Adam Kern’s Manga from the Floating World analyzes the literary genre of kibyōshi (literally, “yellow covers”), providing a particular focus on the subversive effects these small, fully illustrated works of humor had on the ruling military bureaucracy in late eighteenth-century Japan. The book is rich in detail and written in a style that is engaging, informative, and entertaining. Kern has a penchant for taking standard phrases and morphing them into something ironic, as in his title for chapter 4, “The Rise and Pratfall of the Kibyōshi.” A further distinctive feature is that the study follows what is now standard practice for manga translated into English (e.g., VIZ Media’s Shonen Jump series) by providing translations of three kibyōshi in right-to-left pagination (referred to with the chapter title “Reading Backwards”). This strategy allows the reader to follow the three narratives in the same order (reading the images and texts from right to left) as someone would have when the works first appeared in the 1780s.

The book is divided into two parts: part 1, a study of the kibyōshi, and part 2, translations of three kibyōshi written and illustrated by Santō Kyōden (also known as the woodblock-print designer and artist Kitao Masanobu), one of the great creative talents of the genre. Part 1 consists of an introduction and four chapters that provide readers with a sense of the cultural milieu of Edo in the 1770s and 1780s, particularly with regard to the complex relationships that existed among publishers, authors, illustrators, and readers, as well as the roles played by members of the military bureaucracy, the bushi or samurai, and the artisans and merchants, who, as townsfolk or chōnin, participated in new forms of literary and cultural production. In fact, it takes the introduction and three chapters to prepare readers to make sense of what transpires in the case of the kibyōshi itself in the fourth chapter. Chapter 1 is called “The Floating World in An’ei-Tenmei Edo”; chapter 2 is “The Blossom of Pulp Fiction”; chapter 3 is “Manga Culture and the Visual-Verbal Imagination”; and chapter 4 is “The Rise and Pratfall of the Kibyōshi.”

The introductory chapter opens with a case study of an image from a deluxe 1784 album of woodblock-printed portraits of Yoshiwara courtesans with their autograph poetry, Yoshiwara keisei: Shin bijin awase jihitsu kagami, or Pageant of the Latest Beauties, Their Calligraphy Mirrored: Courtesans of the Yoshiwara, published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō. Kern argues that in the image of a young courtesan’s apprentice running off with a “little yellow comicbook” (3) which she has apparently snatched from another slightly older apprentice, “this type of comicbook . . . was central to the Japanese popular imagination” (5) of the time. He states his purposes in writing this book as wishing, “To introduce the kibyōshi to the informed general reader as well as to the student of Japanese literature and culture, and to intimate why the young women in Masanobu’s woodcut supposedly find the genre so beguiling” (6). A second stated goal of the book is “to suggest why the kibyōshi was relatively short lived” (9). Kern spends the next 241 pages doing just that, with a plethora of images, details, and suggestive insights.

One distinctive characteristic of this detailed study is the fact that Kern provides new (and generally refreshing) translations for Japanese literary terms that have become relatively standardized in English over the past several decades. It may be instructive to provide the following list, in order to understand the approach Kern takes in providing nomenclature that is a better “fit” for his study. These include: “companion booklet” (otogizōshi, 11), “syllabary booklet” (kanazōshi, 11), “novella of the Floating World” (ukiyo-zōshi, 6), “comicbook” (kusazōshi, 26), “redbook” (akahon, 11), “blackbook” (kurohon, 11), “bluebook” (aohon, 48), “frivolous work”(gesaku, 13, but generally maintained as gesaku in English), “mock-sermon book” (dangibon, 25), “fashionbook” (sharebon, 25), “funnybook” (kokkeibon, 246), “multivolume comicbook” (gōkan, 76), “reading book” (yomihon, 60), “(human) sentiment book” (ninjōbon, 60), “madcap verse” (kyōka, 8), and “comic haiku” (senryū, 109). He even refers to the humorous plays of the Nō theater, kyōgen, as “madcap plays” (109), providing a standardization of its own for the term kyō, usually rendered as “crazy,” “insane,” or “mad.” Making the term “madcap” connects early modern Japanese genres of humor with North American vaudeville and even Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter. Another result of these re-renderings of generic categories (and the list provided above is by no means exhaustive) is that they highlight how complex and multifaceted the discourse on humor in fact was at this time.

As Kern explains so graphically over the course of chapter 4, “the primordial sludge from which the kibyōshi more or less directly emerged . . . was a cluster of murkily differentiated genres of woodblock-printed, illustrated popular fiction, published in Edo and flourishing roughly from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries” (184). These works, referred to in Japanese by the term kusazōshi or “grass booklets,” were, until the appearance of the kibyōshi, aimed at a readership (or those listening along and enjoying the illustrations with an elder reading) of children. Kern refers to these works—known by their color-coded covers such as redbook, bluebook, and blackbook—not as “grass booklets” (which indeed has little meaning to the reader of English) but as “comicbooks,” due to their humorous or otherwise entertaining content. The akahon (or akabon, literally “red books”) were “easy-to-read adaptations of children’s stories, folk legends, fairy tales . . . such as The Old Yarn of Peach Boy (Momotarō mukashibanashi, ca. early 1770s)” (187). The kurohon and aohon (literally “black books” and “blue books” respectively) “tended to be . . . retellings of kabuki and puppet plays, heroic legends and military accounts, though still rendered in easy-to-comprehend language and writing” (188). Kern provides an example illustration from a kurohon on page 189, called A Rundown of Kinpira’s Exploits (Kinpira tegarazukushi). In this chapter he suggests that even these ostensibly juvenile-directed works “may actually have been intended for and read by readers of most ages and literacy levels, if not solely by adult readers” (185). Here, though, Kern in his efforts to make kibyōshi the center of Edo popular literary culture in the late eighteenth century conflates the textual and visual references to the theater and other adult genres on the part of kusazōshi writers and illustrators with an expectation that the reader will wish to “get” the literary or artistic reference. Of course many adult readers would have appreciated such references, but it is generally clear that publishers marketed the pre-kibyōshi works, at least, for juvenile consumption. Elsewhere, Kern wisely draws a line between this body of fiction and the adult kibyōshi. In fact, he argues for a gradual shift from the aohon to the kibyōshi, suggesting that even among bluebooks there were those (earlier) that catered exclusively to juvenile readers and those (later) that catered to more adult-oriented interests. As he states, “The kibyōshi may be considered the first true comicbook for adults, then, only to the extent that readers were aware that the bluebook had splintered in two in a way that the adult proclivities within the companion booklet [otogizōshi], the redbook [akahon], and the blackbook [kurohon] had never entailed” (190–91; bracketed glosses mine). In other words, the publishers may have had one audience in mind while the authors and illustrators may well have been working at a more sophisticated level of humor and entertainment than could have been appreciated by a juvenile readership.

In addition to the richly detailed analysis of how kibyōshi actually functioned in the context of early modern Japanese literary culture, Manga from the Floating World systematically explains just how they did not serve as precursors to or direct influences on the modern manga. This argument flies in the face of many statements by Japanese and non-Japanese scholars alike, purporting to make the kibyōshi the manga’s progenitor. Kern is correct in arguing that this characterization “may unintentionally consign the kibyōshi to the status of neglectable precursor, not as something that demands sustained attention in its own right” (132). For Kern, the kibyōshi “participated in the revolution that was the application of mass printing to popular literature” (132), and as a result, explored realms of inquiry that earlier (and later, it turns out) genres avoided approaching.

Why, then, does this study bear the term manga in its title? I suspect the publishers at Harvard may have had something to do with this, given the global demand for anything that smacks of manga culture these days, but then again, the title may have originated with the author himself. In order for the woodblock-printed, illustrated, humorous Edo kibyōshi published in the last three decades of the eighteenth and first decade of the nineteenth century to serve simultaneously as “manga from the floating world” and not as precursors to the modern manga, Kern needs to engage in some rhetorical gymnastics. In the introduction we learn that the author/illustrator Santō Kyōden himself “largely introduced the term manga—at the time meaning something like ‘comic sketches’—into the popular lexicon through one of his bestselling pictorial works in 1798” (12). Kern then suggests that Katsushika Hokusai, who is famous for, among many other works, his humorous sketchbooks that were published to great popularity as Hokusai manga (series of 15 vols., Nagoya: Eirakuya Tōshirō, 1814–78), “may have appropriated the term by virtue of his direct association with Kyōden, since he not only personally knew the author but also provided pictures for several of his kibyōshi. Is it remotely possible, then, that the kibyōshi was the ‘original’ manga, albeit not in the modern sense of the word?” (12) Thus we have the kibyōshi as a prime example (perhaps) of the manga, not defined as we do in Japanese, English, and other languages today, but of the “comic sketches” as they were referred to during the last decades of the eighteenth century. I, for one, remain unconvinced.

So if the kibyōshi did not function as manga, then how did they function? While many commentators on Japanese popular culture have inaccurately described the kibyōshi from the perspective of the modern manga, even kibyōshi specialists have tended to avoid suggesting that they engaged in political satire. If there is anything in this volume that is indeed controversial, it is Kern’s argument that, for a short period and by a few authors, at least, the kibyōshi lampooned “the policies of the Tokugawa regime, especially the fiscal measures of Tanuma Okitsugu and the increasingly hard-line reforms of Matsudaira Sadanobu” (203–4). At first I was also sceptical, but Kern’s arguments on the “protest pieces” that appeared between 1788 and 1790 were convincing. Not only were the author Santō Kyōden and his publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō punished for creating works of “popular literature that had criticized state-sponsored Neo-Confucianism,” but they seem also to have “been caught in the crossfire between conservative forces within the publishing world and a more progressive and increasingly profitable comicbook culture” (229). All this makes for fascinating reading, and allows for careful reflection on the intersections of ideology, commerce, and literary (and visual) creativity.

Part 2 consists of annotated translations of three kibyōshi by Santō Kyōden and illustrated by his alter ego as a print designer, Kitao Masanobu. The first is Those Familiar Bestsellers (Gozonji no shōbai mono, 3 fasc., Edo: Tsuruya Kiemon, 1782); the second is Playboy, Roasted à la Edo (Edo umare uwaki no kabayaki, 3 fasc., Edo: Tsutaya Jūzaburō, 1785); and the third is The Unseamly Silverpiped Swingers (Sogitsugi gingiseru, 3 fasc., Edo: Nishimiya Shinroku, 1788). The first two are well known, with Playboy generally considered to be one of the masterpieces of the kibyōshi genre. The third is relatively obscure, and the only annotated edition in Japanese is one done by Kern himself and published in 2001 (438; see Adam Kern, “Santō Kyōden gasaku no kibyōshi Sogitsugi gingiseru no saikō to shichū,” in Chōsa kenkyū hōkoku, Tokyo: Kokubungaku Kenkyū Shiryōkan, 2001, 22]).

The greatest problem I have with Manga from the Floating World relates to how the translations of the three masterful works by Kyōden that make up part 2 are presented. I understand that Kern is trying to make the reading experience as close as possible to that enjoyed by early modern readers, but to this reviewer, the effect is more like making the books seem like Marvel Comics. It is true that the carved calligraphic narration and dialogue of the originals have been replaced by offset type in at least one modern reproduction (the kibyōshi included in the Nihon meicho zenshū anthology of the 1920s), but even this is exceptional. By effacing any trace of the original text from the images (including the “family crest” labels on characters’ clothes used to identify them), these works are violently removed from their cultural and linguistic contexts, and dumped into an incongruous world reminiscent of Doonesbury and Calvin and Hobbes. Given that this occurs after Kern argues eloquently for the importance of the visual text as part and parcel of the image itself (“Image as Word” and “Word as Image,” 162–67), the decision to efface the texts throughout seems especially contradictory. Enlarging the images to roughly twice their original size and printing them on pure white glossy stock also removes them from their original environment. The reader is further deprived of any sense of what the book might have been like physically in terms of the text and illustration on each page. We do not know the extent of the margins, because the translation/reproduction of the texts only extends as far as the frames for each page, within which we find the translated text and illustrations. This does not seem consistent with the purported attempt to reproduce the Edo reading experience to the contemporary reader. In his discussion of the issues taken into account that led to the shape of the translation, Kern suggests that an electronic solution might have been aesthetically more satisfying, but is difficult in the current world of academic publishing (255–61).

Thus, in this authoritative and groundbreaking study, Kern has taken a misunderstood genre, the kibyōshi, and elevated it to a position of centrality in terms of literary sophistication, a level of quality that could use humor to engage in political protest. This development proved highly popular to the masses, and as a result deeply offensive to the authorities. In contrast to the original cardboard-and-paper bound volumes that are the object of this study, the book itself is large and utilizes thick, glossy paper that allows for clear reproduction of the 125 (including 10 in color) illustrations, not including the translations, which are essentially illustrations themselves. This makes it a grand showcase for a genre that continues to be downplayed, both in Japan as well as abroad. It also makes for a heavy volume that readers will not be disposed to carrying around for perusal at the beach or even in one’s dorm room, for that matter. I hope that a smaller, more physically accessible edition might appear (perhaps online) so that electronic tablet users can learn from and enjoy this study as much as those with patience and physical strength can in the current bound hardcover format.