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

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

(1600–1868) and early

Meiji period The is 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 colonization ...

. These works were published in the city of

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

(modern

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

). 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 syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contras ...

, although some

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequ ...

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 Zhao may refer to: * Zhao (surname) (赵), a Chinese surname ** commonly spelled Chao in Taiwan or up until the early 20th century in other regions ** Chiu, from the Cantonese pronunciation ** Cho (Korean surname), represent the Hanja 趙 (Chine ...

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 Shan ...

, 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 ''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', 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 be ...

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

kabuki is a classical form of Japanese dance- drama. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily-stylised performances, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. Kabuki is thought ...

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