The Typographic Imagination

Ann Sherif, Oberlin College and Conservatory:
Shockey’s engaging and erudite study lays out beautifully the complex and changing technological, social, and intellectual landscape that informed Japan’s early modern and modern book worlds. This meticulously researched study expands our understanding of the literary field by interrogating the intersections of script reform, the transition from xylographic to industrial printing, new modes of book classification, and the crucial contributions of leftist movements to literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Thomas Lamarre, Duke University:
Rich in detail and vast in scope, The Typographic Imagination deftly charts a course through the roiling complexity of print media that collectively generated a typographic effect in the early twentieth century. But the stroke of genius lies in how the perspective of print allows Shockey to overturn our understanding of modernization, highlighting a pulse of nonlinear difference coursing through print media, resurfacing intensified in strange new characters and movements.

Andrew Piper, McGill University:
Shockey does an amazing job of chronicling a transformative moment in the history of Japanese literature. Canons were transformed, new classes of readers emerged, and vivacious debates about the meaning and diversity of literature's materiality were produced. This book offers an important addition to the global history of print.

Indra Levy, Stanford University:
Nathan Shockey’s study of the typographic imagination in modern Japan reorganizes our sensibilities by seamlessly integrating media studies with modern Japanese literary history and criticism. Its fresh perspective is sure to change the conceptual landscape of Japan specialists, and its rich account of the particularities of modern Japanese print culture will command the attention of media studies scholars as well.