Graphic Narratives from Early Modern Japan

Laura Moretti, Ph.D. (2003) is Professor of Early Modern Japanese Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge. She has published widely in English and Japanese, including Pleasure in Profit: Popular Prose in Seventeenth-Century Japan (Columbia University Press, 2020).Satō Yukiko, Ph.D. (2000) is Professor at The University of Tokyo. She is one of the leading scholars working on early modern Japanese graphic narratives. She has several publications, including Edo no e’iri shōsetsu: Gōkan no sekai (Perikansha, 2001).

"Laura Moretti and Satō Yukiko should hold an exalted space in the world of comics scholarship for what they have contributed with Graphic Narratives… .They have lifted kusazōshi from a brief footnote to a full-fledged area of study, pulling together a mix of Japanese and Western scholars, bent on providing varying perspectives on the medium, from different approaches, backed up with much first-hand information, sourced from plenty of primary and secondary materials, fully explained in the text, footnotes, and explanatory notes to the reader, and profusely- and brilliantly-illustrated. What more can one ask for? A masterful job!" - John A. Lent, International Journal of Comic Art Blog, July 6, 2024