Nathan Shockey's book The Typographic Imagination: Reading and Writing in Japan's Age of Modern Print Media is an ambitious investigation into the creation of print culture in modern Japan. Utilizing methods of inquiry from media studies, literary criticism, cultural and intellectual history, kokugo studies, and business, to name a few, Shockey argues that the four-decade period between (approximately) 1890 and 1930 was the time when “magazines and books became a part of everyday life” (p. 128). For Shockey, the convergence of several crucial developments helped create a society that valued the written word and encouraged the formation and dissemination of shared cultural narratives. Among the most important improvements were a dramatic rise in literacy rates, the formation of effective transportation and distribution systems, language standardization, and the creation of repositories (bookstores, archives, etc.).

The truth of many of Shockey's underlying assumptions seems self-evident. Japanese are voracious readers and eagerly consume everything from print and electronic newspapers to magazines to literary works to manga. His second assumption is that there is a national culture evident in Japan, and that it existed before the age of radio, television, or the internet. For Shockey, national culture therefore must have been heavily influenced by developments in print media. Consequently, his task was not to argue that there was a “typographic imagination,” but rather to reveal how and when it was created. He has succeeded in this effort.

Shockey divides his work into two parts composed of three chapters each. The first half highlights several elements necessary in the creation of print capital, which he calls the “modern media ecology.” Chapter 1 highlights the Hakubunkan publishing empire and the ways its founder, Ōhashi Sahei (1835–1902), transitioned a small bookstore business into one of Japan's most successful publishing houses. Shockey's narrative pivots around stories published about the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5). According to Shockey, Ōhashi understood that image-rich accounts of wartime exploits sold very well and that these helped launch and then underwrite other projects, such as the well-known popular magazine Taiyō. Shockey also highlights how the Russo-Japanese War created an environment that helped transform the Kōdansha group into a publishing powerhouse.

Chapter 2 highlights the establishment of the Iwanami Shoten (bookstore) in 1913. Shockey argues that Iwanami Shigeo's radical decision to reprint older but very popular works in mass paperback form was a seminal moment in the publishing industry, in part because of his desire to use fewer and less complex Chinese characters. His purpose in simplifying the language that his publications used was to facilitate readability. Iwanami Shigeo then decided to charge such small sums of money for each volume (about the cost of two cups of coffee at that time) that they were accessible to just about everyone. Shockey posits that publishers such as Iwanami discovered that the high rates of basic literacy in Japan (approximately 97 percent at that time) allowed for a sustainable business model to emerge for modern print capital. The high circulation numbers of magazines (millions per year) and the extraordinary number of popular book sales reveals that a mass market existed and that culture, knowledge, and entertainment were easily disseminated nationwide no later than 1920. For Shockey, this created an environment in which the modern “liberal reader” could emerge and helped structure a “middle-class intellectual sensibility” (p. 80).

Chapter 3 highlights other bookstores, libraries, and collectors that created the concept of “the materiality of print culture.” In particular, he discusses the well-known Maruzen bookseller. Shockey asserts that used bookstores, archives, and libraries were indispensable in the creation of the canon of Japanese literary and media history. He calls these spaces the “ultimate receptacle of public knowledge” (p. 111), which “generated a shared sense of Japanese national culture through the preservation of old texts” (p. 113).

In part two, Shockey contends that literature, political action, and the Japanese language itself were transformed by the ubiquity of the printed word, especially experimental prose, script reform, and politics in the mass media. Shockey argues, in chapter 4, that several young writers, including Yokomitsu Riichi, helped recenter the new Japanese sensibility by reconfiguring grammatical and narrative structures. In addition, Shockey posits that the increasing pervasiveness of texts in every facet of life helped integrate “economic, transportation and communication networks” (p. 128). The following chapter is a retelling of the well-known story of language reform and standardization efforts of the late Meiji, Taishō, and early Showa eras. Chapter 6 chronicles the role of authors writing for leftist political newspapers and magazines and how they reflected the changing nature of print media in the 1930s. Shockey argues in this section that these helped reorganize society.

Scholars interested in the period will find themselves in agreement with most of Shockey's salient points and will eagerly incorporate his findings into their understanding of the period. Unfortunately, the occasional use of obtuse and labyrinthine language sometimes serves to obfuscate otherwise well-argued points. This will limit the influence of the work. There are also a few unforced errors that ought to have been caught by the historians vetting this study. For example, Shockey depicts, without any caveats, the type of government in Japan in the late 1930s and early 1940s as “fascist.” Historians specializing in Japan have long struggled with how best to describe the government during this period and have been careful to use the word “militarism,” avoiding problematic discussions of the racial elements of fascist ideologies that tend to exclude ethnicities in East Asia. These criticisms aside, The Typographic Imagination: Reading and Writing in Japan's Age of Modern Print Media is a well-researched, subtle, and important monograph. It will be of interest to senior graduate students, scholars, and researchers specializing in early nineteenth-century Japan.