Factbook

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    Literary journals, often run by like-minded individuals helped mature and modernise Japanese literature from the 1890s onwards[UPDATED: 11-10-2026]

    The publication of Japan’s first modern short story, Maihime (The Dancing Girl) by Mori Ogai (1862-1922) in 1890, had a major impact on Japanese creative writing – helping spawn a new type of modern literature in Japan. Ogai also launched a literary journal, Shigarami Soshi, Literary Screen, in 1889, one year before the short story’s publication. 

    Literary movements in Japan have often been centred on particular universities or groups of individuals and two Tokyo-based private universities helped mature and modernise Japanese literature after the publication of Maihime: Waseda and Keio University.

    Literary journals, which are still important in Japan today, played a key role in this. Of particular importance was Waseda Bungaku, founded in 1891, one year after the publication of Maihime, by Hogestu Shimamura (1871-1918). It is still published today. 

    Like-minded groups from one university or one high school often working together on publications, such as the magazine published by Waseda and Garakuta Bunko, Library of Odds and Ends, (1885-1889), which was initially handwritten, helped creative writing develop and evolve in Japan.

    Older than Ogai’s Shigarami Soshi and Waeada Bungaku, Garakuta Bunko is often cited as Japan’s first specialist literary journal. 

    Subsequently, the Keio University magazine, Mita Bungaku, founded in 1910 by Mantaro Kubota (1889-1963), with the help of the novelist Kafu Nagai (1879-1959), has played a similar role. 

    Another interesting magazine launched around this time by five pioneering feminists, was Seito, Blue Stocking, in September 1911. It was named after the 18th century British Blue Stocking Society.

    In its first issue Raicho Hiratsuka (1886-1971) wrote: ‘In the beginning Woman was the Sun. She was the genuine being. Now woman is the Moon. She lives through others and glitters through the mastery of others. She has a pallor like that of the ill. Now we must restore our hidden Sun.’ The publication was controversial with several issues being banned by the authorities. It folded in February 1916. 

    These publications allowed aspiring writer and more established ones to share their work with like-minded people, creating new trends and distinct phases in Japanese literature be they realism, naturalism, anti-realism or feminism.

    They also introduced works by trend-setting Western authors to Japan in translation such as James Joyce’s (1882-1941) experimental full-length novel Finnegans Wake in Waseda Bungaku, which was said at the time to be untranslatable. 

    The Literature department at Waseda, which the not-for-profit Waseda Bungaku is part of has educated and been associated with many important Japanese writers including, for instance, Doppo Kunikida (1871-1908), Edogawa Rampo (1894-1965), Yoko Ogawa, Haruki Murakami and Mitsuyo Kakuta, whose early works were published in Waseda Bungaku, and Kazufumi Shiraishi; as well as Atsuzo Ishikawa (1905-1985), the 1935 winner of the first Akutagawa Prize, one of Japan’s most prestigious. Ishikawa, however, never actually graduated. 

    Wasada Bungaku now has a newcomers’ prize and alongside Keio’s Mita Bungaku, and the literary journals published by commercial publishers, still play important roles in nurturing and developing new generations of creative writing and literary criticism in Japan.

    Literary journals, often run by like-minded individuals helped mature and modernise Japanese literature from the 1890s onwards Posted by Richard Nathan
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    In the late 1880s a series of articles appeared in the Japanese media about ‘Dangerous Books’ for women[UPDATED: 3-1-2023]

    In the late 1880s much was changing in Japan. It was Meiji era (1868-1912) Japan, when the nation was experiencing a period of rapid modernisation and opening up to the West. Foreign visitors to Japan were increasing in number, foreign books and ideas were arriving in Japan and Japan’s first modern novel, The Drifting Cloud by Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909) had been penned.

    Perhaps it is not surprising given this climate and the growing concern that some had about the new direction Japan was heading that articles started appearing about the dangers of fiction and especially novels read by Japanese women.

    A series of articles appeared, mostly written by men, in the press between 1889 and 1890 about the problems of women reading novels and the danger that novels posed for women and the health of the nation.

    The concerns raised were not just about books, but also about the new literary freedom that women were experiencing, about the choice of their reading matter, and also their new ability to publish and write for new publications such as Jogaku Zassshi, the Women’s Education Journal, a magazine launched in 1885 by Yoshiharu Iwamoto (1863-1942) a famous Meiji era advocate for women’s education.

    Books and often ones imported from the West were also starting to become the ultimate ‘must-clutch’ fashion accessories for young women and schoolgirls in a visible outward public expression of these new freedoms.

    There were concerns not just about new and imported publications, but also about the classics, even The Tale of Genji, which had been required reading for over a thousand years for Japanese aristocratic women. Commentators were worried about the temperaments of the female characters and the lusty content.

    Examples of titles of the type of articles that appeared include: Advantages and Disadvantages of Young Women Reading Novels, Young Women And Novels, Problems of Girls Education by Novels, and Behaviour and Morality.

    Some of the concerns raised were: that if girls wasted their lives and energy reading novels they would not be able to live a normal married life; that novels portrayed unreasonable expectations and misguided hopes; that reading would increase divorce rates as fictional men and real husbands differed.

    In a general sense many of the concerns voiced in the 1880s are similar to the ones raised today about the danger of social media, the Internet, and video games. Perhaps they were the click bait of their era designed to help sell magazines and newspapers with their growing female readerships. Even today, the Japanese media enjoy covering scandals and scare stories about the shocking behaviour of high school and university age girls.

    These concerns were, however, also being raised at a similar time to when Western travellers to Japan, such as the British travel writer Isabella L. Bird (1831-1904), were writing about their observations of Japan, with its dangerous corrupting and popular crime fiction, and lack of religious books, as well as their thoughts about the role of women in Japanese society.

    These early Japan commentators often looked back at moral codes, such as the Japanese Code of Morals for Women first published in Japan during the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), as well as reading matter and attitudes, that were rapidly becoming outdated. It is no easy task, but these early Japan watchers and commentators were probably less well attuned to the new real currents within a changing Japanese society, and the complex nuances of a large island nation, than they knew or would perhaps interest their readers who were reading about Japan for the first time.

    However, there was no stopping these trendsetting Japanese women, and the momentum they generated for women reading and writing has not ceased since. This was actually in fact nothing new as aristocratic women had been reading and writing highly creatively for a very long time in Japan.

    That said, in 1903, twenty years after these articles started appearing in the press worrying about whether Japanese women would remain ryosai kenbo, good wife wise mother, as per the popular term coined in the Meiji era about what was expected of women, the first Western-style magazine specifically targeting women was launched. 36 years after the first Western-style magazine was launched in Japan.

    This launch of a commercial magazine targeting Japanese women was followed by another groundbreaking launch by five pioneering feminists of a magazine called Seito, Blue Stocking in 1911 that shocked the nation and had issues banned on occasion as they apparently posed a danger to the nation. It covered topics such as prostitution, abortion, women’ suffrage (something they got, universally, approved in 1945) and poverty.

    In the late 1880s a series of articles appeared in the Japanese media about ‘Dangerous Books’ for women Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan’s first magazine, and the first in Asia, dedicated to gay men, Barazoku, was launched in 1971[UPDATED: 1-22-2023]

    Japan’s first commercial magazine targeting gay men was launched in 1971.

    Barazoku, which is thought to have been Asia’s as well as Japan’s first commercial gay magazine, was not just sold in specialist bookshops and clubs. The magazine was distributed by the two major Japanese book and magazine distributors, Tohan and Nippan, making the magazine a national one and available in most major Japanese cities.

    The magazine whose name is made up of two words rose, bara, and tribe, zoku,is no longer published in print, but during the 33 years when it was, Barazoku survived disapproval, legal injunctions, and numerous arrests of its founder and editor, Bungaku Ito, who was not himself gay.

    Ito was an opportunistic publisher. Initially, he published a book on lesbianism titled Resubian Tekunikku, Lesbian Technique, the commercial success of which led him to publish a second book – Homo Technique, which contained some male nude photographs.

    Both were authored by Masami Akiyama, according to     Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age by Mark J. McClelland.

    Much of the Barazoku’s revenue came from classified and personal advertisements. The magazine was published bimonthly and was generally about 70-pages in length. In its early years the magazine followed the typical format of Japanese magazines with articles, short stories, advice, interviews, and news as well as its popular and important classifieds section.

    Barazoku reportedly published anonymous work by some of Japan’s most famous poets and authors.

    Despite the demise of the print magazine itself, the term Barazoku is still sometimes used in Japan today as a term for gay men and its use is considered either controversial or old-fashioned by some.

    There is, however, also a website, which claims to be the official site of Barazoku, trying to keep the name alive for a new generation of readers.

    Following Barazoku’s example a cluster of other similar themed magazines were launched in the 1970s such as Adon (1974) Sabu (1974) and The Ken (1978).

     

    Japan’s first magazine, and the first in Asia, dedicated to gay men, Barazoku, was launched in 1971 Posted by Richard Nathan
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    In 1968 the Japanese edition of ‘Playboy’ serialised a Yukio Mishima novel[UPDATED: 11-7-2022]

    Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) is known for many things including killing himself and being nominated multiple times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and never winning. In his short writing life (around 21 years), Mishima was highly prolific publishing 40 novels, translations including a translation of Alice in Wonderland and many plays. He also wrote for both highbrow and popular audiences.

    In 1968 the year Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) become the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mishima’s novel Life for Sale, Inochi urimasu, described by critics as ‘an exhilarating piece of quirky fiction’ was published in serial format, in 21 installments, in Weekly Playboy, a Japanese adult magazine.

    The work is an absurd and dark satire written in the style of a noire crime fiction thriller, sprinkled with some eroticism. Its lead character is an advertising copywriter, called Hanoi Yamada, who after attempting suicide puts his life up for sale.

    Weekly Playboy was launched in 1966 in Japan by the manga and magazine publishing house Shueisha, a sister company of Viz Media the largest US publisher of manga and graphic novels, and is still in print today.

    In addition to the photography, Weekly Playboy also publishes serialised fiction, which has a long tradition in Japan.

    Life for Sale was subsequently published in book format on Christmas day in 1968 and much later adapted for television in Japan, as a six episode drama by Amazon Prime. An English translation by Stephen Dodd was published in 2019.

    In 1968 the Japanese edition of ‘Playboy’ serialised a Yukio Mishima novel Posted by Richard Nathan
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    A Japanese literary magazine launched in 1910, called ‘White Birch’, was probably the most culturally influential magazine of Japan’s Taisho Period[UPDATED: 2-4-2021]

    A magazine or author can sometimes capture a national zeitgeist of the times. For British popular culture and style, the magazine The Face probably played that role in 1980s Britain, and Haruki Murakami is said to be the author that best represents and captures Heisei Japan (1989-2019).

    For Taisho Japan (1912-1926), an open and at times experimental period in Japanese history, the trendsetting, ‘it’, magazine for the young literary in-crowd was White Birch, Shirakaba (1910-1923), a monthly publication.

    The publication and authors such as Naoya Shiga (1883-1971), Saneatsu Mushanokoji (1885-1976) and Takeo Arishima (1878-1923) created a ‘new wave’ of literature in Japan. This literature focused on a rejection of Confucianism and highlighted the inherent conflict between traditional family structures, and the awakening individuality of youth.

    The individuals behind White Birch and the movement were mostly from wealthily privileged backgrounds. The narratives and messages generated by White Birch, however, struck a chord with many and were hugely influential amongst writers, artists and intellectuals – some of whom were exposed to Western art, such as German Expressionism and Post-Impressionism, for the first time through the pages of the magazine.

    This was the time of so-called ‘modern boys’ and ‘modern girls’, known as mobo and moga. Mostly city dwelling, the boys wore their hair long and dressed in Western clothing while the girls cut their hair short and also dressed in Western style clothing, and both liked to carry Western novels under their arms, and in the case of the boys often Marxist literature.

    They were the irrepressible youth of Taisho Japan defined by the conflict with traditions and family. This was a period of newfound individualism, idealism and optimism, when many young people in the cities embraced humanism and individuality, while often outraging and shocking the older generations with their Westernized approaches to life and attitudes.

    Blue Stocking, Seito, is another example of an influential magazine of the period, which was in fact actually influenced by White Birch to such an extent that its founders, four feminists, decided to use the same printer when they launched their magazine in 1911.

    In fact, from the 1890s onwards hundreds of magazines were launched during a period when literary journals and magazines helped develop, mature and modernise Japanese literature and create a nation of readers.

    Nonetheless, these optimistic times, and the publication of White Birch, came to an end after a major earthquake, the Great Kanto Earthquake, struck Tokyo in 1923. 

    This devastating earthquake that some saw as divine punishment for the new ‘extravagant’ and ‘immoral’ lifestyles, wiped out much of Tokyo killing more than 100,000 people and requiring 200,000 buildings to be rebuilt. It was by all accounts the largest urban disaster of its time.

    It was widely believed that it would take Tokyo decades to be returned to its former state. But in actual fact, the city was rebuilt and modernised quickly, ushering in a new and different era, the Showa era (1926-1989). 

    Despite the demise of some of these early trendsetting literary publications, including Shirakaba, Japan’s literary scene and the nation’s literature has continued to flourish in multitudes of creative forms and formats. And today books by Japanese authors continue to shock and delight readers in Japan and now increasing outside Japan in translation.
    A Japanese literary magazine launched in 1910, called ‘White Birch’, was probably the most culturally influential magazine of Japan’s Taisho Period Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Newspaper novels, Shimbun Shosetsu, still popular today, were launched in Japan in 1886 by the Yomiuri newspaper[UPDATED: 7-20-2020]

    There is some debate amongst academics about which work was the very first published newspaper novel, Shimbun Shosetsu, in Japan.

    Several are often mentioned, but some consider Torioi Omatsu Kaijo Shinwa, The New Martine Tales of Bird-Chasing Omatsu, by Hikosaku Kubota (1846-1898), published between 1877, and 1878, as one of the first, if not the very first, serialised newspaper novel. 

    It is a tale, allegedly based on a true story, of an attractive young woman who swindles her admirers, but in a twist of fate ends up being swindled herself in an early-age femme fatale type narrative.

    Omatsu, its protagonist, is an untouchable door-stopping beggar. At that time, such individuals were often given the moniker ‘bird-chaser’.

    The tale was published in 14 newspaper installments before being released as a woodblock-printed book, in 1878, based on the newspaper articles. A copy of which can be viewed online at Japan’s National Diet Library (NDL).

    It was, in a sense, a very early form of what is known today as fake news a type of reportage referred to in the 1880s in Japan as tsukuribanashi, manufactured stories.

    Omatsu’s exploits were initially reported as news and not as fiction in the newspaper and used to promote newspaper sales and expand readership. 

    Omatsu’s tale was published before what is generally considered Japan’s first modern novel in 1887, Ukigumo, The Drifting Cloud, by Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909).

    This was also before the Yomiuri newspaper, its publisher, which now claims to have the largest circulation of any newspaper in the world,     had created a dedicated section headed Shimbun Shosetsu, Newspaper Novel, clearly distinguishing fictional information from facts reported in its pages.

    It took almost a decade from the publication of     The New Martine Tales of Bird-Chasing Omatsu for the newspaper’s Shimbun Shosetsu section to be launched in 1886, formally differentiating these two types of distinct content types, and spawning the genre of the Newspaper Novel.

    Kubota’s tale may not fall neatly into the definition of a modern novel in terms of its style, narrative and structure, despite using the often-exploited and occasionally iconic stock character of a protagonist who is a dangerous seductress, sometimes referred to in Japan as dokufu, poisonous women.

    Nonetheless, according to John Whitter Treat in The Rise and Fall of Modern Japanese Literature it ‘constituted the first modern readership in Japan by virtue of its scale.’ He considers it to be Japan’s first bestseller newspaper generated novel. 

    The Konjiki Yasha, The Gold Demon, by Koyo Ozaki (1968-1903) published between 1897-1903 is also cited as one of Japan’s first important serialised novels.

    Also know as The Usurer in English. It was alongside Hototogisu, The Cuckoo, by Kenjiro Tokutomi (1868-1927) one of the two bestselling works of literature in Japan’s Meiji period (1868-1912). 

    Serialised fiction published in newspapers is still popular today in Japan. High profile authors such as Mitsuyo Kakuta, Fuminori Nakamura and Kazufumi Shiraishi continue to write Shimbun Shosetsu with great success.

    The Yomiuri newspaper, the largest of Japan’s so-called big five national newspapers, is also still heavily involved in the publishing and promotion of literary fiction, now clearly marked as fiction, through its newspapers, and magazines such as Chuo-Koron one of Japan’s oldest continuously published magazines,

    The newspaper also organises literary prizes, owns a book publishing company, and the serialised fiction the Yomiuri continues to publish in its morning and evening editions is still enjoyed by millions throughout Japan.

    Newspaper novels, Shimbun Shosetsu, still popular today, were launched in Japan in 1886 by the Yomiuri newspaper Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan’s only convicted cannibal, who lives at large and now describes himself as a food critic, has written more than 20 books[UPDATED: 6-7-2019]

    Issei Sagawa killed and cannibalised a Dutch woman when he was living, and studying for a PhD in French literature, in Paris in 1981. The 25 year-old Dutch woman he murdered was his classmate at the Sorbonne. 

    Sagawa was found legally insane and unfit to stand trial in Paris. He was subsequently deported to Japan where he was initially housed in a mental hospital in Tokyo. 

    However, as the French authorities reportedly sealed all the court papers, dropped the charges, and did not hand over documents to the Japanese authorities, he could not legally be detained in Japan. 

    He was therefore in the unusual position of being able to check himself out of the Tokyo hospital in Japan in 1986, one year after he returned to Japan, and live at large. 

    Despite much criticism, there was apparently nothing that the Japanese authorities could do instantly making Sagawa even more famous. Sagawa’s notoriety helped him became a minor celebrity. 

    Today he is described on book and social media sites that promote the 20 or more books he has written since his return from France, as an essayist, author and food critic. 

    In addition to the many books he has written, he has penned restaurant reviews for the Japanese magazine Spa, starred in pornographic films, been a panellist on television talk shows and has even been featured in a lyric in a song by the Rolling Stones:  Too Much Blood (‘And when he ate her he took her bones/To the Bois de Boulogne’). 

    Sagawa, now wheelchair bound, lives with his brother outside Tokyo and still responds to media requests for interviews.
    Japan’s only convicted cannibal, who lives at large and now describes himself as a food critic, has written more than 20 books Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Two Japanese magazines, launched in the 1920s, played a critical role in the development of Science Fiction writing in Japan[UPDATED: 3-8-2018]

    Two magazines in the 1920s Shinseinen (New Youth) and Kagaku Gaho (Science Pictorial) played pivotal roles in the development and establishment of the modern Science Fiction genre in Japan. 

    New Youth, launched in 1920 was packed full of short stories targeting “urban modern men”, and quickly became an outlet and publishing platform for science-fiction-type stories and detective stories. 

    The editor of the magazine grouped these stories into two categories: 1) honkaku (classic) and 2) henkaku (irregular) stories.

    Science fiction fell into the latter and was, according to Robert Matthew in his book Japanese Science Fiction: A View of a Changing Society, initially categorized in Japan in its modern form as ‘irregular detective fiction’ 

    Science Pictorial, set up just after Amazing Stories, a science fiction magazine launched in the United States in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback’s Experimenter Publishing, also played a critical role. Gernsback is generally credited for the first use of the term Science Fiction. Both magazines were the first in each country to be devoted solely to science fiction. 

    Science Pictorial ‘s mission at launch was to “seek revolutionary works of high literary value which are purely scientific in their material and do not lapse into the detective style ”. 

    The two Japanese magazines published stories such as: Jinzo Ningen (Artificial Human) by Hatsunosuke Hirabayashi (1892-1932), which is often cited by academics as a classic example of Japan’s so-called “early Showa robot literature”, which there was lots of. Other notable examples include: Chitei Jigoku (The Animal Kingdom Under the Earth) by Juran Kuze (1901-1946); and Shindoma (The Demon of Vibration) by Juza Unno (1897-1949), who is sometimes referred to as the Father of Japanese Science Fiction. 

    Despite this early creativity, the terms Science Fiction (Saiensufikushon), SF and Sci-Fi, however, only came into use in Japan after the Second World War. 

    Nevertheless, the words Kagaku Shosetsu (科学小説), which is still occasionally used today, alongside Kuusou Kagaku Shosetsu  (空想科学小説), meaning imaginary science novel, were coined as early as 1886 for the Japanese “scientific novel”. 

    The genre’s roots, however, go back much further in Japan to stories known as Mirai-ki. Nonetheless, the genesis of today’s science fiction writing in Japan is said to be the translation into Japanese of the French author and playwright Jules Verne’s (1828-1905) novels in the 1880s. 

    Verne’s books arrived during a period of rapid modernisation and change in Japan known as the Meiji Era (1868-1912), when Japan was opening up to Western influence after the resignation of the Shogun and more than two hundred years of self-imposed isolation.  Verne’s books and others like them had a major impact on readers and budding authors. 

    New Youth and Science Pictorial provided the platforms for Japanese writers interested in science and fiction, who grew up on these Western translations, to flourish and for the genre to develop with its own Japanese characteristics. 

    Subsequently, two commercially successful magazines, launched in the 1950s, Uchujin (1957-2009) and SF Magajin (1959-) played an equally important role for the next generation of Japanese authors, who are sometimes referred to by academic as “The First Generation Writers” of modern Japanese science fiction.

    This so-called first generation of authors includes writers such as Kobo Abe (1924-1993), Shinichi Hoshii (1926-1997), Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), Sakyo Komatsu (1931-2011) and Yasutaka Tsutsui, who was born in 1934.

    Science fiction has now become an important and popular genre in Japan that is still flourishing creatively and commercially today in all formats: book, animation, film and graphic novel.
    Two Japanese magazines, launched in the 1920s, played a critical role in the development of Science Fiction writing in Japan Posted by Richard Nathan