Kawaraban
As Kawaraban ( Jap. 瓦版 ; to German literally "roof tiles pressure") is referred to in Japan from paper sheets existing and predominantly monochrome with black ink printed leaflets . They were in circulation from around 1615 to 1871/72.
history
The oldest surviving kawaraban date from 1615 of the Edo period . The designation of this type of leaflet as "Kawaraban" has only been reliably proven since the middle of the 19th century. The word with the kanji written 瓦 ( Kawara ) representative of sound produced roof tiles stands. This writing could indicate that the first kawaraban were made with clay printing plates ; however, such printing plates could not be detected. Another etymological derivation of the term refers to a further meaning of the word Kawara , namely " river bank " or "dried out river bed", written with the Kanji 河 原 . The dried up river beds and the river banks were traditionally the residence of the Eta and Hinin , the members of the lowest social strata of society in feudal Japan. The meaning of Kawaraban would then be understood as "prints for the common people". Kawaraban were mainly monochrome until around 1871/72. The last kawaraban was printed around 1871/72, after which they were replaced by the colored illustrated newspaper Tokio Nichinichi Shinbun ( 東京 日 日 新聞 ; to German "Tokios Tageszeitung").
Manufacturing
The kawaraban were made like other woodcuts : texts and illustrations were cut as negatives into the specially prepared wooden plates, from which the prints were then made on Japanese paper . Smaller leaflets were printed with a single plate, for more extensive reporting there could also be several, which were used to print side by side on large sheets of paper. Occasionally, pamphlets appeared that covered several pages. Most of the leaflets were monochrome, but reports on significant events such as the Great Earthquake in 1855 or the arrival of Admiral Matthew Calbraith Perry in 1854 were also printed in multiple colors. The producers of the Kawaraban were small publishers who were not strictly controlled by the censorship authorities . As soon as a newsworthy incident occurred, a scribe was hired to draft the text and illustrations. Its design went to the plate cutter , the printing plates went to the printer and then the finished leaflets were delivered to the Ezōshiya ("bookstores"). In parallel, they were sold by street vendors. The price (around 4 months ) corresponded to the value of a quarter of a simple meal, larger and more extensive kawarabans cost up to twice the meal (around 30 months).
backgrounds
Leaflets like the Kawaraban came up when the common people of Japan tried to find out about important events like natural disasters and wars in the simplest possible way . Initially, the focus was on the exchange of information and news, later, of course, the desire for sensation and entertainment was added.
Smaller specimens were made quickly, but the information and illustrations were limited to the bare essentials, which often caused the quality to suffer. In the case of a house fire, for example, it was sufficient to print a map of the area with place names on which a miniature representation of a fire and an explanatory short text about the place could be seen. In the case of news about natural disasters, on the other hand, more detailed images and more extensive texts were required, so that the kawarabans reporting on them were correspondingly large-format. A well-known Kawaraban reports the Ansei-Edo earthquake on November 11, 1855 ( traditional date : Ansei 2/10/2), in which more than 14,000 houses were destroyed and thousands of people were killed in the epicenter of Edo . Another problem with the kawaraban was that the Bakufu controlled the text content and the amount of leaflets to be printed more and more and that the kawaraban were not produced daily, so that it was impossible to predict when the next kawaraban would appear and what was in it. It was only with the opening of Japan's borders around 1854 that controls eased again a little.
See also
literature
- Rebecca Salter: Japanese popular prints from votive slips to playing cards . A & C Black Publishers Limited, London 2006, ISBN 0-7136-6517-3 .
- Stephan Köhn: "Reports on what was seen and heard from the Ansei period", part 1 . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-447-04546-9 .
- Andrzej K. Koźmiński, Donald P. Cushman: Organizational Communication and Management: A Global Perspective . SUNY, New York 1993, ISBN 0-7914-1305-5 .
Web links
- 瓦 版 に つ い て (About Kawaraban). 早 稲 田 大学 図 書館(Waseda University Library), 2001,accessed May 20, 2012(Japanese, with images of various Kawaraban).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Rebecca Salter: Japanese popular prints from votive slips to playing cards . Pp. 58-61.
- ↑ a b Stephan Köhn: "Reports on what was seen and heard from the Ansei period", part 1 . P. 3, 6, & 17.
- ^ A b Andrzej K. Koźmiński, Donald P. Cushman: Organizational Communication and Management . P. 163.