Factbook

A Dynamic Compendium of Interesting Japanese Literary and Publishing Facts
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    Japanese officials handed out a novel by Banana Yoshimoto at the 1993 Tokyo G-7 Summit[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Long before Japan’s Foreign Ministry had developed its official Japan Brand Program (a framework it uses today), in the 1990s its officials decided to hand out hundreds of copies of a newly translated novel, Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto with media packs to the hundreds of international journalists attending the 1993 Tokyo Group of Seven (G7) summit. 

    The novel, which was especially popular in Italy, one of the Group of Seven nations, where an edition was published in Italian translated by Giorgio Amitrano in 1993, helped Banana Yoshimoto to become Japan’s first author to “go-global”, a feat that perhaps only Haruki Murakami has managed to replicate since. The novel sold more than 90,000 copies in Italy alone and sold well in many other international markets. 

    It wasn’t just the Japanese Foreign Ministry that promoted the book. International publishers also invested heavily in the book’s marketing at a time when Japan’s economic bubble was starting to deflate. This said, international interest in Japan (a nation that some thought was about to overtake the United States to become the world’s new economic superpower), was still extremely high.

    This young Asian woman with the odd sounding name Banana, who found comfort in kitchens, sparked international curiosity and fame. Long before Japan’s so-called lost decades when interest in Japan alongside its economy declined. 

    When the book was initially published in Japan in 1988 it triggered an amazing response that was dubbed by the media as Bananamania. The novel went on to win several literary awards and establish Yoshimoto’s reputation as an important contemporary Japanese author.  

    Kitchen, which was Yoshimoto’s debut novel, has now been adapted for both film and television and is often included on must read book lists by Japanese authors helping position Yoshimoto alongside Haruki Murakami as one of Japan’s two most famous and global contemporary authors.

    Japanese officials handed out a novel by Banana Yoshimoto at the 1993 Tokyo G-7 Summit Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan’s first manga obscenity trial took place in 2002[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    It took half a century, 51 years, from Japan’s first post-war obscenity trial for the first manga obscenity trial to take place. The erotic adult comic book, Misshitsu, Honey Room, written by Yuji Suwa, using the pen name Beauty Hair, achieved this questionable historic honour in 2002.

    The case, which initially took place at the Tokyo District Court, was concluded after an appeal at the High Court and final escalation to the Supreme Court in 2007. The author and the manga’s publisher were both found guilty.

    Besides being the first trial of an obscene manga, of which there have been many since, this was the first obscenity trial in at least two decades in Japan.

    The similarities and differences between the translation of D.H. Lawrence’s (1885-1930) Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which triggered Japan’s firstpost-war obscenity trial in 1951, are noteworthy. Both depict anal sex; one with extreme graphics and the other through written prose. In their defence, Japan’s colourful erotic publishing history was unsuccessfully cited as an acceptable precedent.

    The defence team used the fact that shunga, erotic woodblock prints, were not only published in Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1688) but were also reproduced and  circulated in contemporary Japan. Nevertheless, at all three levels of court, the defendants were found guilty. 

    It was a precedent setting series of trials defining the limits on what manga publishers can legally publish. Experts expect similar trials in the future to set similar parameters for anime, and digital publishing on mobile phones and the Internet. 

    The case also created another interesting event for scholars and students of censorship, Japanese media studies and Japan to research. Kristen Cather, for example, documents and discusses this case in detail in her well-researched book The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan.

     

    Japan’s first manga obscenity trial took place in 2002 Posted by Richard Nathan
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    In the 1700s, publishing books that broke Japan’s censorship rules could get an author or publisher executed[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Commercial publishing in Japan started in 1609, during Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1868), but as the number of publishers grew alongside increasing literary rates so did censorship. 

    The Shogunate authorities (the government) outsourced much of their required publishing, such as directories, maps and calendars; and the encouragement of publishing by the most famous Shogun, Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543-1616), is credited with enhancing the longevity of the regime and the Tokugawa Period (1603-1867). 

    However, the ruthlessness of the samurai-run regime and the need to meet the increasing demand for news about social changes, power-politics and scandals, meant that entrepreneurial publishers and authors were not able to use similar approaches to the tabloids and scandal sheets of today.

    They had to be much more creative to avoid censorship and harsh punishment. 

    According to historians and academics, they got round these rules by masking political commentary. For example, within fantasy storytelling, Kabuki plays and other formats including so-called yellow books, Kibyoshi, were a particularly successful format. 

    There was significant self-censorship and guilds were formed to deal with the authorities and also new competitors. The charge of obscenity was often bandied about and used in a wider definition than that of today to deal with publishers who works used satire to mask criticism of government policy and officials.

    Nonetheless, publishing was a dangerous pursuit. Baba Bunko (1718-1758), a famous storyteller and lecturer, who some academics suspect may have been a Christian who hid his faith and whose work is included in the canon of important Christian authors of Japan, was tried and executed for his satire and publications. 

    He is probably best known for Contemporary Edo: An Album of One Hundred Monsters (Todai Edo hyaku bakemono, 1758), in which struggles with ‘monsters’, expose the hypocrisy of well-known and lesser-known officials of the government and Confucian teachers, and other religious leaders of the time. 

    Capital punishment still exists in Japan today and Bunko is not the only Japanese author or man of letters who has got into trouble, and been executed.

    A few other notable examples include Ikki Kita (1883-1937) a critic of Japan’s Emperor system, Takiji Kobayashi (1900-1933) a proletariat author tortured to death by the Tokyo police, Hitoshi Igarashi (1947-1991) a Japanese professor who was murdered for translating Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses into Japanese and Norio Nagayama (1949-1997) a bestselling novelist who went on a killing spree and was executed for his crimes.

     

    In the 1700s, publishing books that broke Japan’s censorship rules could get an author or publisher executed Posted by Richard Nathan
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    The arrival of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Japan in 1895 spawned thousands of translations and adaptions – with more Japanese translations than any other language[UPDATED: 3-31-2026]

    According to some academics the first Japanese translations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) appeared in two Japanese magazines in serial form in 1895 and 1899, Shonen Sekai (A Boy’s World) and Shojo Sekai (Girl’s World).

    These translations, however, have little resemblance to Carroll’s original, published in 1865, in English, by Macmillan.

    In fact, there were several early Japanese translations and adaptations, and an edition published in 1920, with the title Fushigi no Kuni, Wonderland, is also sometimes cited as the first Japanese translation of Carroll’s work.

    That said, according to Japan’s National Diet Library, the first full and complete translation, in which the whole story of the original was translated faithfully, was published in 1910.

    A copy of this edition, Aichan no yume monogatari. containing copies of John Tenniel’s (1820-1914) famous original illustrations, translated by Eikan Maruyama and published by Nagai Shuppan Kyokai, is accessible online at the library.

    It has been widely commented that in some of these early translations changes were made not just because of the difficulty in rendering the story in Japanese, but also, according to some commentators, to reflect Japanese traditions of the time, such as Alice not arguing with the Mad Hatter,  “because it would be improper to disrespect one’s elders” and the Hatter not offering Alice tea, probably because it was “inappropriate for men to serve food or drinks to women in Japan” at that time.

    This and the story itself has helped spawn a burning desire amongst many to try and create the prefect translation, or a brilliant creative adaptation, or an unusual homage that challenges society’s expectations, a rabbit hole of a challenge that some of Japanese most famous and highly-regarded authors, including Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) and Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), have felt compelled to go down.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has created a field day for many including academic researchers who have written papers and arranged conferences on the topic such as: Being Alice in Japan: performing a cute, ‘girlish’ revolt; Alice in evasion: adapting Lewis Carroll in Japan; and Alice in Wonderland in Japan: Contemporary media and Carroll’s creation.

    There are now literally thousands of translations, more than 1,271 at pixel time, according to Wikipedia. And there have been many other types of creative adaptations by artists like Yayoi Kusama, as well as many manga and anime versions. So much so that a special section titled Through the Looking-Glass and into Manga was included at The British Museum’s landmark 2019 exhibition on manga in London.

    The arrival of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Japan in 1895 spawned thousands of translations and adaptions – with more Japanese translations than any other language Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan’s two oldest history books were translated into English for the first time by two British Japanologists in 1882 and 1896[UPDATED: 3-31-2026]

    The best sources for myths about the foundation of the Land of the Rising Sun are two early chronicles, the Kojiki, the Record of Ancient Things, and the Nihongi, the Japanese Chronicles.

    The Koji was complied in 712 and is the oldest extant Japanese book, while the Nihongi, the second oldest book of ‘classical Japanese history’, was compiled in 720 eight years later.

    Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935), an academic and son of an Admiral who taught at Tokyo Imperial University and translated haiku amongst other things after arriving in Japan in 1873, was the first person to translate the Kojiki into English. His translation was published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, in 1882.

    The Nihongi was translated into English by a contemporary, William George Aston (1841-1911), another 19th century British Japanologist, who started his Japan-related career in 1864 as a student translator at the British Legation, the precursor to the British Embassy in Tokyo.

    Aston’s translation was published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1896.

    That said, the oldest surviving Japanese book is not a book about Japan and its history, but a religious text written in 615. It is owned by Japan’s Imperial Family.

    Japan’s two oldest history books were translated into English for the first time by two British Japanologists in 1882 and 1896 Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Kitazawa Rakuten created Japan’s ‘first serialised comic’ in the 1890s[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]

    Kitazawa Rakuten (1876-1955) created Japan’s ‘first serialised comic’ in the 1890s for Box of Curios, a paper set up by the Australian political cartoonist and printer Frank Arthur Nankivell (1869-1956).

    Rakuten joined the Tokyo-based English language publication, Box of Curios, in 1895, and is said to have been the first professional Japanese cartoonist in Japan, as well as the very first to use the term ‘manga’ in its modern sense.

    That said, many have contributed to Japan’s long history of visual storytelling and some experts like to highlight the links back to famous Japanese woodblock artists, such as Santo Kyoden (1761-1816) and Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), who both knew and used the term manga.

    They are, however, thought to have used the word manga to mean drawing, casually and spontaneously, according to experts such as Ryoko Matsuba, and not in the way the word manga is used today, to describe Japanese-style visual storytelling, even if their artwork has indirectly inspired many manga artists and storytellers.

    Kitazawa Rakuten was actually the pen name of Yusuji Kitazawa, an artist known today for both his nihonga and manga art. 

    Interestingly, Rakuten shares his name, written using the same letters, with Rakuten one of Japan’s largest Internet companies founded much later in 1997. The name, Rakuten, literally means happy heavens, and is often said to mean optimism.

    Amongst his many creative pursuits, Rakuten, the artist, launched his own publication, called Tokyo Puck, named after Puck, America’s first commercially successful humour magazine, which Nankivell contributed to after he moved to the United States from Japan.

    Rakuten is also remembered for creating an early female character called Haneko Tonda, Hopping-Jumping Girl in 1928, about a tomboyish schoolgirl, as well as Teino Nukesaku, Foolish Wooden-Head, a male character.

    Jiji Manga, a Sunday colour supplement included in the newspaper Jiji Shimpo, launched by Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901), was one of the first publications in Japan to use the word manga in its title.  It was launched in 1902.

    Rakuten contributed to this publication and copies of his work included in Jiji Manga are now part of The British Museum’s collection in London, highlighting the importance of his contribution to publishing and manga, as well as the growing interest outside Japan in manga amongst academics and curators, as well as fans.

    This goes some way in explaining Rakuten’s moniker as the Grandfather of Japanese manga, which has itself been dubbed the visual lingua franca of Japan.

    Rakuten, the company, is the owner of Kobo one of the world’s leading digital reading devices and the local competitor to Amazon in Japan and is also very much involved in publishing innovation and new forms of communication and storytelling like its cartoonist forbearer and namesake.

    Kitazawa Rakuten created Japan’s ‘first serialised comic’ in the 1890s Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Sherlock Holmes arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun in 1894 when a Japanese summary translation of ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ was published[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]

    The history of Sherlock Holmes in Japan goes back to 1894, when a Japanese summary translation of The Man with the Twisted Lip by Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was published in the January issue of Nippon-jin. It was originally published in English in the Strand Magazine in 1891.

    A few years later in April 1899, the Mainichi Shimbun, a major national newspaper, began a three-month series featuring an anonymous adaptation of A Study in Scarlet.

    However, the first complete Japanese translation of a Homles story, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was published in another newspaper in 1899 and the first book length translation in 1907.

    Ever since, Holmes has been massively popular in Japan. Adaptations, pastiches, parodies, manga, anime, TV dramas and a large number of research papers on Holmes and Victorian society and culture have been produced.

    Papers in Japanese include, for example, The London of Natsume Soseki and Holmes, A Comparative Study of Japanese Translation Techniques in Holmes Stories, The Influences of Holmes Stories on Japanese Mysteries and many others.

    Other British mystery and detective writers including Agatha Christie (1890-1976), have been and continue to be popular in Japan but none seem to have had the impact as Holmes or generated as many studies and spin-offs.

    The only comparable character from a book by a British author is probably Lewis Carroll’s (1832-1898) Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was published in English in 1865, before the very first Holmes story, which first appeared in print in 1887.

    Sherlock Holmes arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun in 1894 when a Japanese summary translation of ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ was published Posted by Richard Nathan
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    The complete works of Shakespeare were published in Japanese translation in 1928 for the first time[UPDATED: 2-18-2026]

    In 1928 Shoyo Tsubouchi (1859-1935), a Japanese writer and translator and professor at Waseda University, who is famous for many things including first proposing that the term shosetsu be adopted as the standard Japanese translation for the English word novel, completed the first ever translation of the complete works of William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) into Japanese.

    Tsubouchi was aged 70 at the time of the publication. He translated his first Shakespeare play, Julius Cesar, 44 years earlier in 1884 when he was 26.

    Tsubouchi, was the authority on all things Shakespeare at Waseda University, an important private university in Tokyo, and was even offered the job at one stage of president of the university, but he refused deciding his time would be better spent completing his translations of all of Shakespeare’s plays.

    Tsubouchi’s long and enduring dedication to the Bard allowed readers in Japan to read all of Shakespeare’s plays in Japanese for the very first time, 267 years after Shakespeare’s death.

    Tsubouchi constantly worked on revisions, edits, and amendments, and a revised set of translations was published in 1935, three months after his death.

    Soseki Natsume (1867-1916), one of Japan’s most highly regarded authors, who unlike Tsubouchi, studied in London and who interestingly had a tutor when he was based in London who was editor of Arden’s Shakespeare famously criticized Tsubouchi translation of Hamlet.

    According to Shakespeare’s Asian Journeys edited by Bi-Qi Beatrice Lei, Judy Celine Ick and Poonam Trivedi, Soseki had a profound knowledge of Shakespeare and used his technique in his creative works, but never actually translated his plays into Japanese.

    While Tsubouchi, on the other hand, was not a believer in the need for or importance of direct translation.

    The complete works of Shakespeare were published in Japanese translation in 1928 for the first time Posted by Richard Nathan