By juxtaposing public media forms alongside the private collections of fūsetsudome, we see the far-reaches of the informational revolution that indicate both the growing breadth and depth of national political awareness across Japan. Perry and his naval fleet to Edo Bay in 1853. Evidence of this can be found in the public media broadsides ( kawaraban), brocade pictures ( nishiki-e), and “print material” ( surimono) produced in especially large volumes following the arrival of U.S. Japan had a widespread print culture pre-Meiji. Those with samurai contacts who had political authority increasingly had access to sensitive and uncensored political information.

These documents reveal the pervasive culture of information sharing between the Japanese elite and commoners. While it was known previously that communication and cultural network revolutions enabled the spread of information across social classes in early modern Japan, I focus on the emergence of private compilations of political documents called fūsetsudome, which were explicit in reproductions of uncensored edicts, memoranda, and letters issued by the shogun, feudal lords, members of the court, and Western officials. I examine two of these-one informational and another political-in this post, as well as in my recent article, “ Channeling the Undercurrents: Fūsetsudome, Information Access, and National Political Awareness in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” in The Journal of Japanese Studies. Nineteenth-century Japan witnessed a series of revolutions across the Japanese archipelago.

Japan in Print by Mary Elizabeth Berry