Printing and Publishing

• This article deals with printed materials; for handwritten materials, see Manuscripts.

Japan has, since the 18th century, continually been among the highest-publishing countries in the world. For lengthy periods of time, Japan published annually more individual titles of books, magazines, and other bound materials than any other country on Earth.

Publishing in Japan, largely in woodblock prior to the Meiji period, took off especially in the Edo period. Printing in Japan, however, has a much longer history. The oldest extant printed materials from Japan, and indeed some of the oldest extant printed materials from anywhere in the world, date to 764-770. At that time, upon the orders of Empress Kôken, one million slips of paper were printed with Buddhist charms called dhâranî, using copper-plate printing technology; these slips of paper, along with the tiny wooden pagodas into which they were inserted, are known as the hyakumantô darani.

Pre-Modern Printing

Throughout the pre-modern period, up until the late 16th century, printed materials in Japan were almost exclusively Buddhist texts. With the exception of the 8th century Hyakumantô darani, the printing of religious texts took place in a significant volume beginning in the 11th century.

Tokugawa Period

Moveable-type printing technology was introduced to Japan via Korea in the 1590s, essentially stolen along with many other technologies, and artisans, by forces participating in Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea. The Korean presses used metal type, but the Japanese quickly moved to carving type blocks out of wood; roughly 300 titles were produced in the 1590s-1630s using moveable type, but afterwards, for a variety of reasons, moveable type was all but abandoned in Japan in favor of woodblock printing, which made use of single pieces of wood for a full page, or two pages.

Scholars cite a number of potential reasons for the dominance of woodblocks over moveable type in early modern Japan. Japanese calligraphic script, and the way it was integrated into the composition of a page alongside images, was more well-suited to woodblocks, as moveable type would have demanded a shift from long strings of connected (running script) calligraphy to separated, distinct characters which could be printed each from a separate type block. Woodblock printing also allowed for the inclusion, for example, of glosses such as what is today called furigana - small syllabic kana characters placed next to the logographic kanji to identify the reading. This provided not only the pronunciation in the strictest sense of the word - meaning, the sound, and thus the ability to read the word out loud - but also served, often, as an important indication of the identity or meaning of a phrase, since one generally knows one's mother tongue more natively or fluently by sound rather than by visuals. While moveable type works best with strict grids of characters, the inclusion of such glosses, at a smaller size, and nestled up next to the "main" columns of text, called for either a much more complex system of moveable type, or for woodblocks carved for a whole page - text, glosses, images, and all.

Woodblocks were also better suited to the production of multiple editions, as a publisher could simply hold onto the blocks for a given book and reprint new copies later, never having to take apart the stereotype (the formatted, laid-out type blocks for a given page) and reassemble it for each page, or each work, as one would have to with moveable type. Finally, a third reason given for the popularity of woodblocks, and for the explosion of publishing in early modern Japan using woodblocks, was the relatively inexpensive entry cost for starting a publishing business. Rather than investing in a press (or multiple presses) and a collection of thousands of type blocks for individual characters, an entrepreneur could simply deal with one set of blocks at a time, hiring professional artisans (e.g. block-carvers and printers), or doing the work himself. The Japanese process of woodblock printing, furthermore, did not require any heavy, expensive, or technologically complex printing press, but rather was done largely by hand, using a tool called a baren to rub a piece of paper on top of an inked block.

Commercial publishing houses first emerged in Kyoto around 1626, the phenomenon expanding to Osaka in the 1660s. Publishing came to Edo relatively late by comparison, but grew rapidly over the course of the 17th century, and by the year 1800 dramatically eclipsed the Kyoto-Osaka (combined) publishing industry. The first half of the 19th century saw the continued growth of publishing in the three major cities, as well as the emergence of commercial publishing operations in a number of provincial centers.

According to one scholar, roughly 100,000 titles were published in the Edo period, 195,000 if we include renamed later editions of older titles; the same source estimates that roughly 236 new titles were published each year, on average, between 1600 and 1730, and approximately 510 new titles each year, on average, between 1730 and 1868. Literacy among urban dwellers has been estimated at 80% for men, and 50% for women.

References

• Smith, Henry. "The History of the Book in Edo and Paris." in James McClain, et al (eds.) Edo & Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era. Cornell University Press, 1994. pp332-352.