ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that the power of the spoken word was not lost with the dawn of mass media in Japan but that it thrived in a variety of new forms, most notably popular sokkibon, which accompanied the coming of the industrial age. The relaxation of Tokugawa censorship laws and technological advances in print production created new opportunities for theatrical artists to express themselves in a variety of mass media. Cultural critics since have tended to associate the dawning of mass media as the end of traditional culture, usually for the following reasons: mass media is not rooted in the community; mass media is not participatory but consumed; and mass media precludes any chance of variance. Hanashi developed in Osaka but moved east toward Edo, gravitating to the cultural centre of Tokugawa Japan where it became known as otoshi-banashi – a term that during the Meiji period was read as rakugo.
