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The Typographic Imagination explores how this commercial print revolution transformed Japan’s media ecology and traces the possibilities and pitfalls of type as a force for radical social change. Nathan Shockey examines the emergence of new forms of reading, writing, and thinking in Japan from the last years of the nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth. Charting the relationships among prose, politics, and print capitalism, he considers the meanings and functions of print as a staple commodity and as a ubiquitous and material medium for discourse and thought. Drawing on extensive archival research, The Typographic Imagination brings into conversation a wide array of materials, including bookseller trade circulars, language reform debates, works of experimental fiction, photo gazetteers, socialist periodicals, Esperanto primers, declassified censorship documents, and printing press strike bulletins. Combining the rigorous close analysis of Japanese literary studies with transdisciplinary methodologies from media studies, book history, and intellectual history, The Typographic Imagination presents a multivalent vision of the rise of mass print media and the transformations of modern Japanese literature, language, and culture.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780231194297","publication_date":"20230627","publisher":"Columbia University Press","slug":"the-typographic-imagination","subtitle":"Reading and Writing in Japan’s Age of Modern Print Media","title":"The Typographic Imagination"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"LIT008030","confidence_band":"high","label":"Japanese Literary Criticism","score":0.8046,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LCO004030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Japanese Literary Collections","score":0.7664,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"ART019030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Japanese Art","score":0.7472,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"LIT008030","confidence_band":"high","label":"Japanese Literary Criticism","score":0.8046,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LCO004030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Japanese Literary Collections","score":0.7664,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"ART019030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Japanese Art","score":0.7472,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"LIT008030","confidence_band":"high","label":"Japanese Literary Criticism","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"LIT024050","confidence_band":"high","label":"20th-Century Literary Criticism","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Japanese Literary Criticism","score":0.8046,"slug":"japanese-literary-criticism"},{"label":"Japanese Literary Collections","score":0.7664,"slug":"japanese-literary-collections"},{"label":"Japanese Art","score":0.7472,"slug":"japanese-art"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers who enjoy Japanese Literary Criticism","Good for readers who enjoy Japanese Literary Criticism and Japanese Literary Collections."],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Ruth Benedict"],"book_id":"9780618619597","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780618619597.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-21T10%3A11%3A40Z","score":14.2452,"title":"The Chrysanthemum and the Sword","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780618619597"},{"authors":["Thomas Gaubatz"],"book_id":"9780231221306","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780231221306.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-21T10%3A11%3A40Z","score":11.1605,"title":"The Textual Townsman","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780231221306"},{"authors":["Royall Tyler"],"book_id":"9780231214674","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780231214674.jpg?v=20260418T162306Z%3A2026-04-21T10%3A11%3A40Z","score":10.5143,"title":"The Dawn of the Warrior Age","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780231214674"},{"authors":["Michael K. 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