The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century

Rating:
Summary: Authoritative and highly readable
Review: This is a very useful study of the history of the book (defined rather broadly) in Japan. It is well written and makes interesting even topics that at first glance seem inherently dull--the chapter on bibliographies and catalogs, for example. Kornicki combines extensive old-fashioned archival scholarship with a good sense for recent theory on such topics as the death of the author, media technologies, and the shifting history of reading practices.