Outlaws of Postwar Publishing: Japanese Rental Bookstores and their Textbooks for Criminals

Though the practice of rental bookstores (kashihon-ya) can be traced back to the Edo period, the Fifteen-Year War spawned a postwar iteration of this Japanese tradition that differed in remarkable ways. Originally a response by secondhand bookstore owners to book and paper scarcity characteristic of the immediate postwar period, kashihon-ya emerged in Kansai as early as 1948 as the leading provider of reading materials to the newly orphaned, widowed, disabled, and poor. This presentation examines the culture of postwar rental bookstores, attending to their non-traditional and oftentimes illicit methods of production, circulation, and distribution. Though giants would eventually emerge from this rental bookstore market to claim mainstream fame, such as the much-celebrated figures of Mizuki Shigeru, Umezu Kazuo, and Shirato Sanpei, in its time the rental bookstore—and its main product, kashihon manga—soon were blamed for truancy, criminality, and sexual deviancy in minors by PTAs, traditional publishers, and public intellectuals alike. After outlining the history of kashihon-ya—a history which lasts, at best, 20 years—this presentation examines the long-forgotten work of Satō Masaaki (1937-2004) to argue the importance of this ephemeral reading culture.

Reischauer Institute Japan Forum