This dissertation examines the history and discourse of comedic periodicals during the formative period of Japanese modernization, 1870-1910. In the broadest sense, this study argues that comedic publications were key to the birth of modern mass media in late-19th and early-20th century Japan. Comedic periodicals created Japan's first integrated 'magazine' by suturing a division created in early periodicals between political discourse and social life through approachable yet experimental visual and textual modes. As the development of industrial capitalism produced new modes of society, media, and politics in the late-19th century, comedic periodicals drove the creation of mass readership and provided a place of political critique in an environment of increasingly strict censorship. Although comedic genres of Japan's modernization have been marginalized by intellectual and cultural historians, this study will show they were not only essential in the history of modern print culture, but also their development through the era, gives invaluable insight into the way modernization and capitalism reconfigure modes of representation and communication.
نام شخص به منزله سر شناسه - (مسئولیت معنوی درجه اول )