2008 年 72 巻 p. 40-57
The purpose of this paper is to understand the so called "Iwanami Culture" of reading. More particularly, I focus on the reception of the widely circulated Iwanami-Bunko pocket sized edition during World War II. This analysis utilizes Chartier's approach to the practice of reading. Until now the Iwanami-Bunko edition has been considered a vehicle for self cultivation(kyoyo). By focusing on personal accounts in reader's journals, this research came across another aspect of cultivation, national cultivation(nihon shugitekina kyoyo). Iwanami-Bunko's popular pocket sized classic series thus encompassed national as well as personal cultivation.