besides the chapter and verse numbers, the only other instances of Chinese characters is the rather optimistic and ultimately misleading running series title printed on the folded column of each leaf, “新約全書” (“The Complete Books of the New Testament”). The rest of the books are written in katakana script, a Japanese syllabary used mostly to render foreign words. For most modern readers of Japanese, a text without kanji (Chinese characters) is difficult to parse. The Bettelheim Bible books, moreover, present a deeper challenge.

Firstly, it is difficult to determine exactly what language Bettelheim spoke while on Okinawa, and to what degree he recognized the overlaps between native Ryukyuan, mainland Japanese, Okinawan dialect Japanese, and the heavily Chinese-influenced “officialese” used by the local government. His grammar of the Ryukyuan and Japanese languages Elements or Contributions Towards a Loochooan & Japanese Grammar (surviving as a manuscript and in a Japanese reprint of the same) sometimes conflates the two. Bettelheim’s less than rigorous linguistics may have played a part in this. In his Elements, he appends a list of possible parallel roots to Hebrew words, in order “[t]o invite & stimulate phylologists to turn their attention to the Japanese”, and in a March 2, 1847 entry in his voluminous diaries, Bettelheim hints at his discovery of a Lost Tribe of Israel using comparative analysis of Ryukyuan personal names (“Moshi מיטה [sic]”, and “Yudji very near to Jesus”) [2].

First leaf of “Loochooan” Luke (1855) “unfolded”.

Secondly, Bettelheim, might be considered an “executive translator” of these editions, since he compiled and adapted the translation work of others rather than laboring over it on his own. He was aided by numerous local tutors, and the lack of continuity among their translations (and their varying willingness to treat with Bettelheim in the “Loochooan” language) have apparently created some internal inconsistencies in the books, with some passages reading as broken sentences. It should also be noted that some of Bettelheim’s phrasing in the Gospel of John is very close to that of the Japanese translation of that same book made by Karl Gützlaff, Bettelheim’s son’s partial namesake. Both begin their translations of John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”) with the phrase “ハジマリニカシコイモノ…” (“Hajimari ni kashikoi mono…” “In the beginning [was] the wise [one]”), substantiating the abstract Greek Λόγος, usually translated literally as “Word.” Bettelheim, then, clearly took Japanese text and repackaged it as “Loochooan.”

Lastly, Bettelheim’s use of Japanese katakana to render Ryukyuan was a matter of necessity, since besides Chinese characters, there was no other method of writing the local language. Because katakana was not designed to accommodate Ryukyuan, a modern person literate in Japanese would read these books as if they sounded like Japanese, and not Ryukyuan [3].

First leaf of “Loochooan”/Chinese Luke (1858) “unfolded”.

By 1858, Bettelheim had revised portions of his work, and 500 copies of a new version of Luke were published in Hong Kong, this time as a noticeably wider (29 x 21.5 cm) bilingual edition including the Gospel of Luke from Delegates’ Chinese version of the Bible. This same Delegates’ version, incidentally, had already served as the source of all five Hong Kong editions’ Chinese title page quotation. British and Foreign Bible Society bibliographers Darlow and Moule record that “[c]opies of this edition were sent to missionaries in Japan, who found, however, that the book was unsuitable for circulation in Japan proper.” Indeed, the curious mix of heavily Okinawan-flavored Japanese and Chinese would not prove useful for mainland Japanese. This second edition of Luke, by the way, still bears the carving date of 1855, since it appears that the block used to print the title page of the 1855 edition was reused for the bilingual 1858 edition.

Early Taishō Japanese Juvenile Pocket Fiction: Tatsukawa Bunko and its Imitators

[Ed. Note: Today’s post comes from Mike Williams, a Japanese Specialist here at the Penn Libraries]

[Auth. Note: Due to bibliographic evidence and mild demand of researchers and interested parties, I have adjusted the romanization of the title from Tachikawa to Tatsukawa. Updated July 22, 2013.]

For many years, a faded assortment of colorfully-bound but unassuming Japanese books sat relatively undisturbed in the East Asia stacks, perhaps examined once or twice, but almost never circulating. These items—small, aging, and brittle—were retired from active browsing and sent to the Penn Libraries’ High Density Storage facility (now LIBRA).

The Libraries’ bibliographic records for these books were mostly bare-bones: brief catalog cards bearing limited romanized information with additional material in Japanese were soon replaced by digital records—with all of the valuable “vernacular” script stripped out. Now buried even deeper than before in storage, this treasury of early 20^th century fiction lay in wait for someone to dig them up again.

Volumes of Penn’s Japanese juvenile pocket fiction collection

So dig I did. Armed with a stack of original cards from the East Asia card catalog and data freshly harvested from the Libraries’ Data Farm, I was able to get all of the books unearthed and shipped right to me. These diamonds-in-the-rough—or perhaps, roughly-hewn gemstones, given their panoply of colors and well-worn condition—proved to be much more interesting than I had imagined.

Scope of the Collection

The collection of early Taishō period (more properly, very late Meiji through early Taishō) fiction held at the Libraries is a snapshot of early 20^th century Japanese publishing history. These 188 small books (roughly 12.75 cm high by 9.25 cm wide) largely contain tales of bravery and adventure: reimagined samurai swashbucklers, ninja-turned-heroes, fantastic journeys, and wars of glory. The romanticized bygone days of the post-medieval Edo period (1600-1868) provided a wealth of material for young urban readers.

Only two of these volumes stand alone as “single works”—the remaining 186 were all issued as volumes in a series (generally numbered). The Penn Libraries’ holdings of these pocket books span a few series, none of which are completely owned. The majority of these books feature a series bibliography in the form of publisher’s advertisements (found after the colophon page, generally located at the end of Japanese books). Whether or not these had been published or merely planned is not clear. Even Nichigai Associates, an information specialist company whose bibliographies are enormously helpful in identifying Japanese materials in print, draws complete blanks on some of the titles Penn holds. Of the ten series represented in the collection, Nichigai’s “Catalog of Series in Japan 1868-1944” lists only four—and none of these are without incomplete portions. In fact, some of these series and titles are truly unique at Penn, with no records of them in libraries or used book networks worldwide. With scant publication records in existence, the best source of describing what may have existed is the items themselves—many of which, of course, no longer exist.

Frontispiece from Nan’ō tantei kidan yūreikutsu, a novelized adaptation of an unidentified Italian film.

While the Penn Libraries is still in the process of enriching our catalog with careful description and Japanese scripts, the following series bibliography with the number of volumes owned of each can be offered: Bushidō bunko [武士道文庫] (3 titles) ;  Katsudō bunko [活動文庫] (2 titles) ; Kaiketsu bunko [怪傑文庫] (2 titles) ; Kodan bunko [講談文庫] (3 titles) ; Okamura kōdan sōsho [岡村講談叢書] (6 titles) ; Shidan bunko [史談文庫] (30 titles) ; Shūchin bunko [袖珍文庫] (10 titles) ; Shūchin Okawa bunko (AKA Shūchin shosetsu bunko) [袖珍大川文庫・袖珍小説文庫] (61 titles) ; Tatsukawa bunko [立川文庫] (61 titles) ; Taishō bunko [大正文庫] (8 titles).

Of these, the focus of much scholarly research and nostalgic reminiscences has been the Tatsukawa bunko series.

Tatsukawa Bunko: Popular Fiction and the Birth of the Heroic Ninja

The stories that formed Tatsukawa bunko and enthralled their readership trace their origins back to the spoken-word performance art of kōdan in the latter half of the 20^th century. Kōdan featured stories of heroism and wars, delivered in a dramatic and colloquial but certainly professional style. These tales eventually formed the basis for a genre of literature called sokkibon, or to use J. Scott Miller’s term, “phonobooks”. Stenographers of kōdan used newly-imported Western techniques for shorthand (sokki) to transcribe the narratives of performers into readable texts. These printed stories, written with a decidedly oratory style, proved to be hugely successful in the greater Osaka area. With the proliferation of sokkibon as a literary genre, authors familiar with the kōdan and sokkibon penned their own stories in the same vein, conflating the functions of both storyteller and transcriber.

It was from the minds of professional storyteller Tamada Gyokushūsai (1856-1921) and his second family that the wildly popular stories of Tatsukawa bunko were conceived. Born Katō Manjirō, Tamada trained as a tale-teller under the first Gyokushūsai, who specialized in Shinto religious tales. After Gyokushūsai’s death, Katō assumed the mantle of his former mentor. Tamada’s first wife and child died of cholera, but later he became acquainted with a woman named Yamada Kei (1855-1921). Kei, already a married woman, ran off with Tamada and brought her children with her, eventually settling in Osaka.

Tamada, his wife, and his stepchildren (in particular eldest son Otetsu) collaborated on creating stories for publication. Eventually, the idea of a serialized sokkibon publication occurred to the family, who shopped around the idea with little success. Finally, the proprietor of publishing house Tatsukawa Bunmeidō, Tatsukawa Kumajirō (1878-1932) received their idea with enthusiasm and began publishing their stories under the name Tatsukawa bunko, which has often been referred to with colloquial pronunciation Tachikawa bunko (a trend that library catalogers have followed).

The books were marketed chiefly to a juvenile audience, mostly the poor teenage apprentices of the Osaka area. Designed to fit easily into the pockets of these working youth, the Tatsukawa bunko volumes priced between 25-30 sen (a now obsolete unit valued at 1/100 yen). Although poor apprentices could not afford to spend all of their pocket money on reading material, Tatsukawa Bunmeidō offered a novel trade-in deal: a new volume could be purchased by trading in an older volume, with an additional 3 sen trade-in fee. Of course, readers borrowed and lent titles amongst their friends as well.

Frontispieces from four Sarutobi titles published in Tatsukawa bunko. Art by Hasegawa Sadanobu III

Between 1911 and the mid-1920s, roughly 200 titles were produced to meet the rampant demand (the exact number of books is uncertain—see the Notable bibliographies of Tatsukawa bunko at the end). The content of these books were largely jidai shōsetsu, or historical fiction. But the character that provide to be the breakout success of the Tamada-Yamada creative team was ninja Sarutobi Sasuke, or “Monkey-Jump Sasuke”, who debuted in 1913 in volume 40 of Tatsukawa bunko (Penn owns a 1916 edition, and a reproduction of a 1914 edition). A fusion of historical and fictional accounts of ninja with the skills of legendary literary hero Sun Wukong (known in Japanese as Son Gokū), Sarutobi Sasuke was a new type of ninja, largely unfamiliar to his readership. Rather than serve as a villain corrupted by the dark arts of ninjutsu, Sasuke was a spritely and mischievous antihero who used his myriad magic powers for virtuous ends. Sasuke continued to appear in other Tatsukawa titles, and his popularity heralded the rise of a “ninja boom” that lasted until the latter 1920s.

With the death of Tamada in 1921, the Yamada family’s literary efforts waned. Tatsukawa Bunmeidō continued to operate and reprint earlier titles of the series, up until the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. Tatsukawa Bunmeidō continued to publish until early 1945, when an air raid on Osaka destroyed their offices, records, and all of the printing plates within.

 Tatsukawa Bunko in Comparison

Each volume of Tatsukawa bunko was bound in cloth in one of seven colors (red, blue, yellow, green, orange, black, or purple) with spines featuring the full title in gold leaf. Almost every book featured a frontispiece by ukiyoe artist Hasegawa Sadanobu III (1881-1963). These artistic merits surely appealed to their readership and lent an air of literary legitimacy to these cheaply produced books.

Lining paper patterns from six of the ten pocket fiction series owned by Penn

As the forerunner of the “bunko boom”, Tatsukawa bunko became something of a household name. Imitators of Tatsukawa’s success such as Taishō bunko and Shidan bunko (both held in part by the Penn Libraries) sold well, but continued to be compared to and grouped under the generic trademark of Tatsukawa bunko. Many competing series, many published in Osaka and others in Tokyo, modeled their look on the Tatsukawa books. Bound in bright colors, given elaborate spine designs, and some featuring their own frontispieces, these books are on first glance indistinguishable from Tatsukawa bunko volumes. Indeed, seeing all of these volumes together in bulk, I had thought they had all been published by the same company. Take a look at the photo from earlier on: the Tatsukawa books each have a five-petaled flower on the lower half of the spine; the other books are all from competitors.

Lining paper spreads from three of the ten pocket fiction series owned by Penn

While Tatsukawa bunko and other Osaka-based bunko sets focused largely on historical fiction and fictional historical personages like Sarutobi Sasuke, Tokyo publishers drew on the wealth of existing national literature. Shūchin bunko, for instance, reprinted many classics of Japanese literature, from the 8th century Kojiki to Edo period novels. The similarly named but distinct Shūchin Ōkawa bunko took a more middle-road approach, publishing biographical fiction of well-known warriors along with classical war stories like Genpei seisuiki and the Edo samurai tale Nansō Satomi Hakkenden.

The Tokyo-Osaka/East-West divide can be further noted in that the exploits of the Tokugawa clan, the family who held the shogunate of Japan during the Edo period, are treated with very different tones depending on the locality. Osaka area bunko stories painted the Tokugawas, particularly Ieyasu, as villains to be thwarted, while Tokyo-based bunko featured them as heroes. These conceptual differences notwithstanding, competing publishers did feature some of the same notable personages, whose exploits were unaligned with regional sentiments.

Frontispieces from two stories about legendary Zen monk Ikkyū:(left) from Ikkyū zenji (series Shūchin Ōkawa bunko), artist unidentified; (right) from Shokoku man’yū Ikkyū zenji (series Tatsukawa bunko), artist Hasegawa Sadanobu III

Many more pocket fiction titles similar to Tatsukawa bunko existed as well. An exhibition held at the Himeji Bungakukan in 2004 featured representative volumes of at least 18 other series. One of these titles, Poketto sōsho, measures roughly two times smaller than Tatsukawa bunko, at a diminutive 9 cm high by 6.5 cm wide. See the exhibition catalog Tatsukawa Kumajirō to Tatsukawa Bunko: Taishō no bunkoō for details.

The Future of the Collection

Some of these materials may not exist anywhere else in the world, and are extremely unlikely to be reprinted. Although some reproductions of Tatsukawa materials exist, these are largely out of print as well, and do not offer a complete reproduction of the series as a whole. As the Penn Libraries embark on a reevaluation of the bibliographic description for these precious items, some of which Penn uniquely holds, we are exploring options for the preservation and access to their content.

Collection Update (October 29, 2014)

The entire collection described in this post has been digitized and is now available through Print at Penn as the Japanese Juvenile Fiction Collection. The number of physical volumes (188) is greater than the amount of digitized titles, since some are multivolume sets represented by one digital facsimile. The print collection has also expanded by several newly purchased titles, and new digital facsimiles may be added in the future. For digitized materials only, the option to narrow results by titles with facsimiles (Facsimile = “Yes”) may be selected.

I would like to thank: Joe Kishman and the staff of LIBRA for kindly and carefully shipping these fragile materials to me; PJ Smalley for scanning help; and all the ILL staff who helped me procure articles and books for my research.

For further reading and bibliographical information about Tatsukawa bunko…