“
Nehon” in Early Modern Osaka included stage writings, stage directions and speeches; they were, in other words, Kabuki play scripts. Playscripts, essentially for theatre internal use only, were copied out and disseminated by book lenders. Frontispieces and illustrations were added, resulting in the publication of “
e-iri nehon”. Led by Osaka publisher Kawachiya Tasuke, from 1802, they became regularly published works for sale, as a rule, on the 2nd day of the New Year. However, there are various extant
e-iri nehon whose colophons do not give a date of publication, or whose colophons are missing, or where the colophon for the first printing remains unchanged in a later printing, etc. Since it is hard to tell a first printing from a later printing, there are many works for which the NIJL Pre-Modern Japanese book database gives the year of publication as unknown, or gives an incorrect year of publication. This paper has surveyed and analysed the publisher information, advertisements and publication lists in
ei-ri nehon from their beginning into the Meiji period, and collated them with entries in
Osaka Honya Nakama Kiroku (Osaka Publishers’ Guild Record). The
e-iri nehon discovered to date appear in the “
E-iri nehon List” appended to the end of the paper, which has clarified their year of publication, title, illustrator and publisher.
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