Japan’s vibrant print and publishing industry has bolstered modernization by simultaneously helping to provide forums for new discourses and cultivate the attitudes and tastes of its citizens. Sometimes by oversight, sometimes through manipulation, images and texts once imbued with informational significance to then contemporary audiences pass unnoticed by readers today. Viewing various "originals"—first printings, republished and repackaged versions of texts and images—from newspapers, comics, magazines, and literary series, this interdisciplinary panel examines the sites and circumstances in which these "originals" were produced in an effort to recover nuances of their contemporary meaning.

First, Keiko Suzuki reveals early Japanese social constructions of self and Other by examining images of foreigners in popular manga of early Meiji. Exploring Yanagawa Shun’yô’s popular novel Nasanu naka (No Blood Relation, 1912–13) in its initial newspaper format, Claire Cuccio explores Hiresaki Eihô’s illustrations and his idealized representations of social modeling in the text. Focusing on the original serialized version of Shinseinen and noting the variations and gaps in subsequent publications of the novel, Michiko Suzuki argues for a reinterpretation of Hisao Jûran’s Kyarako san (Miss Calico, 1939). Finally, Marvin Marcus looks at the repackaging of Shimazaki Tôson’s collected writings as a conscious effort to manipulate authorial persona. Encapsulating the richness and diversity of the publishing industry, each paper reveals new shades of meaning about text, image and the materiality of their modern production.

Keiko Suzuki, University of Wisconsin, Madison

In the last decade, the issue of how the West has constructed and ideologically employed various notions of the Other, such as "the savage," "the primitive," or "the Oriental," has come under scrutiny. Investigation into the nature of otherness, however, is not complete without complementary examinations. That is, how have non-Western peoples perceived and incorporated "the West" to construct their own identities, and how have they perceived other non-Westerners for the same purpose?

Visual images of foreigners in manga (cartoons and comics) in the Meiji period provide us with a unique site where we can extend our understanding of collective identity construction, its negotiation, and transformation. For, in the popular art of manga that circulated throughout the nation, foreigners were depicted through visual differences in physiognomy, clothing, behavior, and other culturally "exotic" attributes. Such differences were markers shared by both artists and audience, or society as a whole. In this sense, I will treat visual representations in manga as social constructions in order to elucidate how they changed historically and reflected Japanese understanding not only of the world beyond Japan’s borders but of themselves. I will document these changing public perceptions of self and foreigner by referring to original comic magazines that were both prevalent and popular in the Meiji period, but that have largely been ignored since.

Claire Cuccio, Stanford University

If a Meiji-Taishô newspaper novel (shimbun shôsetsu) was sufficiently popular to outlive its syndication, it has usually survived as a text-only republication in a standard anthology. While the text alone clearly merited republication, it is to these republished versions that critics often refer when more broadly denigrating the genre of newspaper novels as hackneyed. In fairness, however, the "newspaper" dimensions of a "newspaper novel" were integral to the reading experience. That is to say, without access to newspaper novels in the format in which they were originally intended—as illustrated daily installments prominently placed and simultaneously linked to surrounding articles and advertisements—contemporary readers of the text-only republications are not privy to the composite story presented to the Meiji-Taishô readership.

Serialized in Ôsaka Mainichi Shimbun from 1912–13, Yanagawa Shun’yô’s wildly successful novel Nasanu naka (No Blood Relation) stands as a prime example of a newspaper novel in which text alone is unable to narrate the story laid out in the original newspaper version. While Shun’yô’s text relates what critics might call a melodramatic tale of a once tranquil family in upheaval, the large, animated woodcut illustrations by the novel’s artist, Hiresaki Eihô (1880–1968), steadily reflect idealized models of family life. I argue that Nasanu naka in its original version is a multi-layered story, as much about social conditioning and ideal relationships depicted in the images of Eihô as about the volatile tale told in Shun’yô’s text. By extension, the composite of text and image in this novel becomes as much a story about the competitive newspaper industry in late Meiji-Taishô.

Michiko Suzuki, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Shinseinen (New Youth; circulation 1920–50) is a journal best known for promoting the detective story genre by publishing translations of Western stories as well as works by writers such as Edogawa Rampo. In this paper, I will look at a different aspect of this journal by examining Kyarako san (Miss Calico), a "shin josei mondai shôsetsu" (the new-woman-question novel) serialized in 1939. This work, by Hisao Jûran (1902-57), follows the adventures of a patriotic, frugal, common-sensical heroine, whose nickname, "Miss Calico," derives from her policy of only wearing sensible cotton underclothes. This story is most often read by critics as a reflection of the times, presenting an ideal model for Japanese girls to follow during the China war.

Looking at variant forms of this novel—that is, the original version in Shinseinen, as well as tankôbon and zenshû versions—it becomes clear that the above interpretation is too simplistic; an investigation of these different "texts" and "images" (illustrations and advertisements accompanying the text in Shinseinen) shows that a much more complex reading, particularly vis-à-vis nationalism, is required.

In addition to exploring the work from this perspective, I will also consider its unusual form of "self"-referentiality, that is, the numerous references to writers and works associated with Shinseinen. This largely unrecognized element functions, through intertextual means, to more fully illuminate the story of the heroine’s maturation process. Understanding the context of production is crucial for a more nuanced comprehension of this work and its heroine, touted by contemporaries as "Nihon no koibito" (Japan’s Sweetheart).

Marvin Marcus, Washington University

With the rise of national readerships in early twentieth-century Japan and the growing involvement of major publishing houses in promotion and marketing, the work of prominent writers became available for "repackaging" in the form of literary collectanea. I am not referring to the "hardcover" edition that would normally follow initial serialization in periodical form. Rather, I am speaking of individual volumes or multi-volume sets that republish earlier work across the genre spectrum. Such publishing ventures, which were often quite ambitious and costly, became a mainstay of literary publishing in Taishô Japan (1912–26). To my mind, they constitute an index of an author’s standing in the bundan and one’s worth in the marketplace.

In terms of the sheer output of such collectanea, few writers could rival the example of Shimazaki Tôson (1872–1943). During the course of a forty-five year literary career, Tôson published well over sixty collectanea, beginning with the celebrated poetry anthology, Wakanashû (1897), and ending with a volume in the 1942 Shin Nihon shônen shôjo bunko series. The market for Tôson collectanea lasted well into the postwar period.