Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, Episode 558, The Hack.

This week, I want to focus our attention on an episode that I actually had planned to do initially

right after our discussion of Hizakudighe.

You might remember from a few weeks back that Tokai-do-chu Hisakudigye by the great comic author

Jipensha Iku is an example of the kind

of thing an average person in the Edo period, the height of pre-modern Japan, the final age

of feudal rule before the birth of the modern state, would have read for fun. At least, those who

could read, literacy was more widespread during the Edo period, which ran from

1600 to 1868 than at any prior point in Japanese history, but a majority of the population

was still illiterate. Still, the main thrust of that whole episode a few weeks back was that

we could learn a lot from focusing not just on authors we

consider canonical, the famous and influential and the literarily recognized authors like,

say, Matsuo, but also on the popular. And there's definitely a lot we can learn about

the Edo period from talking about Jepenchaiku. In much the same way that, to borrow an example I used in that episode,

we can widen our understanding of early 20th century England by focusing not just on Virginia Woolf, but Arthur Conan Doyle.

The thing is, Gepenshaiku might not be that well known in the English-speaking world, but he does still have

a presence in modern Japanese culture.

It's not, in fact, just a coincidence that I compared him to Arthur Conan Doyle.

Like Sherlock Holmes, Kita and Yaji, the troublemaking vagrant heroes of Jepensha's work,

still appear in modern popular culture, in movies or manga, or what have you.

In fact, they appeared on the silver screen as recently as 2007 in a comedy called Three for the

Road in English, or in Japanese, Yaji Kita Doochu Teresco.

...