Kanazoshi
Encyclopedia
describes a type of printed Japanese
book that was produced primarily in Kyoto
between 1600 and 1680. The term literally means “books written in kana
” (kana being the phonetic Japanese syllabary that is simpler to read and write than kanji
, or Chinese ideographs). The designation thus derives from the fact that the text of these books was written either entirely in kana or in a mixture of kana and kanji. Kanazōshi are considered to be a transitional genre, bridging the gap between medieval romances
and the first high point of Edo period
(1600-1868) literature, the ukiyozōshi
composed by Ihara Saikaku
(1642-93). The genre comprises an unlikely assortment of essay
s, stories
, travel guides for famous places, military chronicle
s, religious writings, and critical
pieces. Despite the lack of uniformity in content, kanazōshi are classified as a distinct genre primarily based on the fact that they were the first literary works to be printed and widely circulated in Japan. Scholars also maintain that kanazōshi are generally of higher literary quality and more realistic than medieval forms, such as the otogizōshi
, that preceded them.
Despite these limitations, the appearance of these books amounted to an important new trend in literary production. Closely tied to the rise of Japan's urban centers, the growing economic power of the chōnin
(urban commoner) class, the improvement of literacy rates, and the advent of woodblock print technology, kanazōshi emerged as a new, distinctly plebeian form of literature. Its authors arose from the educated portion of the population, including scholars, Buddhist priests, courtiers, samurai and rōnin. But its readership consisted mostly of non-aristocratic residents of Japan's growing cities.
In contrast to otogizōshi and other forms of medieval Japanese tales, kanazōshi tended to be more realistic, with fewer supernatural or fantastic elements. Whether meant to entertain or inform, kanazōshi narratives conveyed more details about the characters and their setting, contained more natural dialogue, and showcased a more representative slice of life.
Although more skillfully written than otogizōshi, kanazōshi are considered less advanced in terms of structure and wordplay than the subsequent ukiyozōshi composed by Saikaku. Reflecting the tastes of their comparatively less sophisticated audience, kanazōshi often relied upon simple puns to generate humor. For instance, the term “hanatare”, which can mean both a runny nose or a drooping flower, is used to describe a young child with the family name of Fujiwara (wisteria field). This type of pun typifies the level of humor found in kanazōshi.
Each kanazōshi book consisted of between one to twelve slim volumes of twenty to thirty leaves each, with roughly one-fifth of the space devoted to illustrations. Book prices were principally determined by the number of volumes.
, courtiers, Buddhist priests, and scholars. Because these works were written by highly educated authors, they were often didactic, promoting moral behavior based on the previous generation’s sense of morality. The early kanazōshi are broken down into three categories: works meant to entertain, works meant to intellectually enlighten, and works written to educate people about practical matters. Kanazōshi which were written to entertain include war tales, romances and parodies of earlier classics such as Ise monogatari. Those written to promote intellectual growth mainly deal with reconciling the ideas of Buddhism, Shintoism and Confucianism. The more practical kanazōshi include travel guides, samples of well written love letters, and critiques of famous courtesans and kabuki
actors.
The late kanazōshi are those works which were written in the latter half of the 17th century. Unlike the early kanazōshi, the late kanazōshi were written mostly by commoners for a commoner readership. This shift in the social class of the authors is reflected in the fact that the protagonists in the later works are usually commoners. In addition, the language used in the later kanazōshi is more realistic, and male and female characters speak using structures that are specific to their gender. Many scholars believe that this shift towards realism paved the way for ukiyozōshi, a later genre which is partially defined by its intense realism.
(d. 1691) and Suzuki Shôsan (1579-1655). Main works include: Nise monogatari (Tale of Falsehoods: A Parody of Tales of Ise), Shimizu monogatari (Tale of Shimizu), and Tokkaidō meishoki (Famous Sites on the Tokkaido Highway). The most celebrated example of the genre is Ryōi’s Ukiyo monogatari (Tales of the Floating World, 1661), a comedic tale about a young man named Hyōtarō who gets himself into all kinds of trouble with gambling, prostitutes, and the like, and then learns valuable lessons about the proper way to live one’s life from town elders.
Moretti, Laura. "Kanazōshi Revisited: The Beginnings of Japanese Popular Literature in Print". Monumenta Nipponica. Vol. 65/2 (Autumn 2010), pp. 297-356. Available on Project Muse (http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/monumenta_nipponica/v065/65.2.moretti.html) [This article challenges the traditional view of kanazōshi and offers a new, alternative perspective on the subject]
Fukasawa Akio 深沢秋男 and Kikuchi Shin’ichi 菊池真一, eds. Kanazōshi kenkyū bunken mokuroku 仮名草子研究文献目録. Osaka: Izumi Shoin, 2004. Updates available online at Kinsei Shoki Bungei Kenkyūkai 近世初期文芸研究会 Web site, http://www.ksskbg.com/kana/index.html. [a bibliography of Japanese studies about kanazōshi]
Asakura Haruhiko 朝倉治彦, Fukasawa Akio 深沢秋男, et al. Kanazōshi shūsei 仮名草子集成. 46 vols. (to date). Tōkyōdō Shuppan, 1980–. (A collection of diplomatic transcriptions of kanazōshi).
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
book that was produced primarily in Kyoto
Kyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
between 1600 and 1680. The term literally means “books written in kana
Kana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
” (kana being the phonetic Japanese syllabary that is simpler to read and write than kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
, or Chinese ideographs). The designation thus derives from the fact that the text of these books was written either entirely in kana or in a mixture of kana and kanji. Kanazōshi are considered to be a transitional genre, bridging the gap between medieval romances
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
and the first high point of Edo period
Edo period
The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....
(1600-1868) literature, the ukiyozōshi
Ukiyozoshi
is the first major genre of popular Japanese fiction, written between the 1680s and the 1770s in Kyoto and Osaka. Ukiyozōshi literature developed from the kanazōshi genre and was in fact initially classified as kanazōshi...
composed by Ihara Saikaku
Ihara Saikaku
was a Japanese poet and creator of the "floating world" genre of Japanese prose .-Biography:Born the son of the wealthy merchant Hirayama Tōgo in Osaka, he first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku, and later studied under Nishiyama Sōin of the Danrin School of poetry, which emphasized...
(1642-93). The genre comprises an unlikely assortment of essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s, stories
Stories
Stories may refer to:* Height of more than one Storey * Stories , a greatest hits compilation album by Randy Stonehill...
, travel guides for famous places, military chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
s, religious writings, and critical
Criticism
Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another . To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault, but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice, or a disapproval.Another meaning of...
pieces. Despite the lack of uniformity in content, kanazōshi are classified as a distinct genre primarily based on the fact that they were the first literary works to be printed and widely circulated in Japan. Scholars also maintain that kanazōshi are generally of higher literary quality and more realistic than medieval forms, such as the otogizōshi
Otogizoshi
refers to a group of approximately 350 Japanese prose narratives written primarily in the Muromachi period . These illustrated short stories, which remain unattributed, together form one of the representative literary genres of the Japanese medieval era.-Overview:This type of short prose narrative...
, that preceded them.
Characteristics of Kanazōshi
Before the 1620s, the only books available in Japan were handwritten manuscripts. The printed kanazōshi were less expensive and more widely available than these earlier manuscripts. They are thus considered the first example of commercial literature produced in Japan. One should keep in mind, however, the comparatively limited nature of their popularity. The cost of a single volume was still prohibitive, costing roughly the equivalent of what a laborer could earn for two or three days of work (4000 of Japanese currency). Moreover, the books, because of their small print runs (often only a few hundred copies), rarely circulated beyond Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo, the publishing centers in premodern Japan.Despite these limitations, the appearance of these books amounted to an important new trend in literary production. Closely tied to the rise of Japan's urban centers, the growing economic power of the chōnin
Chonin
was a social class that emerged in Japan during the early years of the Tokugawa period. The majority of chōnin were merchants, but some were craftsmen, as well. Nōmin were not considered chōnin...
(urban commoner) class, the improvement of literacy rates, and the advent of woodblock print technology, kanazōshi emerged as a new, distinctly plebeian form of literature. Its authors arose from the educated portion of the population, including scholars, Buddhist priests, courtiers, samurai and rōnin. But its readership consisted mostly of non-aristocratic residents of Japan's growing cities.
In contrast to otogizōshi and other forms of medieval Japanese tales, kanazōshi tended to be more realistic, with fewer supernatural or fantastic elements. Whether meant to entertain or inform, kanazōshi narratives conveyed more details about the characters and their setting, contained more natural dialogue, and showcased a more representative slice of life.
Although more skillfully written than otogizōshi, kanazōshi are considered less advanced in terms of structure and wordplay than the subsequent ukiyozōshi composed by Saikaku. Reflecting the tastes of their comparatively less sophisticated audience, kanazōshi often relied upon simple puns to generate humor. For instance, the term “hanatare”, which can mean both a runny nose or a drooping flower, is used to describe a young child with the family name of Fujiwara (wisteria field). This type of pun typifies the level of humor found in kanazōshi.
Each kanazōshi book consisted of between one to twelve slim volumes of twenty to thirty leaves each, with roughly one-fifth of the space devoted to illustrations. Book prices were principally determined by the number of volumes.
Early kanazōshi
Early kanazōshi were written mainly by the educated classes, including lesser samuraiSamurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
, courtiers, Buddhist priests, and scholars. Because these works were written by highly educated authors, they were often didactic, promoting moral behavior based on the previous generation’s sense of morality. The early kanazōshi are broken down into three categories: works meant to entertain, works meant to intellectually enlighten, and works written to educate people about practical matters. Kanazōshi which were written to entertain include war tales, romances and parodies of earlier classics such as Ise monogatari. Those written to promote intellectual growth mainly deal with reconciling the ideas of Buddhism, Shintoism and Confucianism. The more practical kanazōshi include travel guides, samples of well written love letters, and critiques of famous courtesans and kabuki
Kabuki
is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...
actors.
Late kanazōshi
The late kanazōshi are those works which were written in the latter half of the 17th century. Unlike the early kanazōshi, the late kanazōshi were written mostly by commoners for a commoner readership. This shift in the social class of the authors is reflected in the fact that the protagonists in the later works are usually commoners. In addition, the language used in the later kanazōshi is more realistic, and male and female characters speak using structures that are specific to their gender. Many scholars believe that this shift towards realism paved the way for ukiyozōshi, a later genre which is partially defined by its intense realism.
Representative Authors
Famous kanazōshi writers include Asai RyōiAsai Ryoi
was a Japanese writer in the early Edo period. A Buddhist priest who was at one time head of a Kyoto temple, he is held to be one of the finest writers of Kanazōshi. Kanazōshi was a form of popular literature that was written with little or no kanji, thus accessible to many. Though it spanned...
(d. 1691) and Suzuki Shôsan (1579-1655). Main works include: Nise monogatari (Tale of Falsehoods: A Parody of Tales of Ise), Shimizu monogatari (Tale of Shimizu), and Tokkaidō meishoki (Famous Sites on the Tokkaido Highway). The most celebrated example of the genre is Ryōi’s Ukiyo monogatari (Tales of the Floating World, 1661), a comedic tale about a young man named Hyōtarō who gets himself into all kinds of trouble with gambling, prostitutes, and the like, and then learns valuable lessons about the proper way to live one’s life from town elders.
Printed Resources
Lane, Richard. “The Beginnings of the Modern Japanese Novel: Kana-zoshi, 1600-1682.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. Vol. 20, Nos. 3-4 (Dec., 1957), pp. 644-701.Moretti, Laura. "Kanazōshi Revisited: The Beginnings of Japanese Popular Literature in Print". Monumenta Nipponica. Vol. 65/2 (Autumn 2010), pp. 297-356. Available on Project Muse (http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/monumenta_nipponica/v065/65.2.moretti.html) [This article challenges the traditional view of kanazōshi and offers a new, alternative perspective on the subject]
Fukasawa Akio 深沢秋男 and Kikuchi Shin’ichi 菊池真一, eds. Kanazōshi kenkyū bunken mokuroku 仮名草子研究文献目録. Osaka: Izumi Shoin, 2004. Updates available online at Kinsei Shoki Bungei Kenkyūkai 近世初期文芸研究会 Web site, http://www.ksskbg.com/kana/index.html. [a bibliography of Japanese studies about kanazōshi]
Asakura Haruhiko 朝倉治彦, Fukasawa Akio 深沢秋男, et al. Kanazōshi shūsei 仮名草子集成. 46 vols. (to date). Tōkyōdō Shuppan, 1980–. (A collection of diplomatic transcriptions of kanazōshi).