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Early Meiji Manga: The Political Cartoons of Kanagaki Robun and Kawanabe Kyôsai

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Book cover Rewriting History in Manga

Part of the book series: East Asian Popular Culture ((EAPC))

Abstract

The origins of manga are intimately linked to non-sanctioned narratives of contemporary political and cultural history. Shimizu Isao has called Kanagaki Robun’s and Kawanabe Kyôsai’s Eshinbun nipponchi (1874, 絵新聞日本地 Illustrated Japan News) the “first” manga magazine (Shimizu 2006). Shimizu defines early or “first” manga as demarcated by a combination of graphic and textual elements, and distinguished by their connection to current events and politics. Manga of the Meiji period (1868–1912) thus shares an intertwined history with the development of newspapers and periodicals in late nineteenth-century Japan. Theorizing the major difference between what he terms “Edo manga” and modern manga, Shimizu claims that the defining difference arises from the use of contemporary issues as modern manga’s subject matter (Shimizu 1986:1). It is precisely its engagement with history that defines Meiji manga.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Brienza cites the separate scholarship of Roland Kelts, Kaoru Misaka, and Susan Napier for this summation of the appeal of contemporary Japanese pop culture in general, and manga in particular (Brienza 2009: 103).

  2. 2.

    For more information on kibyôshi, see Kern 2006 and Tanahashi 1997.

  3. 3.

    See Marran (2007) and Strecher (2004) for more detailed discussions of Robun’s style of reportage in conjunction with the Takahashi O-den story.

  4. 4.

    Dajare can be thought of as frivolous word play and is defined by Indra Levy as “both a habit of spoken language and a characteristic feature of popular Edo fiction” (Levy 2006: 46).

  5. 5.

    While the influence of Japan Punch on Robun and Kyôsai’s Eshinbun nipponchi is well documented, further scholarship is needed to explore the possible link between the Illustrated London News and Eshinbun nipponchi. From the 1850s onward, Charles Wirgman was a contributing correspondent to the Illustrated London News, and the name of this influential periodical is repurposed as Illustrated Japan News (Eshinbun nipponchi) by Robun and Kyôsai.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Denver, Denver, USA

    Orna Shaughnessy

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  1. Orna Shaughnessy
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Nissim Otmazgin

  2. Dept of Japanese Studies,, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Rebecca Suter

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© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)

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Shaughnessy, O. (2016). Early Meiji Manga: The Political Cartoons of Kanagaki Robun and Kawanabe Kyôsai. In: Otmazgin, N., Suter, R. (eds) Rewriting History in Manga. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55143-6_3

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