Resources
A free online class taught by leading experts of Japanese book history from Keio University.
Eastern Culture Nucleus: Chinese Rare Books in the USC Libraries
A digital exhibit highlighting Chinese rare books at USC which can be explored by date, subject, or printing technique.
General overview of Japanese book history:
Kornicki, Peter F. The Book in Japan: a Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. University of Hawai’i Press, 2000.
Prehistory of writing and books in China. The transmission of writing and books from China to Japan:
Xiao, Dongfa. 2009. From oracle bones to e-publications: three millennia of publishing in China. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. Chapter One: “The Era of Oracle Bones, Bamboo and Silk, 21st - 2nd Century BC,” pp. 19-36.
Kornicki, Peter F. The Book in Japan: a Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. University of Hawai’i Press, 2000. Chapter Seven: “Transmission to Japan,” pp. 277-292.
Book forms in Japan:
Kornicki, Peter F. The Book in Japan: a Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. University of Hawai’i Press, 2000. Chapter Two: “Books as Material Objects,” pp. 39-77.
The relationship between gender and writing in Japan:
Yoda, Tomiko. "Literary History Against the National Frame, or Gender and the Emergence of Heian Kana Writing." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 8, no. 2 (January 9, 2000): pp. 465–497.
The relationship between books, printing, and Buddhism in Japan:
Kornicki, Peter F. The Book in Japan: a Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. University of Hawai’i Press, 2000. Chapter Four “Printed Books,” pp. 112-124.
Kornicki, Peter. "The Hyakumantō Darani and the Origins of Printing in Eighth-Century Japan." International Journal of Asian Studies 9, no. 1 (January 2012): pp. 43–70.
Manuscript culture:
Kornicki, Peter F. The Book in Japan: a Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. University of Hawai’i Press, 2000. Chapter Three: “Manuscript Culture,” pp. 78-98.
Kornicki, Peter F. "Manuscript Not Print: Scribal Culture in the Edo Period."The Journal of Japanese Studies 32, no. 1 (January 1, 2006): pp. 23–52.
Print culture:
Kornicki, Peter F. The Book in Japan: a Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. University of Hawai’i Press, 2000. Chapter Five: “The Book Trade in the Tokugawa Period,” pp. 169-193.
Berry, Mary Elizabeth. Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 2006.
Kern, Adam L. Manga from the Floating World" Comicbook Culture and the Kibyōshi of Edo Japan. Cambridge (Massachusetts): Published by the Harvard University Asia Center, 2019.
Technologies of printing:
Kornicki, Peter F. The Book in Japan: a Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. University of Hawai’i Press, 2000. Chapter Four “Printed Books,” pp. 125-143.
Heijdra, Martin. “Technology, culture and economics: moveable type versus woodblock printing in East Asia.” In Studies of Publishing Culture in East Asia, edited by Isobe, Akira. Tokyo: Nigensha, 2004.
Kornicki, Peter F. The Book in Japan: a Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. University of Hawai’i Press, 2000. Chapter One “Literacy and Reading,” pp. 30-38 and Chapter Six “Authors and Readers,” pp. 251-278.
Rubinger, Richard. Popular Literacy in Early Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007.
Walthall, Anne. "Women and Literacy from Edo to Meiji." In The Female as Subject: Reading and Writing in Early Modern Japan., edited by Kornicki P. F., Patessio Mara, and Rowley G. G., Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010, pp. 215-236.
