Kibyōshi
Kibyōshi (黄表紙) is a genre of Japanese picture book (草双紙, kusazōshi) produced during the middle of the Edo period (1603–1867),[1] from 1775 to the early 19th century.
[2] Considered to be the first purely adult comicbook in Japanese literature, a large picture spanned each page, with descriptive prose and dialogue filling the blank spaces in the image.
Due to the numerous characters and letters in the Japanese language, moveable type took longer to catch on in Japan; it was easier to carve the text directly onto the same wood block as the illustration.
Known for its satirical view of and commentary on flaws in contemporary society, these books focused primarily on urban culture, with most early works writing about the pleasure quarters.
[8] The first major kibyōshi to be published was Kinkin sensei eiga no yume, often translated as Master Flashgold's Splendiferous Dream, by Koikawa Harumachi in 1775.
It combined the wit and subject matter of fashionbooks with the graphic nature of the otogi-zōshi to retell the classic noh drama Kantan in contemporary Edo.
Other authors were keen to follow his lead, including Santō Kyōden, Shiba Zenkō, Ōta Nanpo, and Hōseidō Kisanji, all of whom got their start during this period.
Early kibyōshi targeted an educated audience, as evidenced by allusions made to "old-fashioned" theatre, such as noh and kyōgen, in Master Flashgold and Travelogue, and kabuki being used as a major plot point in Dreamers.
It contains political overtones regarding the class system, as the protagonist Enjirō tries desperately to live the life of the romantic heroes of kabuki plays and ballads, despite being a merchant's son; he is firmly put back in his place at the end of the story.
These kibyōshi were written during an intense period of social unrest; Japan was afflicted with natural catastrophes, such as floods, volcanoes, cold weather, earthquakes, and draught, leading to high commodity prices as famine struck the country, causing an estimated one million citizens to starve to death.
Popular subjects to satirize included the Tokugawa regime, bad blood between Tanuma Okitsugu and Sono Zanzaemon Masakoto, devaluation of the silver coin, and Neo-Confucian policies advocated during the Kansei Reforms, based on a sampling of major works.
His piece Swaggering Headbands: A Chronicle of Urban Knight-Errantry in a Peaceful Realm (Kyan taiheiki mukō hachimaki), published in 1799, actually incited physical violence.
[17] Without political and social satire as fodder, authors were forced to go back to parodying earlier kibyōshi and other written formats, which grew tedious fast.
As authors attempted to expand the reader base across different classes and education levels, the jokes, allusions, and humour were inevitably dumbed down.
Sugiura Hinako improved upon this concept when publishing her rendition of Master Flashgold, by replacing the sprawling script with her own less curvaceous, more legible handwriting.
Thus, the next type of woodblock comics, kurohon, or "black books", feature more complicated retellings of kabuki and puppet plays, heroic legends and military accounts, while still being easy to read.
