Origins of Popular Literature

Popular literature has its origins in classical Japanese popular literature. The modern literature after the Meiji Restoration included talk books (shakai-shu), which had a tendency toward popular literature. Japanese translations of European detective novels and novels with Edo themes also prepared the way for the later popular literature. However, popular literature was not a continuation of traditional literature, but a product of modern capitalism. in the early 1920s, with the rapid development of propaganda tools such as newspapers, journals, publishing, and broadcasting, as well as the onslaught of the depression, a form of literature in the form of mass-marketed commodities developed rapidly. in 1925, the magazine King published by the Lecture Society, which published novels for the purpose of popular entertainment, reached a circulation of 700,000 to 800,000 copies. reached an unprecedented record of 700,000 to 800,000 copies. In the same year, the magazine Popular Literature and Art was founded, and in 1927, the Heibonsha published The Complete Collection of Modern Popular Literature. At that time, the circulation of major Japanese newspapers had already exceeded one million copies, providing the best garden for serialized popular novels.