OBIYA IHEI, A JAPANESE PROVINCIAL PUBLISHER^

p. F. KORNICKI

COMMERCIAL publishing came of age in during the Tokugawa period (1600- 1868). Both at the beginning and at the end of this period there was a vogue for experimenting with movable type, but from the middle of the seventeenth century the burgeoning publishing industry relied almost exclusively on wood-block printing, and it continued to do so until the 1870s. The industry developed to such an extent that there was by the early nineteenth century a national, albeit informal, network of publishers and distributors and a national market for the printed book. So at the time of the opening of Japan in 1854 and the subsequent Meiji Restoration of 1868 there already existed in Japan the means of publishing and communication which could serve to inform the inhabitants of Japan about the world from which they had long been cut off. The first newspapers and magazines were predominantly wood-block publications, but soon after the Meiji Restoration wood-block printing began to lose ground rapidly to printing with movable type, which enjoyed the stimulus of newly imported Western technology. There can be no doubt, however, that the foundations of the Meiji publishing industry were laid in the Tokugawa period. Until recently, studies of the publishing history of the Tokugawa period have concentrated exclusively on the so-called 'three capitals', , Osaka, and , the last of which was designated the capital in 1868 and renamed , The received opinion is that commercial publishing began in Kyoto and rapidly developed in Kyoto and Osaka in the seventeenth century but that in the course of the eighteenth century Edo gradually assumed ever greater importance, until in the nineteenth century it achieved a dominating position that was further strengthened in the Meiji period, when Tokyo had no serious rivals. Publishing outside the three capitals, defined as provincial publishing, has no place in this scheme and consequently has received little attention. In 1981, however, the Nagoya City Museum mounted an exhibition devoted to the history of publishing in Nagoya in the Tokugawa period, and since then several studies have appeared which elucidate, among other things, the growing strength of the publishers' guild in Nagoya and the threat it was held to pose to the guilds of the three capitals.- Similarly, in 1982, an exhibition was held in Sendai City Museum devoted to the history of publishing in Sendai, which dates back to the early part of the Tokugawa period.^ Provincial publishing was certainly a factor to be reckoned with in the Tokugawa period and this is nowhere more apparent than in a recently published index to the publishers of the Tokugawa period. This work includes a table which gives the numbers of publishers appearing in the body of the index according to their locations and the periods during which they are presumed to have commenced their publishing careers, and the figures are as follows:''"

1598-1703 1704-88 1789-1868

Kyoto 701 538 494 Osaka 185 564 504 Edo 242 493 917 Elsewhere 43 135 407

These figures have to be treated with some caution. In the first place, there are some errors of identification and omission, as is inevitable in a work ofthis kind. Secondly, some of the establishments listed in the body of the index were not so much publishers as distributors of books for other publishers, although both were covered by the same word, shorin, in the Tokugawa period and the names of both might well appear in a colophon. Thirdly, the figures convey only the number of publishers and say nothing about the level of their activity as measured, for example, in numbers of publications. And lastly, the figures are based on the number of new publishers commencing operations in each of the three periods. Thus if there were differences in the survival rates from area to area, then the totals represented by the second and third columns of figures might not be accurate as a portrait of the relative strengths of the publishing industries in the three capitals and the provinces during the second and third periods under consideration. Supposing, for example, that most of the Kyoto publishers from the first period had survived, then there would in the second period have been far more publishers in Kyoto than in Osaka. Nevertheless, these points do not affect the striking increase in the numbers of new provincial publishers, particularly in the third period, which is apparent from the table. The increase bespeaks a growth of publishing activity outside the three capitals. There can be no doubt that Nagoya was pre-eminent among the provincial publishing centres, but there were also flourishing publishing industries in a number of other castle towns, including Sendai, Hiroshima, Kanazawa, and Wakayama, a town on the coast some thirty-five miles to the south-west of Osaka. During the Tokugawa period Wakayama enjoyed a diversity of local industry, excellent communications inland by river and to other parts of Japan by sea, and a vigorous intellectual and cultural life centring around the Gakushukan, the local fief school, which was opened in 1713.^ In the closing years of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the nineteenth, a number of booksellers in Wakayama started turning their attention to publishing, and several of these were to grow in strength and continue operating beyond the Meiji Restoration. They were joined by one or two others just before the middle of the nineteenth century,

132 one of whom printed a number of works using wooden movable type.'^ The most active of them all, however, was the establishment of Obiya Ihei, and it is fortunate that the British Library possesses not only one of Ohiya Ihei's most famous publications but also some rare material relating to the range of his output and his ambitions in the early years of the nineteenth century. The founder of the establishment as a printing concern was Takechi Shiyu, whose trade name was Obiya Ihei.^ He was born in Wakayama in 1751 to a merchant family under the patronage of the local daimyo, and he died there in 1823. Thereupon the family business was taken over by his son, Takechi Shibun, who also inherited his father's trade name, as was customary. At about the age of seven the first Obiya Ihei made the long trip to Edo by himself and became apprenticed there to a pharmaceutical business, where he worked until he was in his twenties. By 1778 he was back in Wakayama and had applied to the daimyo for permission to sell a patent medicine for palsy both within the fief and elsewhere. By 1793 he had also become the author of an illustrated catalogue of old coins which gave their current values. This work was published in Osaka in the same year and according to a note immediately preceding the colophon, Obiya was actually engaged in the numismatic trade in Wakayama at this time, probably as a sideline.^ In subsequent years he persuaded fellow Wakayama merchants to help alleviate the fief's financial difficulties, arranged for essential dredging work to be undertaken in Wakayama's waterways, which were in danger of silting up, established the first theatre in Wakayama, and engaged in numerous other ventures that testify not only to a certain public- spiritedness but also to an unusually close relationship with senior samurai in the fief, including the daimyo himself.^ It is not clear when Obiya Ihei turned to publishing and bookselling. His name first appears on a colophon in a collection of ghost stories entitled Kaidan tabisiizuri. The colophon is undated but the preface and the end of the text on the obverse of the colophon leaf are both dated 1791. In the colophon the name of Obiya Ihei appears third in a list of four shorin, the others being Akitaya Zenbei of Kyoto, Maekawa Rokuzaemon of Edo, and Yamaguchiya Mataichi of Osaka. Both Maekawa and Yamaguchiya were well-established publishers by this time and, as would be expected both by his position at the end of the list and by the presence on the rear endpaper of a list of his other publications, Yamaguchiya appears from contemporary booksellers' catalogues to have been the principal publisher. The same catalogues state that the author of this work, one Koyoen Shujin, who is otherwise unknown, was a Wakayama man. It is therefore likely that the inclusion of Obiya Ihei's name in the colophon indicates little more than the local connection and the right to distribute the work in Wakayama itself. It is possible, though, that he may have contributed to the costs of publication.^^ By the middle of the 1790s Obiya Ihei was definitely involved in publishing. In the first place, his name appears in the colophon of Haikai shosen, a collection of , which bears the date 1794. Again four shorin are named: Asaiya Genkichi of Wakayama, who is otherwise known for only one other publication; Obiya Ihei; Noda Jihei of Kyoto, who is better known as Tachibanaya Jihei and was a prolific publisher for almost the entire span

133 of the Tokugawa period; and Shionoya Chubei of Osaka, who was active throughout the second half of the Tokugawa period and was evidently the principal publisher of this work. The compiler was Tadokoro Hachigo of Tanabe, a subsidiary castle town to the south of Wakayama, but Obiya's involvement as a publisher rather than just as a distributor is indicated by the existence of another issue of the same work with an undated colophon giving only Obiya's name, and of a revised edition published under Obiya's name alone in 1840.^^ Secondly, towards the end of the same year, 1794, Obiya was involved in a dispute over a case of alleged plagiarism. It appears that Obiya had published, or was about to publish, a work entitled Sanraizu; it is probable that this refers to the Sung dynasty edition of the work San-li-fu, which was prepared by Nieh Ch'ung-I and appeared in Japanese editions published by Maekawa Rokuzaemon of Edo in 1765 and 1790. Obiya then learnt that excerpts from his edition had been included in a book published by Kitamura Shirobei of Kyoto. After the dispute had gone to Edo, it was finally agreed that Obiya would yield the printing blocks of his Sanraizu to Kitamura for the substantial sum of seventy ryo.'^^ Thirdly, in 1796, Obiya received permission to commence work on an ambitious project, the preparation of an album covering all the places of note within the province. This will be dealt with more fully shortly. And fourthly, in 1797, he was involved in another case of alleged plagiarism, this time involving ^joruri book, a text of the recitative associated with the bunraku puppet theatre. An Osaka publisher, Tenmaya Genjiro, claimed that one of his own publications had been plagiarized by Obiya and that this threatened his livelihood; the case was settled in his favour. ^^ So far more than twenty works have come to light that were definitely published during the time of the first Obiya Ihei. These do not include Sanraizu or the joruri book, both of which seem to have discreetly disappeared. The range that they cover is as follows:

I. Collections of haiku poetry, reflecting Obiya's own status as an amateur poet ot some standing. For example, Oriku Ki no tamagawa, a collection of haiku by poets from Wakayama and the surrounding area published in four parts. The first part was edited by Takechi Shiyu (i.e. Obiya Ihei himself) and includes some of his own poems, while the second part, edited by the pseudonymous Sorokusai Hasei, contains a list of poets from the Wakayama area ranked in order of merit with Shiyu ranked fifth. The surviving copies of the first three parts have no colophons but the prefaces are dated 1819,1820, and 1823, and pasted on to the inside rear cover of each is an advertisement for five haiku collections, including the one under discussion, with the name of Obiya Ihei given as the publisher. The fourth part is furnished with a colophon dated 1825 and bears the names of Shionoya Heisuke of Osaka, Obiya Ihei (the second), and Tomiya Wahei of Tanabe. Other haiku collections published by Obiya Ihei include Yomo no warai (published in 1802 by Obiya alone; only known copy in Wakayama Prefectural Library), Sumiregusa (published in 1816 by Kawachiya Tasuke of Osaka, Kasedaya Heiemon, another of the leading publishers of Wakayama, and Obiya Ihei), and Shichtkasen (published in 1821 by Obiya Ihei alone).

134 2. Religious works. For example, Hannya shingyo chuge, published in 1817 by Obiya Ihei alone for four temples in Tanabe at the order of the daimyo of Tanabe, which was a subordinate fief under the control of the daimyo of Wakayama. This work is a commentary on the PrajM-pdramitd-hrdaya-sutra prepared by the Zen monk Enji (1559-1619) and first published in 1606. 3. Art. For example, Kanso, a collection of seal inscriptions by the Osaka seal-engraver, calligrapher, and litterateur, Morikawa Chikuso. The earliest dated edition I have been able to find is that of 1802, published by Obiya Ihei and Kasedaya Heiemon, also of Wakayama; many other editions exist, including one pubhshed by Obiya Ihei alone in 1845. Two other works are published by the same publishers Gagoroku (1814) and Kanga hitori-geiko (1807), a work by Miyamoto Kunzan that provides instruction in the Chinese style of ink-painting. There are copies of the latter in the British Library (i6iii.b.9.) and in the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies.^""^

Most but not all of these works were local publications, but only in the sense that the compilers or authors or sponsors were from Wakayama or the surrounding area. This is particularly true of the haiku collections, but even here Obiya had secured the co-operation of some of the major publishers from the three capitals, indicating at least a possibihty of interest and sales outside Wakayama. Obiya's lasting monument as a publisher and the work which made his name widely known was Kii-no-kuni meisho-zue, a comprehensive and profusely illustrated guide to the province of Kii, which comprised part of the fief of the daimyo of Wakayama. Local topographies of this kind, featuring the temples, shrines, and other places of historic or scenic interest in a given province or city, became popular towards the end of the eighteenth century, and a number of them are to be found in the British Library. The first of these local topographies was Akisato Rito's Mtyako meisho-zue, which dealt with the sights of Kyoto and was published in 1780. Its popularity inspired Akisato to compile similar works on different localities, and he started something of a fashion. It should be noted that these local topographies were read widely, and that their readership was by no means confined to the province with which each one concerned itself. The British Library's copy of Akisato Rito's Settsu meisho-zue (1798), for example, which describes the sights in and around Osaka, formerly belonged to a circulating library in Nagasaki, far away in Kyushu. Similarly, the great circulating library Daiso of Nagoya owned several copies of most of the local topographies of this kind that were published, including Kii-no-kuni meisho-zue, a fact which testifies to their popularity as reading matter, ^^ Obiya Ihei seems to have undertaken to prepare a topographical guide to the province of Kii in the mid-i79os. Before embarking on his preparatory travels around the province he secured a certificate from the fief administrators guaranteeing his bona fides and explaining why he should be travelling around the countryside with an artist. This document, which is dated the eighth month of 1796 and bears the names and seals of six senior samurai, is still in the possession of his descendants. The work was eventually completed in five sets. The first set, consisting of five

135 volumes, was compiled by Obiya Ihei himself and illustrated by Nishimura Chuwa (fl. 1794-1826), who was also responsible for the illustrations in several other of these local topographies, amongst them Omi meisho-zue (1797) and Kisoji meisho-zue (1805), as well as a number of works of fiction. The detailed colophon for the first set covers both sides of a leaf. The obverse gives the names of all those involved in the preparation of the edition, including the calligrapher responsible for the final copy and the craftsmen responsible for carving the blocks, the contents of the following sets, and a notice, together with an official seal, indicating that publishing permission had been granted by the fief authorities in the eighth month of 1796 and that the Takechi (i,e. Obiya Ihei) family was to retain the blocks. The reverse gives the following list of publishers: Suharaya Mohei and Maekawa Rokuzaemon of Edo, Eirakuya Toshiro of Nagoya, Ogawa Tazaemon and Namariya Yasuhei of Kyoto, Obiya Ihei, and Kasuya Nihei, Katsuoya Rokubei, and Kawachiya Tasuke of Osaka. The last named was the controlling publisher and Maekawa was the Edo distributor.^*^ Appended to the copy in the British Library (16113.C.29) is a catalogue of these local topographies published by or on sale at the establishment of Kawachiya Tasuke. The second set of five volumes was published in 1812 by Obiya Ihei and Kawachiya Tasuke; the date of permission for publication and the names of those involved are the same as those for the first set. Both the third and fourth sets date from after the time of the first Obiya Ihei. The third set lacks any indication of authorship but both the third and the fourth sets seem to have been compiled by Kano Morohira (1806-57). Kano was a samurai in service to the daitnyo of Wakayama and had studied under some of the leading scholars in the daimyo's court, including Motoori Ohira, whose fame was national. In 1831 Kano had been ordered to assist with the compilation of Kii zokufudoki and in 1835 to complete Kii-no-kuni meisho-zue. ^"^ To what extent he was relying on plans or even drafts prepared earlier by the first Obiya Ihei is not clear. At any rate, as a result of his efforts the third set, of seven volumes, was published in 1838 by Suharaya Mohei of Edo, Kawachiya Tasuke of Osaka, and Obiya Ihei (the second), and the fourth set, of six volumes, was published in 1851 by Suharaya of Edo, Kawachiya Kihei and Kawachiya Tasuke of Osaka, and Obiya Ihei. The final part, on the Kumano area, was published by Obiya Ihei in 1937-43 in an edition prepared by the current head of the family, Takechi Shichoku. There would be little more to relate of the activities of the first Obiya Ihei were it not for the fortunate survival of a catalogue he issued some time in the early nineteenth century. In the second half of the Tokugawa period it was a fairly common practice for publishers to prepare lists of their publications and append them to the books they published, and several examples have already been referred to above, Obiya Ihei prepared at least two such lists, a short one listing the titles of three haiku books, and a longer one covering three sides and listing forty-two works. Only the shorter is contained in a recent compendium of such publishers' lists reproduced in facsimile, ^^ and although the longer is said to exist in lapan I have only seen it in the British Library copy of Kii-no-kuni meisho-zue (16113.c.29), where it comes at the end of the last volume in the second set. In spite of appearances to the contrary, this is not a catalogue of works already

136 oo

OO

-a;

a -A; I eCJ I

C C x: published by Obiya Ihei. This is immediately apparent from the entry on Kii-no-kuni meisho-zue., which refers to a total of five sets and has the numbers of volumes in the third and fourth sets wrong. The catalogue was therefore clearly printed before the publication of the third set in 1838. Also, although it is to be found in a copy of the second set which was published in 1812, it could have been printed after that date, owing to the fact that the year of publication in the colophon does not necessarily represent the year in which a given copy was actually executed from the wood blocks or even bound. Some of the books in the list survive in dated editions published by Obiya Ihei: Kaidan tabisuzuri (1791), Kyoka kaiawase (1796), Kanso (1802), Kanga hitori-getko (1807), Kakke bensei (1811), Gagoroku (1814), Ki no tamagama (1819-20), and Kenkyojin (1821). The presence of the last three works, which were not large-scale publications requiring several years of preparation, suggests that the catalogue was in fact printed well after 1812, the date of the second set of Kti-no-kum meisho-zue, although it may have anticipated Kenkyojin by a year or two. In this connection the fact that neither Shichikasen (1821) nor Jogan seiyo (1822) appears in the catalogue suggests that they had not been planned at the time of the preparation of the catalogue. So there is every indication that the catalogue was printed C.1820, still several years before the first Obiya Ihei's death. Some of the items in the catalogue survive only in copies that bear the imprints of other publishers. These are Murachidori (1795), a poetry collection, Shoshushu (1799), a collection of Chinese poetry, Onbyoron (1800), a medical work, and Waka no ura (1805), another haiku collection, all of which seem to have been published by Kasedaya Heiemon either alone or in tandem with other publishers in Wakayama and elsewhere, and Soraishu (1791), a collection of some of the works of the major Confucian philosopher Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728), which was published by one Nakai Genkichi of Wakayama, Maekawa Rokuzaemon of Edo, and Morimoto (Kawachiya) Tasuke of Osaka. There are two possible explanations for the appearance of these works in Obiya's catalogue. One is that they were works he had for sale but had not published himself. On balance this seems unlikely, as he would almost certainly have had a much greater range of books on sale, including works published outside Wakayama. The second, and more likely, explanation is that he had actually taken over the blocks of these titles and was printing from them now himself. The following considerations increase the likelihood of this being the correct explanation. If, as I have suggested, Obiya's catalogue was printed c. 1820, the most recent of the five works mentioned above would already have been some fifteen years old; after the passage of so many years it is quite conceivable that Kasedaya may have chosen to sell the blocks rather than hang on to them in the hope of further sales. Kasedaya was a leading Wakayama publisher with whom Obiya Ihei had been co-operating since their joint publication of Kanso in 1802. There are copies of two different reissues of the fourth of the works mentioned above, Waka no ura; both of these lack the original colophons and contain instead advertisements for books published by Obiya Ihei, which suggests that he had been responsible for publishing them.^^ Apart from one or two other items that have survived in editions published by Obiya but that lack dates, the remaining items have either been lost, not yet found, or represent

138 planned publications, like the third and subsequent volumes of Kii-no-kuni meisho-zue. This is definitely the case with respect to the four other topographical guides listed, which were to cover the provinces of Iga, Ise and Shima, and the whole of Shikoku. The first three were apparently to be prepared by Obiya Ihei himself, but by this stage he had not even finished the guide to Kii. At any rate, given the popularity of these local topographies, it is certain that they would have survived if they had actually been published, but there is no record of them even in the Osaka and Edo booksellers' catalogues. It is clear, though, that Obiya entertained ambitions of being the compiler and publisher of a series of such local topographies. Following the topographical guides, several other of Obiya's interests as a publisher are revealed by the catalogue, and the second of these that should be mentioned is medicine. Obiya definitely published Kakke bensei (1811), a work on beri-beri by one Maruyama Gensho, about whom nothing is known except that he was in service to the daimyo of Wakayama.^° In addition, the catalogue lists three works by Ebi Koreyoshi (1757-1807), who studied medicine in Osaka and Kyoto from 1784 to 1787 and then returned to Wakayama to lecture in medicine; when the daimyo established a school of medicine (the Igakukan) in Wakayama, Ebi was required to assist with the teaching and administration, but in 1805 he was ordered to Edo, where he lectured at the Bakufu's school of medicine.^^ The three works are Onbyoron (1800), a treatise on fevers, which, as I have already mentioned, survives in an edition published by Kawachiya Tasuke of Osaka and Kasedaya Heiemon of Wakayama, Gaishoron, a treatise on external injuries which was published by Obiya, Kasedaya, and three other publishers c.1804, and Mashin kiiketsu, a work on smallpox which was either never published or has failed to survive. A third area is the work of local scholars, particularly the kokugaku school of'national learning' of Motoori Norinaga and his intellectual descendants, many of whom were to be found in Wakayama, including Motoori Ohira (1756-1833), who composed an obituary poem for Obiya Ihei,^^ Motoori Uchito (1792-1855), and Motoori Toyokai (1834-1913). The founder ofthe school, Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), was based in Matsuzaka in the province of Ise but he was frequently in Wakayama. His work Kenkyojin, which appears in Obiya's catalogue, was published in 1821 by Sakaiya Nihei and Sakaiya Kashichi of Kyoto, Kashiwaya Heisuke of Matsuzaka, and Obiya Ihei and Kasedaya Heiemon of Wakayama. But other works of his mentioned in the catalogue seem never to have been published, at least by Wakayama publishers. These include Kakaika, which was completed in two parts, in 1787 and 1790, but never printed and today survives only in a number of manuscript copies, and Naobi no mitama which was complete in 1771 but apparently not published until 1825.^^ The catalogue thus affords a glimpse of Obiya's ambitions as a publisher that would have taken him well beyond the run of provincial publishers. The works that he did publish in the three categories mentioned above, and those that he would have done had his plans come to fruition, are all of a kind that would have enjoyed a national readership, so it is clear that he was not content to remain a provincial publisher in the narrow sense of the term.

139 After the death of the first Obiya Ihei in 1823, the bookselling business he had established continued to flourish. Some of these later publications were: 1. Poetry. The second Obiya Ihei maintained the tradition of publishing haiku poetry, for example Haikai senshu no shiori (parts i and 2, 1837, and part 3, 1857) and sandai shu (1845 and another edition in 1851). Both of these works were published by Obiya in conjunction with a number of other Wakayama publishers, who included not only Kasedaya Heiemon, but the brothers Sakamotoya Kiichiro and Sakamotoya Daijiro, who were the leading publishers in Wakayama by the 1840s and were to remain so for some years. In addition to haiku, Obiya started publishing classical waka poetry, most notably Kii-no-kuni meisho hyakushu (1848) and its sequels Zoku Kii-no-kum meisho hyakushu (1850) and Shinzoku Kii-no-kuni meisho hyakushu (1854). These are collections of poems concerning places in Wakayama culled from the classic collections of such as the Man'yoshu, the Kokmshu, and the Sankashu^ as well as from other sources. The first volume was compiled by Motoori Ohira, and the second and third by Takashina Sanshi, a Kii local historian, and all three were published by a consortium of publishers from the three capitals and Wakayama, including the Sakamotoya brothers. 2. Sinological works, especially those edited by teachers in the fief school or in some other way connected with it. For example, Toshisen (Obiya Ihei alone, 1845), ^ collection of T'ang dynasty poems, and Rongo hokai (Obiya Ihei with Kasedaya, Suharaya Mohei of Edo, and Tsuruya Kyuhei of Osaka, 1839), an edition of Ho Yen's (third century AD) commentary on the Confucian Analects prepared by Yamamoto Genko (d. 1859) of the fief school in Wakayama. 3. Pharmacology. The principal publication in this category was Todo ihitsu, a three- volume posthumous collection ofthe works of Ohara Todo (d. 1825), edited by his grandson. Ohara was an herbalist and botanist whose family had been in service to the daimyo of Wakayama for generations and who was appointed head of the herbarium founded by the tenth daimyo, Tokugawa Harutomi. Todo ihitsu was published in 1833 by a consortium of Wakayama publishers, Obiya, Kasedaya, and Sakamotoya Kiichiro. A second set of three volumes was published in 1850 by the Sakamotoya brothers and a collection of publishers from the three capitals, and a further eight sets were planned, according to the colophon ofthe second set, but Obiya seems to have had nothing to do with any of these subsequent sets. 4. Educational works. These include not only a number of didactic or instructional books for women, ^'* but also, as a sign of the changing times at the end of the Tokugawa period, a French grammar entitled (Furansu yaku bunten) Hitori ayumi and published by Obiya Ihei alone in 1867. During the Tokugawa period the works published by Obiya Ihei and the other Wakayama publishers covered a broad range and the only notable category of publication missing from their lists is fiction, which remained the monopoly of the three capitals. Many of their publications were undoubtedly not merely of local interest but of a nature

140 that could appeal to a national readership through the booksellers ofthe three capitals. Within twenty years ofthe Meiji Restoration of 1868 this had ceased to be so. Wakayama publications were by that time mostly works intended for Wakayama consumption only. The cultural decentralization encouraged by the feudal dispensation under the Tokugawa shoguns collapsed after the Restoration and in its place Tokyo rapidly acquired a magnetic appeal as the place to learn about the West and all the forces that were currently changing Japan. Wakayama intellectuals and poets moved to Tokyo, as they did from other parts of Japan, and this spelt the end of the kind of provincial pubhshing that had flourished during the Tokugawa period.

1 The author wishes to express his gratitude to Mr biography and now the only source of much T. Suyama, of Wakayama Prefectural Library, detailed information concerning Obiya Ihei, for and to Mr I. Takachi, who is a direct descendant the wartime bombing of Wakayama destroyed of Obiya Ihei and the owner of the family most of the Takechi family archives. bookshop in Wakayama. Without their co- 8 The work in question is {Kokin zukan) Kosen operation it would have been impossible to nedan-zuke, and it was published by Shokddo complete this study. (Kashiwaraya Seiemon), Shogadd (Harimaya 2 The exhibition catalogue, Nagoya no shuppan— Kyubei), and Kyobundo (Shionoya Heisuke or Edo jidai no honyasan (Nagoya, 1981), is Kameya Yasuhei), all of Osaka, in the sixth profusely illustrated and provides a thorough month of 1793. introduction to all aspects of publishing in 9 Tanaka, op. cit, passim. Nagoya in the Tokugawa period. Among the 10 {Kyoho igo) Osaka shuppan shoseki mokuroku more detailed studies that have since appeared, (Osaka, 1936), p. 139. most worthy of mention are Kishi Masahiro, 11 The dated editions are both in Wakayama Pre- 'Bishu shorin nakama no seiritsu to santo', fectural Library, and the undated in Tokushima Bungaku, xlix, 11 (1981), pp. 125-37, ^"d Ota Prefectural Library. Masahiro, 'Nagoya no shoshi', ibid. 12 (1981), 12 Tanaka, op. cit., pp. 8-9. pp. 95-104- 13 Osaka honya nakama kiroku, vol. ix (Osaka, 3 On publishing in Sendai, see Koikawa Yuriko, 1982), p. 187. 'Sendai no shoshi zassan', Sendai-shi hakubut- 14 D. G. Chibbett, B. F. Hickman, and S. Matsu- sukan nenpo, vii (ig-jg), pp. 33-46, and'Sendai no daira, A Descriptive Catalogue of the pre-1868 shoshi ni tsuite', Sendai-shi hakubutsukan chosa Japanese Books, Manuscripts, and Prints in the kenkyu hokoku, ii (1981), pp. 10-22. There are Library of the School of Oriental and African also illustrations of a number of Sendai publica- Studies (London, 1975), no. 105. tions in Sendai-shi hakubutsukan zuroku (Sendai, 15 See Shibata Mitsuhiko, Daiso zosho mokuroku 1979), pp. 81-91. to kenkyu (Musashi-Murayama, 1983), vol. i, 4 Figures taken from Inoue Takaaki, Kinsei shorin pp. 620-2, and P. P. Kornicki, 'Books from hanmoto soran (Tokyo, 1981), p. 5. Japanese Circulating Libraries in the British 5 On the economic grounds for Wakayama's Library', British Library Journal, vi, 2 (1980), prominence in the Tokugawa period, see Sarah P: 195- Metzger-Court, 'Two Roads to Modernity: 16 Osaka shuppan shoseki mokuroku, pp. 200 and Some Reflections on Economic Preparedness 202, and {Kyoho igo) Edo shuppan shomoku in Nineteenth Century Wakayama and Pre- (Toyohashi, 1962), pp. 409 and 416. Industrial Britain', Asiatische StudienjEtudes 17 Ordinances issued by the government of the Asiatiques, xxxv, 1 (1981), pp. 15-33. daimyo of Wakayama to facilitate the editing of 6 Tajihi Ikuo, 'Kishu shoshi Shuseid5 no katsu- the fourth set arc contained in Nanki Tokugawa jibon', Biblia, Ixxxi (1983), pp. 130-6. shi (Wakayama, 1930-3), vol. ii, pp. 642-4. 7 Tanaka Keichu, Takechi Shiyu den (Wakayama, 18 Kinsei shuppan kokokushu (Tokyo, 1983), vol. i, 1927), albeit lamentably brief, is the only detailed p. 270.

141 19 These undated reprints are to be found in the Takechi Shiyu shi shoden', in Tanaka Keichu Wataya Bunko in Tenri Library (za/197/2) and and Kishi Koshin (eds,), Bunka kenshosha shoden Wakayama PrefecturalLibrary(WB9ii.4/82/05) (Wakayama Bunka Ky5kai, 1958), alongside copies of the original dated edition. 23 The 1825 edition of Naobi no mitama was 20 Nanki Tokugawa shi, vol. xvii, p. 169. published by Kashiwa Heisuke of Matsuzaka and 21 Ibid., vol. vi, p. 534, and Sakagami Yoshiyori, five other publishers from Kyoto, Osaka and Ki no kuni no ijin (Wakayama, 1977), p. 25. Nagoya. A catalogue of nine of his works, few of which 24 These works are listed in the colophon of the seem to have survived (or possibly they were Wakayama Prefectural Library copy of//ya^Mm'n never published) is contained on the obverse of isshu waka sho, which was published by Obiya the colophon \eaf of Onbyoron. Ihei alone in 1857. 22 Quoted in 'Chojutsu shuppangyo no kosekisha—

142