Tsutaya Juzaburo, Star of 2025 NHK Drama

The innovative publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo became a big name in Edo. In addition to being acquainted with a number of leading writers and intellectuals, he’s credited with discovering new talent, particularly Utamaro.

Born in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter, in the 1770s Tsutaya successfully introduced a new format for guidebooks to the beauties of Yoshiwara. He opened a shop outside the quarter where he sold courtesan critiques and guidebooks, eventually monopolizing these guidebooks called Yoshiwara saiken.

Publishers like Tsutaya contributed to the development of light fiction that satirized officials and treated the world of Yoshiwara with only transparent disguises. New writers like Kyokutei Bakin and Santo Kyoden produced yomihon that exported the tastes, fashions, language, and outlook of Edo throughout Japan. At various times Tsutaya offered lodgings to Bakin, Kyoden, and Utamaro, who stayed with Tsutaya until the latter's death.

Tsutaya was inventive in incorporating wood-block prints into his publications. In the early 1790s, he published single-sheet ukiyo-e prints of beauties and actors, concentrated on illustrated books of poetry, and bought up printing blocks of illustrations from other publishers reissuing them under his own imprint.

The Tokugawa government frequently tried to censor books and prints, and Kyoden and Tsutaya were involved in a celebrated censorship case in 1791 as a result of the Kansei Reforms. Kyoden was punished for writing three "depraved books" (sharebon) and Tsutaya was fined half of his personal wealth for having published　them. But Tsutaya's contribution to publishing and implementing collaboration between writers and artists remain as a significant legacy.

(254 words)

Another version of this story can be found on pages 94-95 in “Introducing 100 Impressive Japanese” (『日英対訳 世界に紹介したい日本の100人』山川出版社).