BOOKS IROM JAPANESE CIRCULATING

LIBRARIES IN THE BRITISH LIBRARY^

P. F. KORNICKI

O\i.R the last ten years there has been in Japan a steady growth of interest in thecirculating libraries known as kashihonya^ and in due course this bids fair to make avaluable contribution to the study of the rise of literacy in Japan in the Tokugawaperiod (1600-1868). Some light may also be shed on other subjects, such as the natureof provincial culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the extent to whichit was dependent on the major cities of Edo (7\)kyo), Kyoto, and Osaka.

It has already been established that kashihonya were in existence at the beginning ofthe eighteenth century, and Mr. Nagatomo Chiyoji has discovered what appears to bepictorial evidence of kashihonya operating in Edo as early as 1678.^ It is clear too thatkashihonya generally went the rounds of their customers exchanging new books for oldand charging a fee in proportion to the number of volumes and the number of daysfor which they had been borrowed. There was to my knowledge just one exception tothis rule in the Tokugawa period, and that was the kashihonya Daiso of Nagoya, whichrequired all customers bar the most senior samurai to present themselves at its premisesin order to borrow books.

It was common for kashihonya to impress a black or, occasionally, a red stamp inthe books they owned. These can in most cases be easily distinguished from the ex-librisstamps of private owners and they are found on the front or back covers, the initialpage of the text or the colophon page, or any combination of these locations. They varyfrom simple stamps giving just the abbreviated name of the establishment or its proprietorto large ones, usually circular or rectangular, that may convey such details as the fulladdress of the establishment, its trade mark, and the name of the proprietor. The moredetailed stamps make it possible to begin to draw a map of the distribution of kashihonyathroughout Japan in the Tokugawa period, and a number of the Japanese wood-blockprinted books in the British Library bear stamps of this sort providing valuableinformation about the areas in which kashihonya operated and the kinds of books theyhandled. The following are of particular interest.

I. Taiheiki taizen (16052.^23), a commentary by Nishi Dochi on the fourteenth-century war tale Taihetki, published in fifty volumes in 1659. The stamp (fig. i) is tobe found in each volume and is that of the kashihonya Kishigo of Matsumae in theEsashi district of southern Hokkaido; it includes the words 'kinsen fuyo' (money

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;

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47

/. Stamp of the kashihonya Kishigo of Matsumae. 16052.f 23

unnecessary). Hokkaido was regarded as an extremely remote part of Japan in theI okiigawa period. Matsumae was the principal castle town and was the seat of central

government authority for the area; from 1807 to 1821 this authority was embodied inthe person of the Matsumae hugyd, or commissioner, who was responsible for theadministration, defence, and development of Hokkaido, the Kurile Islands, and Sakhalin.Kishigo is the most northerly kashihonya I have so far encountered and the only onein I lokkaido. Exactly when it acquired this particular book is uncertain, but it was verylikely a long time after i6s(), the year of its publication, and probably some time duringthe nineteenth century. Dais5 of Nagoya, which is known to have been founded in1767, had in its collection books published as early as the 1690s, so the publicationdates of books owned by kashihonya are no reliable guide to the dates between whichthey were in business.'* Kishigo was evidently one of that small band of kashihonya(Daiso was another, but see also number 10 below) that owned books of a scholarly orsemi-scholarly nature. It was unusual too in that, from the wording on the stamp, itseems to have charged no fees; only one other philanthropic kashihonya (see number 2below) is known to me and that was in Kyoto.

2. Akindo gunbai uchiwa (16107.C.41), a novel of the ukiyozoshi typewritten by Ejima Kiseki (1667-1736) and published in Kyoto by Kiseki himself prob-ably in 1712. Kiseki established his own publishing business in 1711 after breakingwith Hachimonjiya Jisho, the proprietor of the Hachimonjiya publishing house of Kyotowhich had published most of Kiseki's earlier works but under Jisho's name. The stampin each of the five volumes is that of the kashihonya Heikyia of Kyoto and it bears thewords 'kinsen fuyo' (money unnecessary; see number i above). The genre ukiyozoshi,which is deemed to date from 1682 when Ihara Saikaku's Kdshoku ichidai otoko wasfirst published in Osaka, seems to have been the first type of fiction that was regularlyhandled by kashihonya. Ukiyozdsht, particularly those published after 1700, often containkashihonya stamps. Other examples in the British Library are Nagaido Kiyu's Shodanisha katagi (16107.C.67) of 1774 and Akaehoshi miyako katagt (16107.C.61) of 1772, TadaNanrei's Seken hahaoya katagi (16107.C.46) of 1752, and numbers 4, 8, and 13, below.Furthermore, there is a reference in Nagaido Kiyu's Fuzoku haijin katagi of 1763^ toukiyozdsht such as Kiseki's Keisei kintanki of 1711 being lent out by kashihonya.

3. Chikuzen nayose (16113.C.11), a topographical work by Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714)published in Kyoto in 1693. Ekken was a Neo-Confucianist who did much to popularizeConfucian moral teachings. The original two volumes of this work have been boundtogether at some stage: this was often done by kashihonya to reduce damage and toprevent the loss of odd volumes. The stamp (fig. 2) is that of the Mansaid5, a kashihonya inNagasaki; the same stamp is also to be found in the British Library's copy of KaibaraChiken's Kotowazagusa (16096.b.5), which is an 1815 reprint of the edition of 1701,and in number 9 below. The stamp bears the word *yorozu-kashihondokoro'; the precisesignificance of this is not clear, but the word appears only on the stamps of kashihonyafrom Nagasaki (see number 15 below, for example). Since it is found on the stamps ofwhat appear to be quite separate establishments, it is less likely to be the name of a

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^

Fig. 2. Stamp of the kashihonya Mansaido of Nagasaki.16113.C.11

chain of kashihonya, which would have no parallel elsewhere, than to be an expressioncurrent perhaps only in Nagasaki for a kashihonya with a wide-ranging stock of books.The word is not attested in dictionaries, but kashihondokoro has the same meaning askashihonya and yorozu connotes great variety, as in the term yorozu-doiya^ a wholesalemerchant stocking all manner of goods.

4. fma genji utsuhobune (16107.C.65), a novel of the ukiyozoshi type by NishizawaIppu (1665-1731) published in five volumes in Kyoto in 1716. In addition to writinga number of ukiyozoshi, several of which burlesque the classics, Ippu also ran a publishinghouse which specialized in texts ofjoruri plays. This work bears the stamp of the kashihonya

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Vatna/akiya of ^ ushima in the Province of Tajima (fig. 3). Yushima had the status ofa \illage until \HHi), when it was joined with two other villages and given the nameKinosaki. It has long been famous as a hot-spring resort and seems to have supportedat least two kashihonya, the other being Nakaya Jin/aemon (see number 13 below).Kashihonya were also to be found in Shuzenji, a hot-spring resort on the I/u Peninsula(see number 5 below), and since it is reported that reading was regarded as one of thepleasures of these resorts it may well be that many resorts boasted one or morekashihonya."

5. Mcisei tsuzoku giindan: Kokusenya chugiden (16052.1.13), volumes io-ir and 18-19only, of the edition of 1717. This is an account by Ukai Sekisai of the warring in Chinain which Coxinga, the celebrated half-Chinese adventurer of the seventeenth century,was involved.^ The volumes in the British Library contain the stamp of the kashihonyaNodaya of Shu/enji, a hot-spring resort. For kashihonya at other such resorts, seenumbers 4 and 13.

6. Kaji no ha (16100.C.33), a collection of poems by the poet Tokuyama Kajiko, whois otherwise unknown; it was published in 1707. The stamp, which is to be found onlyin the first two of the three volumes, is that of the kashihonya Shimizuya of Kesen innorthern Japan. The town of Kesen was in 1955 incorporated in the new Rikuzen-TakadaCity, in Iwate Prefecture.

7. Edo meisho hanagoyomi (16113.a.9), a topographical work describing the sights ofEdo, written by Oka Sancho and first published in 1827 in four volumes. This is theedition of 1837 and all four volumes have been bound together (see number 3 above).Four stamps are to be found inside (fig. 4), three of them mentioning one or other ofthe names for Nagasaki. Two of these three are puzzling, as one includes the words'Hei kiko saikusho' (my tortoise-shell-ware workshop) and the other the word 'shiire'(taking in stock). In the case of the former, it is possible that the owner of the workshopused his business stamp to indicate his private ownership of the book but a more likelyexplanation, albeit scarcely less surprising, is that he ran a subsidiary kashihonya businessas well as the workshop. This would not be the only example of a kashihonya forming aseparate part of a quite unrelated business: the kashihonya Nakaya Jinzaemon also sold.souvenirs and medicines (see number 13 below) and a kashihonya in Kyoto was attachedto a haberdashery.^ The point of the word 'shiire' on the second stamp is obscure, butit may refer to a retailer dealing in ready-made goods. Be that as it may, this is a goodexample of a book that has clearly passed through the hands of several kashihonya: thenew owner often took the trouble to obliterate the stamp of the previous owner butthis has not happened in this case.

8. Wakakusa genji monogatari (i6iO7.g.32), another ukiyozoshi, written and illustratedby Okumura Masanobu (1686-1764), the famous ukiyo-e artist, and published in sixvolumes in 1707. The stamp is that of the kashihonya Menwa from the post-stationHamamatsu in the Province of Totomi on the Tokaido route from Osaka to Edo. At thetop of the stamp is the word 'hondokoro' which is probably either an alternative for honya(a book publishing and retail business) or an abbreviated form of kashihondokoro, which is

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iStamp of the kashihonya Yamazakiya of Yusbima. 16107.c.65

o o

O O CO O O

O O

/

H

Fig. 4. Four kashihonya stamps found in Edo metsho hanagoyomi. 16113.3.9

Fig. 5. Stamp of the kashihonya Nakatomiof Nagasaki. 16114.C.5

not attested in dictionaries but which appears on the stamp of the kashihonya Mansaidoof Nagasaki (see number 3 above) and elsewhere. It should be noted that pronunciationswxre assigned to characters with considerable licence in the Tokugawa period, and thereis a possibility that hondokoro and kashihondokoro were to be pronounced honya andkashihonya respectively.

9. Settsu meisho zue (16114.c.5), a topographical work describing the province ofSettsu to the west of Osaka; compiled by Akisato Rito and published during 1796-8in twelve volumes. In this copy the first five and remaining seven volumes have beenrebound into two larger volumes. The stamps of three kashihonya are to be found withinThe first is that of the kashihonya Mansaido of Nagasaki, which was the former ownerof several books in the Library (see number 3 above). In addition there is the stampof the Nakatomi, which also operated in Nagasaki (fig. 5), and that of the Suzumoto,for which no location is given.

10. Ise monogatari esho (16114.^24), an illustrated version of the classic Ise monogatari.This work is also known as Kao ise monogatari and it was illustrated by HasegawaMitsunobu; it was first published in 1721 but this is the edition of 1748. It containsthe stamp, impressed in red, of the kashihonya Ikezen of Kanazawa on the Japan Seacoast of Japan. Ikezen is the abbreviated name of Ike Zenbei, who ran a publishing

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business in Kanazawa known as the Kanbundo and who published a number of poetrycollections and works on local history from 1861 onwards." It is not clear whether heran his kashihonya before turning to publishing or whether the two were in operationat the satne time. Several other books in the British Library bear the Ikezen stamp,including numbets 12 and t6 below. It appears from these that the collection eschewedcontemporary literature in favour of classical literature and books on such refinedaccomplishtiients as the tea-ceremony. Few kashihonya were willing or could afford tocater to tastes such as these.

11. Kakkd gojildai (16099.c.47), ^ volume of humorous kyoka poems by thepseudonymous Shakuyakutei. No date of publication is given and since the work hasno entry in the comprehensive catalogue Kokusho sdmokuroku^^ it may be no longerextant in Japan. It contains the stamp of the kashihonya Kamada Shionoya, whichoperated in Shinobu, present-day Fukushima City, in the north of Japan. One rarelysees books of poetry with kashihonya stamps, but this and number 6 above are exceptions.

12. Chadd henmdshd (16115.f 9), a book on the tea-ceremony compiled by YamadaShijhen c. 1680 in five volumes: it survives in editions published in 1690 and 1827 andin other editions of uncertain date.^^ This copy consists of only one of the five volumesand is without a colophon; on the back cover is the stamp of the kashihonya Ikezen(see number 10 above).

13. Hdjdjiraiki (16107.C.S8), an ukiyozdshi by Okamoto Ippo published in 1691 inten volumes. According to one account Ippo was the younger brother of the celebratedplaywright of the kabuki and joruri theatres, Chikamatsu Monzaemon.^^ The final pageof each volume bears the stamp of the kashihonya Nakaya Jinzaemon of Yushima inthe Province of Tajima, now Kinosaki in Hyogo Prefecture. The Nakaya establishmentwas in business for some fifty years from about 1801 onwards and the proprietor, oneSaito Jinzacmon, also lent out musical instruments and sold souvenirs and medicineson the premises.'-* For kashihonya at Kinosaki and other hot-spring resorts see numbers4 and 5 above.

14. Shihai gakuya zue (i6iO4.a.29), an illustrated work on drama and the theatrepublished in 1800 in two volumes. It was written by Shokosai Hanbei, who wrote andillustrated a number of plays and books on the theatre in the early decades of thenineteenth century. The stamp (fig. 6) is that of the kashihonya Hon-ne of Izawa in the

Fig. 6. Stamp of the kashihonyaHon-ne of Izawa. i6io4.a.29

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* • ^ -

Fig. 7. Stamp of tbe kashihonyaNakamura of Nagasaki. 16087.d.8

Province of Ise. Izawa had the status of a village until 1955, when it became part ofMatsuzaka City in Mie Prefecture.

15. Gamd gunki (16087.d.8), ^^ account of the martial exploits of Gamo Ujisato(1556-95), who distinguished himself as a warlord in the service of Oda Nobunaga andToyotomi Hideyoshi. The work was published in 1695 in six volumes, but the nameof the author is not known. The stamp (fig. 7) is that of the kashihonya Nakamura ofNagasaki and it includes the word 'yorozu-kashihondokoro' (see number 3 above).

16. Chadd kikigaki (as yet uncatalogued), a work on the tea-ceremony, the authorof which is not known. It has never been published but manuscript copies seem to havebeen in circulation since the middle of the eighteenth century.''^ This copy is in onevolume and bears the stamp of the kashihonya Ikezen of Kanazawa (see numbers 10and 12 above). It was by no means unusual for kashihonya to handle manuscripts, asthe recollections of various of their customers testify. ̂ ^

The selection of former kashihonya books presented above is sufficient to demonstratethe principal characteristics of kashihonya and their collections. Kashihonya wereevidently active in post-stations such as Hamamatsu, resorts such as Yushima andShiizenji, villages such as Izawa, and provincial castle-towns such as Kanazawa andNagasaki, in addition to major cities such as Kyoto. They were sometimes run inconjunction with other businesses and their books ranged from contemporary fictionto topographies and works of a semi-scholarly nature. They clearly facilitated the spreadof this kind of literature throughqut Japan and enabled it to reach potential readerswho did not have the means to purchase books. This suggests that the literate populationin Tokugawa Japan was considerable.

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1 Tbe aiilbor would like Io e\pre.ss bis deept,natitin.le lo Mr. K. B. Ciartiner of tbe Depart-ment of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed IJooks,wbo facilitated bis work on tbe Japanese Collee-titMi in January 1979.

2 1 be word 'kasbibonya' can be used botb in thesinijular and in tbe plural, and can refer botb to.1 book-lending establisbnient and to its pro-prietor,

3 'Kasbibonya no gasbo', Kashthon bunha, vi (Sep-tember 1()7S), pp. 5 g,

4 Napatomo Cibiyoji, 'Onoya Sobei no kasbihon niisuite', Aichi kenritsu datgahujushilnen kinen ron-hunshft (Nagoya, 1975), pp. 1069-78.

5 Quoted in Nakamura Yukibiko, Kinseishdsetsushino kcnkytl (Tokyo, 1961), pp. 145-6.

(1 Nagatomo Cbiyoji, 'Kinosaki onsen kasbibonyano kenr\o\ Osaha furilsu (oshokan kiyo, i(December 1964), p. 19.

7 lM)r an account of tbe life of Coxinga and itstreatment in Tokugawa literature, see DonaldKeene, Lhc Baltics of Cnxinga (Cambridge,197").

S Hironiwa Motosuke, 'Edo jidai kashibonyaryakusbi\ Toshohan kat, xviii, nos. 5 and 6 (Jan.and Mar. 1967), vi. p. 199 and note 77.

9 For Ike/.en's publications in tbe years following[S61, see Miyakawa Seiicbi, *Kyodo no sbosbi toomo na kankobutsu', Ishikawa kyddoshi gakkaikaishi, i (October 1968), p. 34. I am indebted toMr. Nakamura Yutaka, [director of KanazawaCity Library, for drawing my attention to tbepublisbing activities of Ikezen.

10 Kokusho sdmokuroL'u is tbe most comprehensivebibliograpby of Japanese works (printed and inmanu.script) up to 1868.

11 Kokusho somokuroku (Tokyo, 1963-72), vol. v,P- 643.

I 2 See tbe passage from Futagion Shujin's Gikyokushdsetsti tsilshi quoted in Keene, The Battles ofCoxinga, p. 32.

13 See note 6 above.14 Kokusho somokuroku, vol. v, p. 642.15 See Tsukabara Juo (se. Jusbien), 'Edo jidai no

nanbungaku', .loi, no. 3 (July 1910), p. 9.

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