was a Japanese artist, writer, and the owner of a tobacco shop during the Edo period. His real name was , and he was also known popularly as . He began his professional career illustrating the works of others before writing his own Kibyōshi and Sharebon, which marked his importance in the history of manga. Within his works, Kyōden often included references to his shop to increase sales. Kyōden's works were affected by the shifting publication laws of the Kansei Reforms, which aimed to punish writers and their publishers for writings related to the Yoshiwara and other things that were deemed to be "harmful to society" at the time by the Tokugawa Bakufu. As a result of his punishment in 1791, Kyōden shifted his writings to the more didactic Yomihon. During the 1790s, Santō Kyōden became a household name, and one of his works could sell as many as 10,000 copies, numbers that were previously unheard of for the time.
Early life Santō Kyōden was born in Fukagawa, Edo (now Tokyo). The Iwase family, into which he was born, were pawnbrokers. Kyōden was the oldest of four siblings. He had one younger brother, Iwase Momoki (岩瀬 百樹), who later became a famous writer under the name Santō Kyōzan. Kyōden also had two younger sisters named Kinu and Yone. His name as a child was Jintarō.
He first began his studies at the age of nine by reading kusazōshi, specifically aohon "blue books", kurobon "black books", and akahon "red books", and also by copying the works of other authors.
While Kyōden was beginning his studies, he was gifted a desk by his father, Denzaemon, which he would continue to use until he died.
Literary career Ukiyo-e
Kyōden began his career by studying ukiyo-e or woodblock prints, which typically depicted "the floating world" of the Yoshiwara under Kitao Shigemasa (北尾 重政), and began illustrating kibyōshi under the pseudonym Kitao Masanobu (北尾 政寅). He began his professional career by illustrating the works of other authors.
His visual artwork is held in several museums, including the Harvard Art Museum, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, the British Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chazen Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Kibyōshi
In the 1780s, he began writing kibyōshi or "yellow-covered" picture books under the name Santō Kyōden. Several of these works are written by Santō Kyōden and illustrated by Kitao Masanobu. His works gained popularity in 1785. One of his most popular works during this time was Edo umare uwaki no kabayaki, or "Playboy, Grilled Edo Style" or "Playboy, a la Edo." In this work, the main character, Enjirō, is drawn with a pig's nose that became a distinctive feature of Kyōden's illustrations. It is commonly referred to as the "Kyōden nose." Kyōden often depicts himself and his tobacco shop in his works. At the end of Edo umare uwaki no kabayaki, it turns out that Enjirō commissioned Kyōden to write his story. Kyōden wrote thirteen kibyōshi in 1793. Kyōden continued to write kibyōshi until the eventual decline of the genre due to censorship laws during the Kansei Reforms.
Sharebon
Kyōden's first sharebon or "book of manners" was published in 1785. Sharebon acted as guidebooks for how to act in the Yoshiwara. In 1789, Kyōden was punished for his illustrations in Koku bykau mizukagami by Ishibe Kinko. This work displeased authorities and resulted in Kyōden being fined for his illustrations. Following his punishment, Kyōden continued to illustrate, but only his own works. This was not the only punishment Kyōden faced as two years later, Kyōden was handcuffed for fifty days because of three sharebon he wrote. Although there are disagreements as to what the government had an issue with. David Atherton, assistant Professor of East Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard University, in his essay The Author as Protagonist claims that the works were "deemed to contain indecent material" and Kyōden's punishment reflected a "moral connection between author and book that differentiated his position from the others that were punished." During the Kansei Reforms, the bakufu tried to hold artists and publishers accountable for works that they considered to be "harmful to society" for various reasons, such as depicting the Yoshiwara. It is believed that his punishment was used to make an example out of him and to scare off smaller, less famous writers from writing offending material. Adam Kern, professor of Japanese literature and visual culture at the University of Wisconsin, in his extensive thesis, Blowing Smoke: Tobacco pouches, literary squibs, and authorial puffery in the pictorial comic fiction, argues that Kyōden was punished not because of the material present within Kyōden's sharebon, but because of a technicality. Due to the nature of these types of works, writers and publishers would often omit their names. During the Kansei Reforms, however, writers and publishers were required to display their names on the cover of the book, something which Kyōden and had failed to do with the three offending sharebon. However, these rules were rarely enforced and thus inconsistent as a result.
Kyōden was not the only one punished, however, Kyōden's father was also reprimanded. The two censors who had approved the books were not only fined, but they were also banished from Edo. The publisher of Kyōden's three offending works, Tsutaya Jūzaburō (also commonly referred to as Tsutaju), had half of his assets seized by the government as Kyōden's works violated publishing edicts during the Kansei Reforms. Immediately following his punishment, Tsutaju issued a public apology and admitted that he pressured Kyōden into releasing those works. Kyōden himself was hesitant in releasing the work due to the contents. It would seem that Kyōden was trying to avoid punishment, as the punishment he faced two years ago was still fresh in his mind. In Tsutaju's preface, majime naru kojo to Kyōden's Hakoiri musume men'ya ningyo, Tsutaju also implied that this incident deeply upset Kyōden to the point where he wanted to take a temporary break from writing. Ironically, this caused sales of Kyōden's works to increase because rumors spread that Kyōden was never going to write again, and Tsutaju capitalized on these rumors by reissuing second editions of Kyōden's most popular kibyoshi. As a result, Kyōden stopped writing gesaku or "playful writings" shortly thereafter.
Yomihon
Following his punishment in 1791, Kyōden shifted to yomihon or "books for reading." Yomihon are known for being large scale and for being more dramatic and didactic rather than episodic and humorous like many of the works Kyōden had previously written. Kyōden's first yomihon was Tzuzoku Taiseiden or the "Popular Biography of Confucius." In the autumn of that year, Kyokutei Bakin, who would later go on to write Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, or "Tale of Eight Dogs," was made Kyōden's apprentice.
Overall career
It is estimated that over the course of Kyōden's career, Kyōden was involved in approximately 200 unique pieces. He is estimated to have written 125 of them himself. Although this number may be bloated because reissues may be included as well. The way in which Kyōden was paid for his writings was different from the way in which other writers at the time were paid. Most authors of the time were paid a "nominal fee" if their works were to gain popularity, but Kyōden was paid "regularly on a manuscript-for-fee basis." The problem with this, however, was that when Tsutaju reissued second editions of Kyōden's most famous works, he did not get paid for those, because he was only paid for the manuscript. Adam Kern argues that most of the writers during this time were more concerned with establishing themselves as an identifiable brand first and then writing derivative literature. Within his works, Kyōden would present the image he wanted his readers to have of him as a writer. He would describe in detail the struggles he faced, such as struggling to meet deadlines and trying to constantly produce new writings for his publishers. There is great contention as to whether pieces written by Kyōden and other writers were plagiarized; however, Kern argues that it was conventional at the time for works to be derivative and that Kyōden "appreciated this predicament, reveled in it, and even flaunted it in his kibyōshi."
Tobacco shop Advertisements and Promotions
Kyōden was not only an established author. Kyōden was also the owner of a successful tobacco shop named "Kyōya Denzō's Shop" that opened in the autumn of 1793 in Ginza. One way Kyōden was able to increase sales was by placing advertisements for his shop within his writings. Although this is common practice today, this was a new development in Japan at the time. In order for Kyōden to differentiate that from his writing, he would put a box around his advertisements and announce, "this is an advertisement." Even his pseudonym, Santō Kyōden, contains a reference to the location of his tobacco shop. To means "to the East" of san, "the mountains," in kyō or "Kyōbashi." Den is a reference to his status as a merchant named "Denzaburo."
Kyōden was also able to capitalize on his celebrity status to draw customers to his shop. As Adam Kern states, "most denizens of Edo in late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Japan would have recognized the Kyōden name as that of the best-selling author of numerous genres of light fiction." This is why Kyōden made sure to establish himself as a brand before he opened his shop so that people would be drawn to the shop to have a chance of meeting "Japan's first celebrity writer." However, it seems that Kyōden left the day-to-day activities to his father while he would lock himself in his office on the second floor to continue writing.