Henry Black was born in Adelaide in 1858, but arrived in Japan in 1864 after his father became editor of the Japan Herald. In the late 1870s, Henry Black addressed meetings of members of the Freedom and People�s Rights Movement. His talks were inspired by nineteenth-century theories of natural rights. That experience led to his becoming a professional storyteller (rakugoka) affiliated with the San�y� school of storytelling (San�yuha). Black�s storytelling (rakugo) in the 1880s and 1890s was an attempt by the San�y�ha to modernise rakugo. By adapting European sensation fiction, Black blended European and Japanese elements to create hybridised landscapes and characters as blueprints for audiences negotiating changes synonymous with modernity during the Meiji period. The narrations also portrayed the negative impacts of change wrought through emulation of nineteenth-century Britain�s Industrial Revolution. His 1894 adaptation of Oliver Twist or his 1885 adaptation of Mary Braddon�s Flower and Weed, for example, were early warnings about the evils of child labour and the exploitation of women in unregulated textile factories. Black�s kabuki performances parallel politically and artistically inspired attempts to reform kabuki by elevating its status as an art suitable for imperial and foreign patronage. The printing of his narrations in stenographic books (sokkibon) ensured that his ideas reached a wide audience. Because he was not an officially hired foreigner (yatoi), and his narrations have not entered the rakugo canon, Black has largely been forgotten. A study of his role as a mediator of modernity during the 1880s and 1890s shows that he was an agent in the transfer to a mass audience of European ideas associated with modernity, frequently ahead of intellectuals and mainstream literature. An examination of Black�s career helps broaden our knowledge of the role of foreigners and rakugo in shaping modern Japan.

Henry Black was born in Adelaide in 1858, but arrived in Japan in 1864 after his father became editor of the Japan Herald. In the late 1870s, Henry Black addressed meetings of members of the Freedom and People�s Rights Movement. His talks were inspired by nineteenth-century theories of natural rights. That experience led to his becoming a professional storyteller (rakugoka) affiliated with the San�y� school of storytelling (San�yuha). Black�s storytelling (rakugo) in the 1880s and 1890s was an attempt by the San�y�ha to modernise rakugo. By adapting European sensation fiction, Black blended European and Japanese elements to create hybridised landscapes and characters as blueprints for audiences negotiating changes synonymous with modernity during the Meiji period. The narrations also portrayed the negative impacts of change wrought through emulation of nineteenth-century Britain�s Industrial Revolution. His 1894 adaptation of Oliver Twist or his 1885 adaptation of Mary Braddon�s Flower and Weed, for example, were early warnings about the evils of child labour and the exploitation of women in unregulated textile factories. Black�s kabuki performances parallel politically and artistically inspired attempts to reform kabuki by elevating its status as an art suitable for imperial and foreign patronage. The printing of his narrations in stenographic books (sokkibon) ensured that his ideas reached a wide audience. Because he was not an officially hired foreigner (yatoi), and his narrations have not entered the rakugo canon, Black has largely been forgotten. A study of his role as a mediator of modernity during the 1880s and 1890s shows that he was an agent in the transfer to a mass audience of European ideas associated with modernity, frequently ahead of intellectuals and mainstream literature. An examination of Black�s career helps broaden our knowledge of the role of foreigners and rakugo in shaping modern Japan.

The aim of this study is to compare characters in classical and contemporary japanese storytelling rakugo. Classical rakugo presents cultural tastes of merchant class in the Edo period (1600-1867) while the pattern of storytellers attending lords turned to performance in public and brought several amusing characters to idealize the medieval or rather premodern world. Contemporary rakugo carries on this popular tradition spontaneously with great expectations for its future appearance. As society phenomenons effect the appearance of rakugo characters, it is possible to observe the difference between this representation of life in community in past and nowadays. To compare classical and contemporary rakugo characters I analyzed them first according to their or storyteller's utterances and defined them as literary types.

As a text Botandōrō demonstrates bibliographic codes that straddle the border between modern and pre-modern literature. Wakabayashi would present his work as the fruit of his technique of ‘photographing language’ that, by extension, would provide closer and more direct access to the interiority of “author.” In his prologue he presented his shorthand method as a technique that would come to represent the new standard of modern writing. As they created a new system for transcribing language, stenographers were wrestling with the philosophical nature and limitations of language in spoken and written form, and their discoveries and accomplishments would provide a framework for future authors during a highly transformative period in the history of Japanese literature, whether intentional or not. By focusing on these paratextual elements in Botandōrō in the context of the tale’s intertextual construction we find that it is best viewed as a text that exhibits aspects of modern and pre-modern literature in its presentation as a material object, the claims it makes for sokki as a modern writing technique, and its negotiations with the idea of authorship.