Beyond the Early Modern - Modern Divide: A Bibliographic Approach to the Illustrated Fiction of Japan's Nineteenth Century

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25370207
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Japanese literature
• Research Institution: Otsuma Women's University (2015-2016); Chiba University (2013-2014)
• Principal Investigator: TAKAGI Gen 大妻女子大学, 文学部, 教授 (00226747)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 国文学 / 十九世紀小説 / 絵入本 / 草双紙 / 読本

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Over the course of research supported by this funding, I have assembled materials that provide for an overall view of the forms of illustrated fiction from the Bakumatsu to early Meiji periods, focusing on the genre of kusazoushi, the history of which remains understudied at present.
Additionally, in regards to the genre of yomhihon that was published in the early nineteenth century, I have discovered an enormous amount of material at the Musee Guimet in France in which only the illustrations of yomihon were collected and bound into scrapbooks and thus revealed one unknown terminus at the end of the nineteenth century for these illustrated books that had circulated in Japanese lending libraries. These illustrations, cut out from books, appear to have been exported to Europe during the heyday of Western Japonism.

Free Research Field

十九世紀日本小説