Factbook

A Dynamic Compendium of Interesting Japanese Literary and Publishing Facts
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    The commercial connections between Japan’s publishing industry and Onsen (hot springs) go back a long way and are highly creative[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Besides having thousands of publishing companies, Japan also boasts more than 26,000 hot springs and thousands of resorts and hotels with dedicated thermal baths and hot springs, known as onsen. 

    According to official data, these resorts and hotels welcome guests for more than 137 million nights each year. This has created a significant opportunity for publishers who have been publishing dedicated guidebooks since at least the 1850s, to meet the information needs of both tourists and resorts by promoting and distinguishing these locations by throwing light on their attractive and desirable features. 

    Books about tojiba, places for recuperation, have been published since short trips to hot springs first became popular and practical, for some, in Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1868). 

    Two well-known examples of publications from the Edo Period are Ryoko yojinshu by Yasumi Keizan and Azumakoakindokagami edited by Ko Ryozan, published in 1810 and 1855 respectively. 

    Japanese publishers employed a creative approach when ranking hot springs and resorts by using a system known as banzuke. This bestows on these locations the same titles used to grade and rank sumo wrestlers. Such titles as Yokozuna, grand champion, for example.

    These types of publishing strategies were deployed in Japan long before the famous Michelin restaurant guide was published in 1900, which awards and ranks restaurants with stars. 

    Japan’s early hot spring publications also included traditional woodblock prints of popular resorts by renowned artists, like Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858). These often included kimono-wearing women enjoying themselves as well as maps and illustrations of inns, rivers, scenic views and mountains. 

    The development of Japan’s railways in the Meiji Era (1868-1912) made much of Japan accessible for local tourists and travelers.  And by Japan’s Taisho Period (1912-1916) guidebooks covering hot springs throughout Japan had been published. 

    Unsurprisingly, hot springs have featured in many important books by leading Japanese authors. Two important examples are Botchan by Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) and Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972). Snow Country, set at an onsen, is probably the best known of these. 

    These books have had a major impact. Dogo Onsen on the Japanese island Shikoku, which was featured in the novel by Soseki, for instance, became the inspiration for Aburaya, the spiritual bathhouse featured in Hayao Miyazaki’ s internationally acclaimed animation Spirited Away. The Japanese Imperial family has stayed at this hot spring. As a result, Dogo Onsen, one of Japan’s oldest hot spring resorts, has been designated a National Important Cultural Property. It has also been awarded 3 stars by the Michelin Green Guide. 

    Snow Country, set in a different region of Japan known for its heavy snowfall, helped Kawabata become the first Japanese person to win the Nobel Prize In Literature in 1968. 

    Another Japanese author who is often used to promote tourism and hot springs, is Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933). Known for his children’s book The Night on the Milky Way Train, he was born and brought up in Iwate Prefecture where monuments, museums, trains and hot springs are promoted to visitors as a heady cocktail of beauty, relaxation and fantasy.

    The commercial connections between Japan’s publishing industry and Onsen (hot springs) go back a long way and are highly creative Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Tokyo’s oldest western-style bar, Kamiya, was the favourite watering hole of several of Japan’s literary greats[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Opened in the 1880s, Kamiya Bar in Tokyo, a survivor of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 that killed more than 100,000 people and the devastating firebombs of the Second World War, is said to be the oldest western-style bar in Japan.

    Located in the heart of Asakusa, it is something of a legend among publishers and bookworms because some of Japan’s most famous authors drank there. Among them were Yasunari Kawabata (1899-19723), winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature, Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965), Kafu Nagai (1879-1959) and Yukio Mishima (1925-1970). 

    The bar is also famous for its retro cafeteria–like feel; and its all-important original cocktail Denki Bran, electric brandy – a brandy based cocktail that is served nowhere else in Japan. Due to Denki Bran’s unusual flavour and strength, connoisseurs recommend drinking it with a beer chaser.

    The bar, which consists of three floors, is still in its original location, but has been rebuilt several times since the 1880s. 

    Another of Tokyo’s famous literary watering holes is Lupin, founded in 1928, where a more conventional cocktail, the Moscow Mule, is the recommended beverage.  It is served in a copper mug.

    Located in Ginza, Lupin is close to the former office of an important Japanese publisher, andis said to have been a popular location for Osamu Dazai (1909-1948), who has been dubbed Japan’s ultimate bad boy novelist, and his friends; as well as other authors like Ango Sakaguchi (1906-1955), and artists. 

    Several other bars including one at the Hill Top Hotel, a popular Tokyo hotel amongst publishers and authors, are often mentioned in the same breath by Japan’s drinking literati. However, none serve electric brandy.

     

    Tokyo’s oldest western-style bar, Kamiya, was the favourite watering hole of several of Japan’s literary greats Posted by Richard Nathan
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    In 1870s Japan Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ was popular amongst young male students[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Isabella L. Bird (1831-1904) records a visit to a bookshop in Japan in the 1870s in Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: An account of Travels on Horseback in the interior including visits to the aborigines of Yezo and the Shrines of Nikko and Ise, in which she writes about her conversation with a bookseller:

    “He has translations of some of the works of Huxley, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, which he says, are bought by the young men attending the higher school.

    “The Origin of the Species has the largest sale. This man asked me many questions about the publishing and bookselling trade in England, and Ito acquitted himself admirably as an interpreter.

    “He had not a single book on any subject connected with religion”.

    Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) On the Origin of Species was published on 24 November 1859 by John Murray, seventeen years before Bird, a British explorer and travel writer, arrived in Japan.

    In 1870s Japan Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ was popular amongst young male students Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Shugoro Yamamoto who refused to accept any literary prizes while alive ironically had one named after him after his death[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Shugoro Yamamoto (1903-1967), was not just a respected author of novels and short stories, and one of multiple pen names used by Satomu Shimizu, he was a key creative collaborator of Japan’s most famous filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), who also loved and valued reading. 

    Shimizu inspired many, not just Kurosawa who adapted his works for film, but others such as Takeshi Miike, famous internationally for his film Audition, and who adapted Yamamoto’s 1963 book Sabu for film. 

    Ironically, despites refusing to accept any of the literary awards he won during his lifetime, including the Naoki Prize, one of Japan’s most prestigious, he has a literary award named after him, the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize, launched in 1988. 

    It is awarded annually for new works of fiction exemplifying the art of storytelling. Past winners have included Banana Yoshimoto for Tugumi and Kazufumi Shiraishi for Remove That Arrow from Deep in My Heart.

    Shugoro Yamamoto who refused to accept any literary prizes while alive ironically had one named after him after his death Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Shakespeare was already being used as a student text at the Imperial University Tokyo in 1878[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Despite the first William Shakespeare (1564-1616) play only being translated into Japanese in 1883, 267 years after Shakespeare’s death, his plays were already being used as a student text at the Imperial University Tokyo in 1878. 

    The American William Houghton (1852-1917), a Yale graduate who arrived at the university in 1877, is thought by historians to be the first lecturer or at least one of the first to use Shakespeare to teach at the university. 

    Around this period many who would subsequently go on to have a lasting impact on Japanese literature were students at the university. 

    Shoyo Tsubouchi (1859-1935), for instance, a Japanese writer and translator and later a professor at Waseda University, a prestigious private university in Tokyo, who completed the first translation of the complete works of Shakespeare in 1928, was a student at the Imperial University Tokyo graduating in 1883. 

    Another important example is Soseki Natsume (1867-1916), one of Japan’s most highly regarded authors, who entered the University one year after Tsubouchi graduated in 1884, and is said to have been strongly influenced by Shakespeare’s techniques. To name just two such individuals. 

    Interestingly, Soseki later succeeded Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), one of the most famous Japanologists to have lived as a lecturer in the university’s English department in 1903.

    Shakespeare was already being used as a student text at the Imperial University Tokyo in 1878 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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    William Shakespeare and the first Tokugawa Shogun are linked by one very important fact[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]

    Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543-1616), who founded a military state and a dynasty of shoguns that lasted 265 years, would not look out of place in one of Shakespeare’s Machiavellian plays. 

    Most of Shakespeare’s works were produced between 1589-1613 when Tokugawa was busy building alliances and fighting historically important battles in feudal Japan. 

    In 1603, when Tokugawa became the first Tokugawa Shogun, it is very unlikely that Shakespeare would have known anything about this samurai warlord who fought six major battles in his lifetime before initiating Japan’s longest period of peace and stability. 

    Had he known, he might have written a play about this warlord to complement such plays as The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, with a narrative that revolves around the themes of loyalty, patience and opportunistic cunning.

    The decisive battle involving 160,000 men that gave Tokugawa control of Japan was fought in 1600 at Sekigahara around the time that Shakespeare was writing Hamlet – and a few years before he penned Macbeth.  

    Tokugawa understood the importance of literature and was interested in the world outside Japan. King James I exchanged letters and gifts, including Japanese armour and a silver telescope, with him. And it is possible, but unlikely, that Tokugawa might have been made aware of Shakespeare through William Adams (1564-1620) the English navigator from Kent who become an important advisor to the Shogun on all things Western. 

    During his lifetime, Shakespeare did not enjoy the reputation he does today, and was considered by his contemporaries as one of many talented playwrights active at that time. Adams, whose life was fictionalized in the 1975 novel Shogun by James Clavell (1924-1994), arrived in Japan in 1600. The Bard of Avon’s popularity and reputation would have been growing but really only took off and became established after the publication in 1623 of Shakespeare‘s works in the First Folio, three years after Adams’s death. 

    Interestingly, when the Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) adapted Shakespeare’s plays into films set in Japan, he set them in feudal Japan during the Senkoku period (1467-1603), which ended when Tokugawa came to power and the Edo Period (1603-1868) commenced. 

    Kurosawa’s first adaptation was Macbeth in 1957, which became The Throne of Blood. He then went on to make other successful films based on Shakespeare’s plays including King Lear and Hamlet. 

    Aside from the links between the dramatic narratives that featured in both Shakespeare’s plays and the events in Tokugawa’s life, the one uncanny fact that unites the two men is the year of their death: 1616. 

    Despite Tokugawa’s much riskier lifestyle, the warlord died at the age of 74, while Shakespeare died at the age of 52. Both men, however, left remarkable legacies that still resonate with students and academics today.

    William Shakespeare and the first Tokugawa Shogun are linked by one very important fact Posted by Richard Nathan
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    For a thousand years ‘The Tale of Genji’ was required reading for Japanese aristocratic women[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]

    The Tale of Genji written by Murasaki Shikibu, in 1010, during Japan’s Heian Period (794-1185) is said to be Japan’s oldest novel and perhaps even the world’s oldest novel, if a novel is defined as narrative prose of significant length.

    It has been since its very origin a tale for Japan’s high society, written for women by a woman. For a thousand years The Tale of Genji was required reading for Japanese aristocratic women, and was inaccessible to the general Japanese public for much of this time.

    According to academics: “it remained an aristocratic text, its manuscripts the property of aristocrats and aristocrats its principal interpreters.”

    That said, from the 17th century onwards it became more widely available after an edition was printed using movable type, a technology, which first arrived in Japan in 1593, and subsequently in woodblock printed editions.

    And due to its restricted availability, the refinement it portrays and its association with the highest and most sophisticated levels of Japanese society, it became an aspirational read for emerging upwardly mobile Japanese families in Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868) and their daughters, as well as an important tool in women’s education. Home teachers, often women used the text to teach girls reading and as part of their overall education.

    According to the Japan expert and former Editor of The New York Review of Books, Ian Buruma, The Tale of Genji, which is replete with rather promiscuous characters, is a novel all “about the art of seduction.”  And this has led, at times, to concerns being raised about the appropriateness of its content. In 1880s Japan, for instance, many worried that its lusty and emotional content might damage Meiji era (1868-1912) young women.

    This, however, didn’t put future generations of Japanese women off from wanting to read it. Hisako Yoshizawa (1918-2019) is one such interesting example. She is more famous for writing and publishing life style books and broadcasting on how to live a good life, but at the end of the Second World War durning nightly air raids, wearing her silk nightgown and a steel helmet, Yoshizawa, reportedly, liked to read The Tale of Genji to while the noisy dangerous nights away.   

    All this has helped make this 11th century tale by a Japanese noblewoman, an international publishing sensation, with translations, spin-offs and adaptations for manga, anime, film and theatre.

    Such authors as Mitsuyo Kakuta have followed a long tradition of Japan’s leading authors from each generation in updating and publishing a new version of this seductive novel about the life of “Shinning Genji”.

    This multi-generational trend has helped keep the rather long and esoteric tale, which in its original version consists of 54 scrolls or chapters; around a million words; about 430 different characters; 800 poems; as well as 8 or so love interests, fresh, and relevant to contemporary readers – while helping to expand its readership.

    For a thousand years ‘The Tale of Genji’ was required reading for Japanese aristocratic women Posted by Richard Nathan