Titles and Authors

 

The first place to turn for information on book titles, authors, holding libraries, and reprint editions is the monumental Kokusho sōmokuroku, the print edition of which has been largely superseded by the online version hosted by the National Institute of Japanese Literature.  More detailed information on authors, including the proper readings of names, can be found in names dictionaries and other more targeted reference works.  Refer to the bibliography below for details on these and other reference materials.

 

Format and Genre

 

The size of a woodblock-printed book is known as the format (shokei 書型).  Formats vary over a wide range, as the following images illustrate:

[image]

from right to left: (1) goku-ōhon (goku-ōbon), (2) ōhon (ōbon), (3) hanshibon,

(4) chūhon (chūbon), (5) kohon (kobon), (6) mamehon (large), (7) mamehon (small)

 

[image]

Books may also be printed in landscape format; these are referred to as yokohon 横本.

Aside from its use as a general classificatory tool, format is important (among other reasons) because of its close relationship to content.  One might go so far as to say that format—or at least the material qualities of a book as an object, including not only format but the number of fascicles and the color and design of the cover—superseded the concept of genre in the early modern mind.  Indeed, the characteristic physical qualities of the various Edo genres survive in many of the genre names used today.  There is the colorful menagerie of pictorial fiction including the akahon 赤本 (“red-book”), kurohon 黒本 (“black-book”), aohon 青本 (“blue-book”), and kibyōshi 黄表紙 (“yellow-cover”).  Other genres, such as the sharebon 洒落本 (“fashion-book”), kokkeibon 滑稽本 (“humor-book”), and ninjōbon 人情本 (“sentiment-book”), were in their day most often referred to by format simply as kohon or chūhon, the latter encompassing both the kokkeibon and the ninjōbon.  Even genres whose Edo-period names conveyed something of their literary content, such as the dangibon 談義本 (“sermon-book”), were typically closely associated with a unique physical presence.  The close relationship between materiality and genre is seen in the following diagram, which illustrates the most common physical characteristics of given genres:

 

 

                                                                                         from Fleming, Ph.D. dissertation, 233

 

Dating

Specific years are typically indicated by some combination of the era name and year number and/or the stem and/or branch from the Chinese hexagenary (sixty-year) cycle corresponding to that year (e.g. 天明七年, 天明七丁未, 天明丁未, 天明七未, or 天明未 for 1787).  A sample cycle is given below; the subtraction or addition of multiples of sixty allows the determination of stem-branch combinations for years not shown (e.g. for 1787, refer to 1847 instead):

Sixty-Year Cycle of Stems and Branches

[image]

The orthography of Edo-period books comprises an enormous range of forms and styles.  Chinese text appears in unannotated form or with reading marks (kunten 訓点) indicating Japanese reading order.  Furigana glosses are often present to provide guidance regarding Japanese pronunciation and meaning.  Some texts, such as most Edo children’s books, are written entirely or almost entirely in kana.  Most common is some variety of kanamajiri-bun 仮名交じり文, Japanese text featuring Chinese characters mixed with hiragana and/or katakana.  The characters themselves can appear in original or variant (often simplified) forms, the latter known as itaiji 異体字.

One also encounters styles such as seal script (tenji 篆字) and the abbreviated calligraphic forms known as kuzushiji 崩し字.  Edo works were not published in standardized, uniform typeface, as modern editions are.  (The moveable-type Saga-bon are an important exception, but even these sought to emulate the flowing ligatures of handwritten script.)  While the forms for katakana were more or less as they are today, hiragana drew on a much larger body of character-derived abbreviations than the standardized forms now in use.  The great profusion of such variants, known as hentaigana 変体仮名, is seen in the following table:

Variant Kana (Hentaigana)

[image]

Historical Kana Usage and Pronunciation

 

Whatever script is used, the kana usage in early modern materials follows the historical conventions known as rekishiteki kanazukai (lit. “historical kana usage”), which differ from present-day conventions (gendai kanazukai).  The major differences lie in the representation of vowels and may be summarized as follows:

 

 short vowels

i may be represented by い, ひ, or ゐ     u may be represented by う or ふ

e may be represented by え, へ, or ゑ     o may be represented by お, ほ, or を

ji may be represented by じ or ぢ     zu may be represented by ず or づ

sho is represented by しよ, cho by ちよ (likewise for sha, shu, cha, and chu)

jo may be represented by じよ or ぢよ (likewise for ja and ju)

は may represent ha or wa

 

 long vowels

ō may be represented by おう, あ/わう, あふ, お/をふ, or おほ

    similarly, for kō (likewise for other consonant + ō): こう, かう, かふ, こふ, or こほ

yō may be represented by よう, えう, えふ, やう, or よふ

    similarly, for kyō (likewise for other consonant + yō): きよう, けう, けふ, or きやう

    not to mention shō (likewise for chō): しよう, せう, せふ, or しやう

    and jō: じ/ぢよう, ぜ/でう, で/でふ, or じ/ぢやう

yū may be represented by ゆう, いう, いふ, or ゆふ

    similarly, for kyū (likewise for other consonant + yū): きゆう, きう, or きふ

    not to mention shū (likewise for chū): しゆう, しう, or しふ

    and jū: じ/ぢゆう, じ/ぢう, or じ/ぢふ

 

It should also be noted that premodern texts often leave out voicing marks, so it is up to the reader to determine from context whether, for example, かふ indicates kō, gō, kafu, gafu, kabu, or gabu.  As this suggests, in determining how to pronounce historical kana, particular attention should be paid to syllables in the ha column (i.e. はひふへほ).  Unless appearing at the beginning of a semantic unit, these are not pronounced as in modern Japanese.  Rather, the following rules apply (leaving aside the possibility of absent voicing marks):

 

は is read wa (not ha)            ex. あはれ = aware (not ahare)

ひ is read i (not hi)                ex. さぶらひ = saburai (not saburahi)

ふ is read u (not fu)               ex. わらふ = warau (not warafu), becomes warō (see below)

へ is read e (not he)　            ex. あへて = aete (not ahete)

ほ is read o (not ho)　            ex. いほり = iori (not ihori)

 

That is, in all of these examples the initial consonant is not pronounced and the kana is simply read as a vowel.

            Further changes in pronunciation take place when the vowel u (represented by ふ or う) is preceded within a semantic unit by the vowels a, e, or i, as follows:

 

①  a + u = ō

②  e + u = yō

③  i + u = yū

 

Thus, for ① we have, for instance:

 

笑ふ（わらふ）= warō (not warau)

従ふ（したがふ）= shitagō (not shitagau)

与ふ(あたふ) = atō (not atau)

給ふ（たまふ）= tamō (not tamau)

逢坂（あふさか）= Ōsaka (not Ausaka)

かうして = kō shite (not kau shite)

 

Exceptions occur in certain cases where ふ appears in the middle of a word.  For instance, we read:

 

仰ぐ（あふぐ）= not ōgu or augu, but aogu

倒る（たふる）= not tōru or tauru, but taoru

 

For ② we have the following examples:

 

今日（けふ）= kyō (not keu or kefu)

どうせう = dō shō (not dō seu)

憂ふ（うれふ）= uryō (not ureu, even though this is how it is read in modern Japanese)

 

And for ③ we have the following:

 

            言ふ（いふ）= yū (not iu)

九（きう）= kyū (not kiu)