ABSTRACT
Critics and historians praise the Tatsukawa bunko, seeing it as one of the crucial building blocks of modern commercial literature in Japan. Like many other embryonic industries, publishing in Japan saw the creation of new social networks of disparate individuals living and working together – in effect adopted families who shared collective fates. Noma Seiji is rightly regarded as the father of mass media in Japan. For many years, his firm Dai Yuben Nippon Kai competed in the same markets as Bunmeido. Noma would continue to shape the materiality of mass publishing in Japan but in an oblique manner. To keep production houses going and people informed, Noma gathered many of the local publishing companies together under his leadership to create a special report on the disaster and the government’s recovery efforts. With offices in both Osaka and Tokyo, the publishing firm had exceeded all expectations, but it was not as politically well networked or situated as Noma’s venture Kodansha.
