ABSTRACT
Children are a constant presence in the popular culture of Tokugawa Japan. This chapter introduces the concept of childhood as it was represented in popular publications of the Tokugawa period. Childhood in Tokugawa Japan was defined by age, with the fifteenth year marking the end of childhood. The state of Western-language scholarship on childhood prior to the Meiji period shifted dramatically from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s. The artist distinguished between children and adults by depicting the children as visually distinct from adults in size, clothing, and hairstyle. Hairstyles and clothing show their age, gender, and status. In contrast to the unambiguous educational focus and bilingual complexity of Sino-Japanese primers, thin and heavily illustrated books with entertaining stories or vignettes provided amusement in the vernacular. Woodblock-printed publications for children were part of a larger print culture that was widespread and diverse.
