Description
Book SynopsisNathan Shockey examines the emergence of new forms of reading, writing, and thinking in Japan from the last years of the nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth.
The Typographic Imagination presents a multivalent vision of the rise of mass print media and the transformation of modern Japanese literature, language, and culture.
Trade ReviewNathan Shockey’s study of the typographic imagination in modern Japan reorganizes our sensibilities by seamlessly integrating media studies with modern Japanese literary history and criticism. Its fresh perspective is sure to change the conceptual landscape of Japan specialists, and its rich account of the particularities of modern Japanese print culture will command the attention of media studies scholars as well. -- Indra Levy, Stanford University
Shockey does an amazing job of chronicling a transformative moment in the history of Japanese literature. Canons were transformed, new classes of readers emerged, and vivacious debates about the meaning and diversity of literature's materiality were produced. This book offers an important addition to the global history of print. -- Andrew Piper, McGill University
Rich in detail and vast in scope,
The Typographic Imagination deftly charts a course through the roiling complexity of print media that collectively generated a typographic effect in the early twentieth century. But the stroke of genius lies in how the perspective of print allows Shockey to overturn our understanding of modernization, highlighting a pulse of nonlinear difference coursing through print media, resurfacing intensified in strange new characters and movements. -- Thomas Lamarre, Duke University
Shockey’s engaging and erudite study lays out beautifully the complex and changing technological, social, and intellectual landscape that informed Japan’s early modern and modern book worlds. This meticulously researched study expands our understanding of the literary field by interrogating the intersections of script reform, the transition from xylographic to industrial printing, new modes of book classification, and the crucial contributions of leftist movements to literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. -- Ann Sherif, Oberlin College and Conservatory
The Typographic Imagination is an innovative study whose strengths include scrupulous scholarship, clear prose, and lucid analysis. The book makes a substantial contribution to the field of modern Japanese literary and cultural studies. I recommend it with enthusiasm! -- Seiji Lippit, University of California, Los Angeles
Well-researched, subtle, and important. * Journal of Asian Studies *
In his fascinating and stimulating book, Nathan Shockey takes us back to the world of late Meiji and Taisho Japan, when the market was awash with new magazines. . . . This is a richly detailed, resourcefully argued, and astonishingly wide-ranging book. * Journal of Japanese Studies *
A meticulous work of scholarship, brimming with a wealth of analytical and anecdotal perspectives. * Monumenta Nipponica *
Typographic Imagination presents familiar concepts in the information profession alongside new lenses in an intense look into Japan’s history surrounding typography in the late 19th and early 20th century. * RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
A Note on Romanization and Translation
Introduction: The World Made Type
Part I: The Making of a Modern Media Ecology1. Pictures and Voices from a Paper Empire
2. Iwanami Shoten and the Enterprise of Eternity
3. The Topography of Typography: Bibliophiles and Used Books in the Print City
Part II: Prose, Language, and Politics in the Type Era4. New Age Sensations: Yokomitsu Riichi and the Contours of Literary Discourse
5. Brave New Words: Orthographic Reform, Romanization, and Esperantism
6. The Medium Is the Masses: Print Capitalism and the Prewar Leftist Movement
Conclusion: Ends, Echoes, and Inversions
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
