OBIYA IHEI, A JAPANESE PROVINCIAL

PUBLISHER^

p. F. KORNICKI

C O M M E R C I A L publishing came of age in Japan during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). Both at the beginning and at the end of this period there was a vogue forexperimenting with movable type, but from the middle of the seventeenth century theburgeoning publishing industry relied almost exclusively on wood-block printing, and itcontinued to do so until the 1870s. The industry developed to such an extent that therewas by the early nineteenth century a national, albeit informal, network of publishers anddistributors and a national market for the printed book. So at the time of the opening ofJapan in 1854 and the subsequent Meiji Restoration of 1868 there already existed in Japanthe means of publishing and communication which could serve to inform the inhabitantsof Japan about the world from which they had long been cut off. The first newspapers andmagazines were predominantly wood-block publications, but soon after the MeijiRestoration wood-block printing began to lose ground rapidly to printing with movabletype, which enjoyed the stimulus of newly imported Western technology. There can be nodoubt, however, that the foundations of the Meiji publishing industry were laid in theTokugawa period.

Until recently, studies of the publishing history of the Tokugawa period haveconcentrated exclusively on the so-called 'three capitals', Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo, the lastof which was designated the capital in 1868 and renamed Tokyo, The received opinion isthat commercial publishing began in Kyoto and rapidly developed in Kyoto and Osaka inthe seventeenth century but that in the course of the eighteenth century Edo graduallyassumed ever greater importance, until in the nineteenth century it achieved adominating position that was further strengthened in the Meiji period, when Tokyo hadno 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 ofpublishing in Nagoya in the Tokugawa period, and since then several studies haveappeared 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 historyof 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 ofthe Tokugawa period. This work includes a table which gives the numbers of publishersappearing in the body of the index according to their locations and the periods duringwhich they are presumed to have commenced their publishing careers, and the figures areas follows:''"

1598-1703 1704-88 1789-1868

KyotoOsakaEdoElsewhere

701

185242

43

538564493135

494504917407

These figures have to be treated with some caution. In the first place, there are some errorsof identification and omission, as is inevitable in a work ofthis kind. Secondly, some ofthe establishments listed in the body of the index were not so much publishers asdistributors 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 levelof their activity as measured, for example, in numbers of publications. And lastly, thefigures are based on the number of new publishers commencing operations in each of thethree periods. Thus if there were differences in the survival rates from area to area, thenthe totals represented by the second and third columns of figures might not be accurate asa portrait of the relative strengths of the publishing industries in the three capitals and theprovinces during the second and third periods under consideration. Supposing, forexample, that most of the Kyoto publishers from the first period had survived, then therewould 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 newprovincial 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 publishingcentres, but there were also flourishing publishing industries in a number of other castletowns, including Sendai, Hiroshima, Kanazawa, and Wakayama, a town on the coastsome thirty-five miles to the south-west of Osaka. During the Tokugawa periodWakayama enjoyed a diversity of local industry, excellent communications inland by riverand to other parts of Japan by sea, and a vigorous intellectual and cultural life centringaround the Gakushukan, the local fief school, which was opened in 1713.^ In the closingyears of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the nineteenth, a number ofbooksellers in Wakayama started turning their attention to publishing, and several ofthese 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,

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one of whom printed a number of works using wooden movable type.'^ The most active ofthem all, however, was the establishment of Obiya Ihei, and it is fortunate that the BritishLibrary possesses not only one of Ohiya Ihei's most famous publications but also somerare material relating to the range of his output and his ambitions in the early years of thenineteenth century.

The founder of the establishment as a printing concern was Takechi Shiyu, whosetrade name was Obiya Ihei.^ He was born in Wakayama in 1751 to a merchant familyunder the patronage of the local daimyo, and he died there in 1823. Thereupon the familybusiness was taken over by his son, Takechi Shibun, who also inherited his father's tradename, as was customary. At about the age of seven the first Obiya Ihei made the long tripto Edo by himself and became apprenticed there to a pharmaceutical business, where heworked until he was in his twenties. By 1778 he was back in Wakayama and had applied tothe daimyo for permission to sell a patent medicine for palsy both within the fief andelsewhere. By 1793 he had also become the author of an illustrated catalogue of old coinswhich gave their current values. This work was published in Osaka in the same year andaccording to a note immediately preceding the colophon, Obiya was actually engaged inthe numismatic trade in Wakayama at this time, probably as a sideline.^ In subsequentyears he persuaded fellow Wakayama merchants to help alleviate the fief's financialdifficulties, arranged for essential dredging work to be undertaken in Wakayama'swaterways, 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 firstappears on a colophon in a collection of ghost stories entitled Kaidan tabisiizuri. Thecolophon is undated but the preface and the end of the text on the obverse of the colophonleaf are both dated 1791. In the colophon the name of Obiya Ihei appears third in a list offour shorin, the others being Akitaya Zenbei of Kyoto, Maekawa Rokuzaemon of Edo, andYamaguchiya Mataichi of Osaka. Both Maekawa and Yamaguchiya were well-establishedpublishers by this time and, as would be expected both by his position at the end of the listand by the presence on the rear endpaper of a list of his other publications, Yamaguchiyaappears from contemporary booksellers' catalogues to have been the principal publisher.The same catalogues state that the author of this work, one Koyoen Shujin, who isotherwise unknown, was a Wakayama man. It is therefore likely that the inclusion ofObiya Ihei's name in the colophon indicates little more than the local connection and theright to distribute the work in Wakayama itself. It is possible, though, that he may havecontributed to the costs of publication.^^

By the middle of the 1790s Obiya Ihei was definitely involved in publishing. In the firstplace, his name appears in the colophon of Haikai shosen, a collection of haiku, which bearsthe date 1794. Again four shorin are named: Asaiya Genkichi of Wakayama, who isotherwise known for only one other publication; Obiya Ihei; Noda Jihei of Kyoto, who isbetter known as Tachibanaya Jihei and was a prolific publisher for almost the entire span

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of the Tokugawa period; and Shionoya Chubei of Osaka, who was active throughout thesecond half of the Tokugawa period and was evidently the principal publisher of thiswork. The compiler was Tadokoro Hachigo of Tanabe, a subsidiary castle town to thesouth of Wakayama, but Obiya's involvement as a publisher rather than just as adistributor is indicated by the existence of another issue of the same work with an undatedcolophon giving only Obiya's name, and of a revised edition published under Obiya'sname alone in 1840.^^ Secondly, towards the end of the same year, 1794, Obiya wasinvolved in a dispute over a case of alleged plagiarism. It appears that Obiya hadpublished, or was about to publish, a work entitled Sanraizu; it is probable that this refersto the Sung dynasty edition of the work San-li-fu, which was prepared by Nieh Ch'ung-Iand appeared in Japanese editions published by Maekawa Rokuzaemon of Edo in 1765and 1790. Obiya then learnt that excerpts from his edition had been included in a bookpublished by Kitamura Shirobei of Kyoto. After the dispute had gone to Edo, it wasfinally agreed that Obiya would yield the printing blocks of his Sanraizu to Kitamura forthe substantial sum of seventy ryo.'^^ Thirdly, in 1796, Obiya received permission tocommence work on an ambitious project, the preparation of an album covering all theplaces of note within the province. This will be dealt with more fully shortly. Andfourthly, in 1797, he was involved in another case of alleged plagiarism, this timeinvolving ^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 beenplagiarized by Obiya and that this threatened his livelihood; the case was settled in hisfavour. ̂ ^

So far more than twenty works have come to light that were definitely published duringthe time of the first Obiya Ihei. These do not include Sanraizu or the joruri book, both ofwhich 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 otsome standing. For example, Oriku Ki no tamagawa, a collection of haiku by poetsfrom Wakayama and the surrounding area published in four parts. The first part wasedited 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 ofpoets from the Wakayama area ranked in order of merit with Shiyu ranked fifth. Thesurviving copies of the first three parts have no colophons but the prefaces are dated1819,1820, and 1823, and pasted on to the inside rear cover of each is an advertisementfor five haiku collections, including the one under discussion, with the name of ObiyaIhei given as the publisher. The fourth part is furnished with a colophon dated 1825and bears the names of Shionoya Heisuke of Osaka, Obiya Ihei (the second), andTomiya Wahei of Tanabe. Other haiku collections published by Obiya Ihei includeYomo no warai (published in 1802 by Obiya alone; only known copy in WakayamaPrefectural 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).

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2. Religious works. For example, Hannya shingyo chuge, published in 1817 by Obiya Iheialone for four temples in Tanabe at the order of the daimyo of Tanabe, which wasa subordinate fief under the control of the daimyo of Wakayama. This work is acommentary 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 havebeen able to find is that of 1802, published by Obiya Ihei and Kasedaya Heiemon, alsoof Wakayama; many other editions exist, including one pubhshed by Obiya Ihei alonein 1845. Two other works are published by the same publishers Gagoroku (1814) andKanga hitori-geiko (1807), a work by Miyamoto Kunzan that provides instruction inthe 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 thecompilers or authors or sponsors were from Wakayama or the surrounding area. This isparticularly true of the haiku collections, but even here Obiya had secured theco-operation of some of the major publishers from the three capitals, indicating at least apossibihty of interest and sales outside Wakayama.

Obiya's lasting monument as a publisher and the work which made his name widelyknown was Kii-no-kuni meisho-zue, a comprehensive and profusely illustrated guide to theprovince of Kii, which comprised part of the fief of the daimyo of Wakayama. Localtopographies of this kind, featuring the temples, shrines, and other places of historic orscenic interest in a given province or city, became popular towards the end of theeighteenth century, and a number of them are to be found in the British Library. The firstof these local topographies was Akisato Rito's Mtyako meisho-zue, which dealt with thesights of Kyoto and was published in 1780. Its popularity inspired Akisato to compilesimilar works on different localities, and he started something of a fashion. It should benoted that these local topographies were read widely, and that their readership was by nomeans confined to the province with which each one concerned itself. The BritishLibrary's copy of Akisato Rito's Settsu meisho-zue (1798), for example, which describesthe sights in and around Osaka, formerly belonged to a circulating library in Nagasaki, faraway in Kyushu. Similarly, the great circulating library Daiso of Nagoya owned severalcopies of most of the local topographies of this kind that were published, includingKii-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 provinceof Kii in the mid-i79os. Before embarking on his preparatory travels around the provincehe secured a certificate from the fief administrators guaranteeing his bona fides andexplaining why he should be travelling around the countryside with an artist. Thisdocument, which is dated the eighth month of 1796 and bears the names and seals of sixsenior samurai, is still in the possession of his descendants.

The work was eventually completed in five sets. The first set, consisting of five

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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 theselocal topographies, amongst them Omi meisho-zue (1797) and Kisoji meisho-zue (1805), aswell as a number of works of fiction. The detailed colophon for the first set covers bothsides of a leaf. The obverse gives the names of all those involved in the preparation of theedition, including the calligrapher responsible for the final copy and the craftsmenresponsible for carving the blocks, the contents of the following sets, and a notice, togetherwith an official seal, indicating that publishing permission had been granted by the fiefauthorities in the eighth month of 1796 and that the Takechi (i,e. Obiya Ihei) family wasto retain the blocks. The reverse gives the following list of publishers: Suharaya Moheiand Maekawa Rokuzaemon of Edo, Eirakuya Toshiro of Nagoya, Ogawa Tazaemon andNamariya Yasuhei of Kyoto, Obiya Ihei, and Kasuya Nihei, Katsuoya Rokubei, andKawachiya Tasuke of Osaka. The last named was the controlling publisher and Maekawawas the Edo distributor.^*^ Appended to the copy in the British Library (16113.C.29) is acatalogue of these local topographies published by or on sale at the establishment ofKawachiya Tasuke.

The second set of five volumes was published in 1812 by Obiya Ihei and KawachiyaTasuke; the date of permission for publication and the names of those involved are thesame as those for the first set. Both the third and fourth sets date from after the time of thefirst Obiya Ihei. The third set lacks any indication of authorship but both the third andthe fourth sets seem to have been compiled by Kano Morohira (1806-57). Kano was asamurai in service to the daitnyo of Wakayama and had studied under some of the leadingscholars in the daimyo's court, including Motoori Ohira, whose fame was national. In 1831Kano had been ordered to assist with the compilation of Kii zokufudoki and in 1835 tocomplete Kii-no-kuni meisho-zue. ̂ "̂ To what extent he was relying on plans or even draftsprepared earlier by the first Obiya Ihei is not clear. At any rate, as a result of his efforts thethird set, of seven volumes, was published in 1838 by Suharaya Mohei of Edo, KawachiyaTasuke of Osaka, and Obiya Ihei (the second), and the fourth set, of six volumes, waspublished 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 in1937-43 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 forthe 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 publishersto prepare lists of their publications and append them to the books they published, andseveral examples have already been referred to above, Obiya Ihei prepared at least twosuch lists, a short one listing the titles of three haiku books, and a longer one covering threesides and listing forty-two works. Only the shorter is contained in a recent compendium ofsuch publishers' lists reproduced in facsimile, ^̂ and although the longer is said to exist inlapan 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

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published by Obiya Ihei. This is immediately apparent from the entry on Kii-no-kunimeisho-zue., which refers to a total of five sets and has the numbers of volumes in the thirdand fourth sets wrong. The catalogue was therefore clearly printed before the publicationof the third set in 1838. Also, although it is to be found in a copy of the second set whichwas published in 1812, it could have been printed after that date, owing to the fact that theyear of publication in the colophon does not necessarily represent the year in which agiven copy was actually executed from the wood blocks or even bound. Some of the booksin 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 thelast three works, which were not large-scale publications requiring several years ofpreparation, suggests that the catalogue was in fact printed well after 1812, the date of thesecond set of Kti-no-kum meisho-zue, although it may have anticipated Kenkyojin by a yearor 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 thepreparation of the catalogue. So there is every indication that the catalogue was printedC.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 otherpublishers. These are Murachidori (1795), a poetry collection, Shoshushu (1799), acollection 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 Heiemoneither 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, MaekawaRokuzaemon of Edo, and Morimoto (Kawachiya) Tasuke of Osaka. There are twopossible explanations for the appearance of these works in Obiya's catalogue. One is thatthey were works he had for sale but had not published himself. On balance this seemsunlikely, 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, explanationis that he had actually taken over the blocks of these titles and was printing from them nowhimself. The following considerations increase the likelihood of this being the correctexplanation. If, as I have suggested, Obiya's catalogue was printed c. 1820, the most recentof the five works mentioned above would already have been some fifteen years old; afterthe passage of so many years it is quite conceivable that Kasedaya may have chosen to sellthe blocks rather than hang on to them in the hope of further sales. Kasedaya was a leadingWakayama publisher with whom Obiya Ihei had been co-operating since their jointpublication of Kanso in 1802. There are copies of two different reissues of the fourth ofthe works mentioned above, Waka no ura; both of these lack the original colophons andcontain instead advertisements for books published by Obiya Ihei, which suggests that hehad been responsible for publishing them.^^

Apart from one or two other items that have survived in editions published by Obiyabut that lack dates, the remaining items have either been lost, not yet found, or represent

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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, whichwere to cover the provinces of Iga, Ise and Shima, and the whole of Shikoku. The firstthree were apparently to be prepared by Obiya Ihei himself, but by this stage he had noteven finished the guide to Kii. At any rate, given the popularity of these localtopographies, it is certain that they would have survived if they had actually beenpublished, 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 andpublisher of a series of such local topographies.

Following the topographical guides, several other of Obiya's interests as a publisher arerevealed 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 MaruyamaGensho, about whom nothing is known except that he was in service to the daimyo ofWakayama.^° 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 toWakayama to lecture in medicine; when the daimyo established a school of medicine (theIgakukan) 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 alreadymentioned, survives in an edition published by Kawachiya Tasuke of Osaka andKasedaya Heiemon of Wakayama, Gaishoron, a treatise on external injuries which waspublished 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'nationallearning' of Motoori Norinaga and his intellectual descendants, many of whom were to befound in Wakayama, including Motoori Ohira (1756-1833), who composed an obituarypoem 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 theprovince of Ise but he was frequently in Wakayama. His work Kenkyojin, which appearsin Obiya's catalogue, was published in 1821 by Sakaiya Nihei and Sakaiya Kashichi ofKyoto, Kashiwaya Heisuke of Matsuzaka, and Obiya Ihei and Kasedaya Heiemon ofWakayama. But other works of his mentioned in the catalogue seem never to have beenpublished, at least by Wakayama publishers. These include Kakaika, which wascompleted in two parts, in 1787 and 1790, but never printed and today survives only in anumber of manuscript copies, and Naobi no mitama which was complete in 1771 butapparently not published until 1825.^^

The catalogue thus affords a glimpse of Obiya's ambitions as a publisher that wouldhave taken him well beyond the run of provincial publishers. The works that he didpublish in the three categories mentioned above, and those that he would have done hadhis 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 ofthe term.

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After the death of the first Obiya Ihei in 1823, the bookselling business he hadestablished continued to flourish. Some of these later publications were:

1. Poetry. The second Obiya Ihei maintained the tradition of publishing haiku poetry, forexample Haikai senshu no shiori (parts i and 2, 1837, and part 3, 1857) and Hokkusandai shu (1845 and another edition in 1851). Both of these works were published byObiya in conjunction with a number of other Wakayama publishers, who included notonly Kasedaya Heiemon, but the brothers Sakamotoya Kiichiro and SakamotoyaDaijiro, who were the leading publishers in Wakayama by the 1840s and were toremain so for some years. In addition to haiku, Obiya started publishing classical wakapoetry, most notably Kii-no-kuni meisho hyakushu (1848) and its sequels ZokuKii-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 classiccollections of Japanese poetry such as the Man'yoshu, the Kokmshu, and the Sankashu^as well as from other sources. The first volume was compiled by Motoori Ohira, andthe second and third by Takashina Sanshi, a Kii local historian, and all three werepublished 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 otherway connected with it. For example, Toshisen (Obiya Ihei alone, 1845), ^ collectionof T'ang dynasty poems, and Rongo hokai (Obiya Ihei with Kasedaya, Suharaya Moheiof Edo, and Tsuruya Kyuhei of Osaka, 1839), an edition of Ho Yen's (third centuryAD) 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 hisgrandson. Ohara was an herbalist and botanist whose family had been in service to thedaimyo of Wakayama for generations and who was appointed head of the herbariumfounded by the tenth daimyo, Tokugawa Harutomi. Todo ihitsu was published in 1833by a consortium of Wakayama publishers, Obiya, Kasedaya, and Sakamotoya Kiichiro.A second set of three volumes was published in 1850 by the Sakamotoya brothers anda 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 dowith any of these subsequent sets.

4. Educational works. These include not only a number of didactic or instructional booksfor women, ̂ '* but also, as a sign of the changing times at the end of the Tokugawaperiod, a French grammar entitled (Furansu yaku bunten) Hitori ayumi and publishedby Obiya Ihei alone in 1867.

During the Tokugawa period the works published by Obiya Ihei and the otherWakayama publishers covered a broad range and the only notable category of publicationmissing 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

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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. Wakayamapublications were by that time mostly works intended for Wakayama consumption only.The cultural decentralization encouraged by the feudal dispensation under the Tokugawashoguns collapsed after the Restoration and in its place Tokyo rapidly acquired a magneticappeal as the place to learn about the West and all the forces that were currently changingJapan. Wakayama intellectuals and poets moved to Tokyo, as they did from other parts ofJapan, and this spelt the end of the kind of provincial pubhshing that had flourishedduring the Tokugawa period.

1 The author wishes to express his gratitude to MrT. Suyama, of Wakayama Prefectural Library,and to Mr I. Takachi, who is a direct descendantof Obiya Ihei and the owner of the familybookshop in Wakayama. Without their co-operation it would have been impossible tocomplete this study.

2 The exhibition catalogue, Nagoya no shuppan—Edo jidai no honyasan (Nagoya, 1981), isprofusely illustrated and provides a thoroughintroduction to all aspects of publishing inNagoya in the Tokugawa period. Among themore detailed studies that have since appeared,most worthy of mention are Kishi Masahiro,'Bishu shorin nakama no seiritsu to santo',Bungaku, xlix, 11 (1981), pp. 125-37, ^"d OtaMasahiro, 'Nagoya no shoshi', ibid. 12 (1981),pp. 95-104-

3 On publishing in Sendai, see Koikawa Yuriko,'Sendai no shoshi zassan', Sendai-shi hakubut-sukan nenpo, vii (ig-jg), pp. 33-46, and'Sendai noshoshi ni tsuite', Sendai-shi hakubutsukan chosakenkyu hokoku, ii (1981), pp. 10-22. There arealso illustrations of a number of Sendai publica-tions in Sendai-shi hakubutsukan zuroku (Sendai,1979), pp. 81-91.

4 Figures taken from Inoue Takaaki, Kinsei shorinhanmoto soran (Tokyo, 1981), p. 5.

5 On the economic grounds for Wakayama'sprominence in the Tokugawa period, see SarahMetzger-Court, 'Two Roads to Modernity:Some Reflections on Economic Preparednessin Nineteenth Century Wakayama and Pre-Industrial Britain', Asiatische StudienjEtudesAsiatiques, xxxv, 1 (1981), pp. 15-33.

6 Tajihi Ikuo, 'Kishu shoshi Shuseid5 no katsu-jibon', Biblia, Ixxxi (1983), pp. 130-6.

7 Tanaka Keichu, Takechi Shiyu den (Wakayama,1927), albeit lamentably brief, is the only detailed

biography and now the only source of muchdetailed information concerning Obiya Ihei, forthe wartime bombing of Wakayama destroyedmost of the Takechi family archives.

8 The work in question is {Kokin zukan) Kosennedan-zuke, and it was published by Shokddo(Kashiwaraya Seiemon), Shogadd (HarimayaKyubei), and Kyobundo (Shionoya Heisuke orKameya Yasuhei), all of Osaka, in the sixthmonth of 1793.

9 Tanaka, op. cit, passim.10 {Kyoho igo) Osaka shuppan shoseki mokuroku

(Osaka, 1936), p. 139.11 The dated editions are both in Wakayama Pre-

fectural Library, and the undated in TokushimaPrefectural Library.

12 Tanaka, op. cit., pp. 8-9.13 Osaka honya nakama kiroku, vol. ix (Osaka,

1982), p. 187.14 D. G. Chibbett, B. F. Hickman, and S. Matsu-

daira, A Descriptive Catalogue of the pre-1868Japanese Books, Manuscripts, and Prints in theLibrary of the School of Oriental and AfricanStudies (London, 1975), no. 105.

15 See Shibata Mitsuhiko, Daiso zosho mokurokuto kenkyu (Musashi-Murayama, 1983), vol. i,pp. 620-2, and P. P. Kornicki, 'Books fromJapanese Circulating Libraries in the BritishLibrary', British Library Journal, vi, 2 (1980),P: 195-

16 Osaka shuppan shoseki mokuroku, pp. 200 and202, and {Kyoho igo) Edo shuppan shomoku(Toyohashi, 1962), pp. 409 and 416.

17 Ordinances issued by the government of thedaimyo of Wakayama to facilitate the editing ofthe fourth set arc contained in Nanki Tokugawashi (Wakayama, 1930-3), vol. ii, pp. 642-4.

18 Kinsei shuppan kokokushu (Tokyo, 1983), vol. i,p. 270.

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19 These undated reprints are to be found in the Takechi Shiyu shi shoden', in Tanaka KeichuWataya Bunko in Tenri Library (za/197/2) and and Kishi Koshin (eds,), Bunka kenshosha shodenWakayama 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 and21 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 theseem to have survived (or possibly they were Wakayama Prefectural Library copy of//ya^Mm'nnever published) is contained on the obverse of isshu waka sho, which was published by Obiyathe colophon \eaf of Onbyoron. Ihei alone in 1857.

22 Quoted in 'Chojutsu shuppangyo no kosekisha—

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