{"id":8886,"date":"2015-09-27T15:47:22","date_gmt":"2015-09-27T15:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/?p=8886"},"modified":"2024-09-03T11:58:36","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T10:58:36","slug":"international-history-of-magazines-4-china-and-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/2015\/09\/27\/international-history-of-magazines-4-china-and-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"International History of Magazines 4: China and Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

JAPAN AND CHINA<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As one of the most literate countries in the world, Japan<\/strong> has a rich magazine history even if relatively short. That the newspaper and magazine are Western formats is well known, and yet as in other, mainly non-Anglophone, countries the distinction between the two is not always clear. Just two years after Japan was opened to the west in 1859, the Englishman Albert William Hansard began the Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser<\/em>: this became the model for Japanese-language newspapers. The first magazine, which appeared in 1867, was the Seiyo-Zasshi<\/em>, (\u201cWestern Magazine\u201d) featuring articles translated from Dutch. Only six issues were published before it folded in 1869, but its influence is generally considered enormous, not least because it introduced the term “zasshi” into Japanese to mean \u00a0\u201cmagazine\u201d.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The women\u2019s magazine, initially targeting the wealthy (cf. the history of the women\u2019s magazine in the west), arose in the early years of the twentieth century with Katei-no-Tomo<\/em> (\u201cThe Family Companion\u201d) in 1903. The Fujin Gah\u014d, <\/em>(\u201cLadies Pictorial\u201d), first published in 1905 and still published (as of 2015), is significant not only for its aesthetic illustrations but also for its early use of photographs. The women\u2019s magazine market proved lucrative: the Shufu-no-Tomo<\/em> (\u201cThe Housewives\u2019 Companion\u201d), begun in 1916, enabled the founding of a publishing empire named after it (now a subsidiary of Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd). In the 1922 two newspapers, the Asahi Shimbun<\/em> and the Mainichi Shimbun<\/em>, began to publish weekly news magazines, the Shukan Asahi<\/em> and the Sunday Mainichi<\/em>, anticipating the miscellaneous news format of Time Magazine<\/em> by a year. Despite these innovations, circulations were limited until the 1950s and the growth of consumerism. Women\u2019s magazines were now launched into the mass rather than just restricted market, as did, a decade later, men\u2019s magazines such as Shukan Playboy<\/em> (1966 \u2013 ; not a regional version of the American Playboy<\/em>). Since then, there has been a proliferation of magazines catering to a very wide range of target readerships. These are almost all produced by large media conglomerates.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

***********<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Although China<\/strong> had for centuries published a serial state organ (known in English as the Imperial Gazette<\/em>), magazine publishing was introduced into China in the early nineteenth century by Christian missionaries. One of the earliest was the Chinese-language Chashisu Meiyue Tongjizhuan <\/em>(\u201cChina Monthly Magazine\u201d) started in 1815 by Robert Morrison and William Milne of the London Missionary Society. Around the same time, Anglophone and Portuguese missionary magazines appeared in South China and Southeast Asia. In the 1860s foreign-owned commercial newspapers in treaty ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai joined the missionary periodicals and provided the models for Chinese-owned publications. After Japan\u2019s defeat of China in 1895, the government stepped up its internal print propaganda and restricted (when not stopped) circulation of papers critical of its policies. As a result many journalists turned away from politics and newspapers to mass entertainment and to magazines and hybrid magazine-newspapers called\u00a0xiaobao (<\/em>often defined as similar to Western \u201ctabloids\u201d mixing literary genres, news and fiction).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After the Communist Revolution of 1949 very few periodicals were allowed: the most important was Renmin Huabao<\/em> (\u201cThe People\u2019s Pictorial\u201d 1950-), whose title characters were written by Mao Zedong himself, J\u012bnr\u00ec<\/em> Zh\u014dnggu\u00f3 (\u201c<\/em>China Today\u201d 1949-), Dazhong dianying<\/em> (\u201cPopular Film\u201d 1950-). In the late 1980s, magazine markets were opened and Chinese-language versions of Western women\u2019s and men\u2019s magazines, such as Elle<\/em>, Cosmopolitan<\/em> and Men\u2019s Health,<\/em> as well as versions of Japanese magazines, competed with local products. Currently (2015) magazines are again the site of a commercial battle for readers and advertising between foreign and domestic media conglomerates.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

OVERVIEWS<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Bennett, Adrian A. 1983 Missionary Journalist in China: Young J. Allen and his Magazines<\/em>. Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

An early study of Chinese missionary magazines, this focuses on the figure of an American missionary. It offers a comprehensive description of his two Chinese-language magazines, the Chiao-hui hsin-pao<\/em> (\u201cChurch Times\u201d 1868-1874) and the Wan-kuo king-pao<\/em> (\u201cChinese Globe Magazine\u201d, 1874-1883), which the author claims to be the most important intellectual periodicals before the Sino-Japanese war.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Frederick Sarah. 2006 Turning Pages: Reading and Writing Women\u2019s Magazines in Interwar Japan<\/em>. Honolulu: University of Hawai\u2019i Press <\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Originating in a PhD dissertation at the University of Chicago, this is an accessible yet ground-breaking study of three mass-market Japanese women\u2019s magazines between 1918 and 1940 that convincingly asks us to place these publications far closer to the centre of our understanding of Japanese modernity and literature than hitherto.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Minobu Shiozawa. 1994. Zasshi 100-nen no ayumi, 1874-1990 : jidai to tomoni tanjo\u0304shi seisuisuru nagare o yomu<\/em> (\u201cA Century of Magazines, 1874-1990: its birth, successes and failures\u201d). To\u0304kyo\u0304: Guri\u0304n Aro\u0304 Shuppansha.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The standard history of Japanese magazines unfortunately not yet translated.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Mittler, Barbara. 2004. A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity and Change in Shanghai\u2019s News Media, 1872-1924<\/em>. Cambridge, Mass and London: Harvard University Asia Center<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

An outstanding study of a single publication which, even though it is of a newspaper, is very useful for the study of magazines in China as it devotes attention to the wider publishing context, including, in chapter 4, women\u2019s magazines.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Reed, Christopher A. 2004. Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876-1937<\/em>. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Although magazines are incidental to this richly-researched volume — it focuses on commercial book production rather than the periodical press — Reed\u2019s work provides illuminating background information on how the Chinese print industry was a battleground for foreign and domestic ownership and thereby control of information dissemination and propaganda.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Shen, Shuang. 2009. Cosmopolitan Publics: Anglophone Print Culture in Semi-Colonial Shanghai<\/em>. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

An intriguing study of \u201ca culture of circulation\u201d of English in China and also of the Chinese diaspora, this has a lot of interesting material on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Chinese and English-language magazines, though the focus is on the twentieth century. Two chapters focus on the China Critic<\/em> (founded 1928) and on the T\u2019ien Hsia<\/em> (an English-language Shanghai monthly published 1935-1941), and two more on various international Anglophone magazines about China and on magazines related to the Chinese diaspora.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Wagner, Rudolph G. Ed. 2007 Joining the Global Public: Word, Image and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870-1910<\/em>. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Despite the title of this fascinating and well-researched volume , two chapters of the six (including the introduction) are devoted to magazines, one to the Dianshizhai huabao<\/em> (Illustrated News from Dianshizhai, 1884-1898) and another to xiaobao<\/em> (translated as \u201ctabloids\u201d but which recall general interest entertainment magazines).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Zhang, Xiantao. 2007. The Origins of the Modern Chinese Press. The Influence of the Protestant Missionary Press in late Qing China<\/em>. Oxford: Routledge.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A readable and theoretically informed account of Chinese-language missionary journals with careful attention to their dialogue with local productions consisting of both their contemporaries in the nineteenth century and today\u2019s journalistic practices. Not only concerned with discourse, one chapter describes the interesting impact of missionaries on Chinese print technology.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

DATABASES<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Magazineplus <\/strong>http:\/\/www.nichigai.co.jp\/database\/mag-plus.html<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This vast database, the largest Japanese magazine database, \u00a0includes, unusually, trade and professional magazines as well as an ever expanding list of general interest, local and specialist magazines. Well over 27,000 titles have been indexed as of writing (2015).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Meiji Shinbun Zasshi Bunko<\/em><\/strong> http:\/\/www.meiji.j.u-tokyo.ac.jp\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A major database of newspapers and magazines at the University of Tokyo that is particularly useful. The library collections include 2,030 newspapers and 7,550 periodicals, in addition to original prints and earlier editions from the Meiji era.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator (CiNii) \u00a0https:\/\/cir.nii.ac.jp\/<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This database includes Japanese articles, books and periodicals, mostly but not exclusively from the natural sciences. Many articles are publicly available.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Shenbao database: \u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/shenbao.uni-hd.de\/Lasso\/Shenbao\/searchSimple.lasso<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A rather clunky database of the contents of one of the longest lived and most successful of early Chinese newspapers, the Shenbao<\/em> founded in 1871 by a British merchant, Ernest Major (1841-1908).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Chinese Women\u2019s Magazines in the Late Qing and Early Republican Period: http:\/\/womag.uni-hd.de\/index.php<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

An excellent database comprising fully searchable (in Roman characters) copies of four key women\u2019s magazines published between 1904 and 1937: N\u00efzi shijie<\/em> (Women\u2019s World<\/em>, 1904-7), Fun\u00fc shibao<\/em> (The Women\u2019s Eastern Times 1911-17), Fun\u00fc zashi<\/em> (The Ladies Journal<\/em>, 1915-1831) and Linglong<\/em> (Elegance, 1931-1937)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Zasshi kiji sakuin shusei detabesu<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Available through some institutions, this database indexes periodical articles published in Japanese from 1868 onwards, including those in former Japanese colonies and local periodicals. It also provides the capability to simultaneously search CiNii (q.v.). It is especially valuable for the late 19th and early 20th centuries.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JAPAN AND CHINA As one of the most literate countries in the world, Japan has a rich magazine history even if relatively short. That the newspaper and magazine are Western formats is well known, and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,9,13,15,16],"tags":[28,31,54,62,73],"class_list":["post-8886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-history","category-periodicals","category-publishing-history","category-twentieth-century-publishing","category-victorian-popular-literature","category-victorian-publishing","tag-china","tag-comparative-magazine-history","tag-japan","tag-magazines","tag-periodicals-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8886"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16041,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8886\/revisions\/16041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/andrewking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}