The Book as a World: Seeing Izumi Kyoka's Nihonbashi through the Book Design of Komura Settai

Abstract

Izumi Kyoka wrote his novel Nihonbashi in 1914, and published it in September of that year. The cover design and illustrations were done by the Japanese artist Komura Settai. The purpose of this paper is to consider the significance of Nihonbashi as a book through an analysis of both novel and book design. The plot of Nihonbashi develops through the overlapping identities of the women characters, which in turn makes us feel their emotional bonds. Settai's book design initially appears to stand alone, independent of the novel. Yet by viewing his illustrations in the light of the novel, we realize that rather than depicting specific scenes, Settai's art captures the novel's logic as a whole. A joint work by Kyoka and Settai that left its mark on the history of the book, Nihonbashi, embodies the logic, time, and space of the novel in a single object, the book.