Kawaraban – “printed on roof tiles”

In the stifling, narrow alleyways of Edo, among the smells of fish, wet wood, and soy sauce, news spread differently than in Europe. There were no multi-page newspapers, no columns or political analyses. Instead, there was shouting, illustration, and emotion. It was enough for a kawaraban-uri — a street news vendor — to appear on the Nihonbashi bridge with a bundle of freshly printed sheets (瓦版, literally “printed on roof tiles” – a leftover from the days of samurai wars in the Sengoku period), and the whole city held its breath. Kawaraban were the fleeting newspapers of Edo, single sheets of thin washi paper, short-lived like the echo of a sensation, yet capable of stirring the city to its depths. Instead of the cold tone of European editorial offices, they offered a gaudy image, a dramatic headline, and a handful of words meant to provoke emotion. They did not describe the world — they created it. Just like the media today – one might spitefully say they were the precursors.

Their content was as varied as life in the city itself, yet they catered to very specific tastes and did not differ much in theme from certain types of modern tabloids. Fires and earthquakes, executions, bloody crimes, miraculous signs in the sky, monsters dragged from rivers, lovers’ suicides in Yoshiwara, kabuki actors’ scandals, rumors of wonders and marvels of nature — all of this found its place on those thin sheets of washi. Kawaraban were printed using woodblock techniques, much like ukiyo-e, but their illustrations were rougher, simpler, violently expressive (that exaggerated expressiveness is something we recognize today in manga and anime). Headline templates were painted with thick brushstrokes, so that the reader would feel a shiver of emotion even before reading the text. Several workshops could work on the same event simultaneously, racing to be the first to release a sheet. In Edo, nothing was one-dimensional — different versions of the same story circulated side by side, competing for the attention of passersby. Each sheet seller persuaded the crowd toward his own version of the truth.

Kawaraban are a poor source of factual knowledge about events in Edo, but a brilliant source of the living voices of the people — their fears, delights, superstitions, and dreams. In them one can smell the damp sumi ink, hear the cries of the vendors, see the trembling hands of readers bent over news of a disaster, a miracle, or a crime. Today we shall discover what these Japanese “newspapers” looked like and what role they played during the time of the Tokugawa shogunate – I invite you!

Scene I

Hunger for news in Edo

The Nihonbashi bridge trembled under the steps of countless feet. It was a sweltering morning, one of those heavy, humid days when the air in Edo smelled of everything at once – the dampness of the Nihonbashi-gawa river, the salty sweat of laborers, smoke from rice stoves, the sharp aroma of soy sauce, fish sizzling on the stalls, and freshly washed cloth drying on bamboo poles. The city pulsed with sounds – the clatter of geta on the wet wooden planks of the bridge, the calls of botefuri street vendors, the clink of coins, the chirping of cicadas, and above it all, one voice stood out louder than the rest.

— “Honjō, Honjō no daika!” shouted a young kawaraban (newspaper) seller, standing on a sake crate to be better seen. In his hands he held a bundle of freshly printed sheets. The paper was still slightly damp, smelling of ink and the pinewood of the printing blocks.

That day everyone wanted to know what had happened in the Honjō district. Rumors spoke of a daika, a “great fire,” which had consumed hundreds of houses and several lumber warehouses. Edo – the largest metropolis of its time, built of wood and paper – lived in the shadow of catastrophes: fires were daily occurrences, yet each new one aroused both fear and fascination. Kawaraban became a window onto the world, and the vendor was not only a tradesman — he was an actor, a herald, a dramatist.

The boy unfolded one sheet and read the headlines in a drawn-out, almost theatrical tone:

— Honjō taika! Shisha gohyaku-nin nari! (“Great fire in Honjō! Five hundred dead!”)

People in the crowd stopped in their tracks. A woman in a dark blue yukata covered her mouth with her hand, an old man in a straw hat halted to listen more closely. Children clambered onto barrels of herring to glimpse the illustration of the fire drawn on the sheet in bold, striking lines: flames climbing over rooftops, people fleeing across the bridge, smoke rising over the canals.

The kawaraban sellers — kawaraban-uri (瓦版売り) — were masters of attracting attention. They did not just sell paper. They sold emotions: the terror of a fire, the sensation of a crime, the awe at a wondrous phenomenon in the sky. They usually stationed themselves at the city’s busiest points: by Nihonbashi bridge, at the Uogashi fish market, near the kabuki theaters. Many people had no money even for cheap kawaraban, so the kawaraban-uri recited fragments aloud – the crowd absorbed the stories, even if not everyone could afford to buy them.

The sheets cost only a few mon – the price of a cup of tea – but for the woodblock workshops it was a golden business. After every major event in Edo, whether a fire, an earthquake, or a public execution, the wooden blocks went into motion, the hands of artisans painted, wrote, carved the content, and by morning the city awoke to fresh news.

That day the kawaraban sold out instantly. Everyone wanted to see the woodblock map marking the burned quarters, everyone wanted to know where to find relatives, whose homes had survived. But these were not dry reports – each sheet was a small work of art. Bold brushstrokes in the headlines, expressive drawings, a dynamic narrative. Sometimes facts mingled with superstition, and the story of the fire’s cause veered into the wrath of gods or the revenge of spirits. The people of Edo wanted to believe the world was full of mysteries, and the kawaraban gave them exactly that.

The vendor noticed a woman clutching a few copper coins in her hand. He handed her a fresh sheet. She quickly snatched her copy and rushed off toward her home. Soon the news of the fire would reach her neighbors, then her friends, until at last it was spoken of throughout Edo. Kawaraban were like an echo — first resounding on bridges and markets, then in alleys, teahouses, theaters, sentō bathhouses.

That day the Nihonbashi bridge was not only a place of trade. It was the center of information.

What does “kawaraban” mean?

In the chatter of Edo, full of vendors’ cries, the clatter of geta sandals, and the sing-song dialogues in teahouses, the word kawaraban (瓦版) carried a particular resonance. Today it is simply translated as “newspaper,” but in the Edo period it concealed far richer meanings — and a history that began long before damp sheets of paper, smelling of fresh ink, ever reached the streets of Nihonbashi.

The word itself is written with the characters 瓦版:

• 瓦 (kawara) – roof tile, ceramic slab.
• 版 (ban) – print, block, imprint.

Literally, it means “printed on roof tiles.” And this is not merely a metaphor — in the Sengoku wars (15th–16th c.), before paper woodblock printing became widespread in Japan, important information was carved directly into clay tiles. These were often military orders, reports on enemy movements, sometimes short notices for civilians. Clay kawara were cheap, easily available, and resistant to moisture, making them excellent as the “first carriers of information.”

When in the 17th century the development of woodblock technology opened entirely new possibilities for mass reproduction of texts, the name itself survived — the tile disappeared, but the spirit of rapid information exchange remained. Kawaraban became synonymous with cheap, instant print and quickly entered the everyday life of Edo’s inhabitants.

The printing technique was simple, yet brilliant in its functionality. The same methods that made ukiyo-e famous were used: mokuhanga (木版画), woodblock printing (more on the craft and industry of woodblock printing here: The Ukiyo-e Business: How Hanmoto Balanced Between Shogunate Censorship and the Art Market Trends in Edo). In a single workshop a wooden block was carved with text and illustrations, coated with ink, and pressed onto sheets of inexpensive washi. Whenever something significant occurred — a fire, an earthquake, a public execution, an unusual phenomenon — within a single night hundreds, sometimes thousands of sheets could be produced, ready to spread through the city by morning.

It was precisely this speed and accessibility that earned kawaraban the name “news for the people.” Unlike the official edicts of the shogunate, inscribed on wooden notice boards called kōsatsu (高札), kawaraban arose from the bottom up. They had no centralized source — they were printed by small workshops, often family-run, living off their quick reactions to sensation. Whoever first carved a headline onto a block earned the most.

The beginnings of regular information flow in Japan are closely tied to kawaraban. In an era before newspapers in the Western sense, they fulfilled that role — though their rhythm was different. They had no fixed issues or cycle. They appeared only when something happened that could stir the whole city. A disaster, a scandal, a miracle, the birth of a two-headed cow, the visit of a Russian princess in a UFO capsule (more here: The Unidentified “Utsurobune” Object in the Time of the Shogunate – UFO, Russian Princess, or Yōkai?) — any of these stories could become the pretext for a fresh print.

Kawaraban created an archive of emotions and the collective memory of Edo. Thanks to them we know today what moved the city’s inhabitants, what was gossiped about in teahouses, what phenomena aroused fear, awe, or laughter. One could say that kawaraban were not only print, but also the rhythm of the city — pulsing with its emotions, transmitting the anger of the gods, the shame of a betrayed husband, the terror of a fire, and the fascination with miracles. They were for Edo what breaking news is today — but with something more: the smell of ink, the rustle of damp paper, the shouted headlines, and illustrations that were often works of art.

The birth and history of kawaraban

The birth of kawaraban was closely linked to the rapid transformations Japan was undergoing at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu established a new shogunate in Edo (more on this here: What to Do with a Society of Samurai Who Only Know War and Death in Times of Peace? - The Clever Ideas of the Tokugawa Shoguns), and the city, once a small fishing village, began to transform at breathtaking speed into a metropolis. By the mid-17th century Edo already had over 300,000 residents, and a century later nearly a million. At one point it was the largest city in the world, living by its own intense rhythm: the day regulated by the opening and closing of the shogun’s castle gates, the night illuminated by the lanterns of teahouses, kabuki theaters, and pleasure quarters in Yoshiwara (more here: Born in hell, buried in Jōkanji – what have we done to the thousands of Yoshiwara women?).

In such a vast concentration of people, a hunger for information naturally arose. Edo was a city that hardly slept: in the early morning the fish markets at Nihonbashi pulsed with life, in the evening the entertainment districts buzzed, and during the day the streets filled with processions of merchants, craftsmen, samurai, and wandering monks. In such an environment, every event — a fire, an earthquake, an execution, a scandal — spread quickly. But word of mouth was not enough. Mediums were needed that could carry stories further, faster, and with greater drama.

It was then, in the late 17th century, that the first kawaraban appeared. They were a natural response to the city’s needs: to make sense of chaos, to partake in sensation, to share emotion. At first they operated on a small scale — sheets reproduced by woodblock workshops in hundreds of copies found their way mainly into the hands of townspeople living in central Edo. But as the city grew, with its expanding network of canals, bridges, and marketplaces, the distribution of kawaraban became ever denser.

It is important to understand that kawaraban were not newspapers in today’s sense. They had no regular issues or editorial boards, did not appear on a set schedule. They were reactive: they existed only when something extraordinary occurred. A fire, a disaster, a miracle, a bloody crime — each of these stories could make the chisels resound in the woodblock workshops by night, and by morning vendors on Edo’s bridges were already calling to the crowds.

Their development was also made possible by rising literacy. The Edo period was a time of extraordinary educational growth in Japan. Terakoya (寺子屋) — private schools run by monks, craftsmen, or samurai — sprang up in cities like mushrooms after rain (more on them here: Terakoya Schools for the Children of Ordinary People in the Time of the Shogunate – There Are Still Things We Can Learn From Them in the 21st Century). They taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and the basics of Confucian etiquette. By the mid-18th century most boys and an increasing number of girls from merchant families could read and write. It is estimated that literacy levels in Edo exceeded 50%, making it one of the most educated centers of its time.

This education went hand in hand with the flourishing of print culture. Woodblock workshops produced not only ukiyo-e, but also books, Edo guidebooks, haiku anthologies, kabuki scripts, and popular sensational literature (see for example the comedies of Yaji and Kita here: Yaji and Kita on the Tōkaidō Road – Samurai-Era Japan Through the Eyes of Two City Rogues in Trouble on the Countryside). In this context, kawaraban were a natural complement — a rapid, mass response to sudden events, ephemeral chronicles of city life.

It is worth adding that in their beginnings kawaraban also served a quasi-official role. The Tokugawa shogunate sometimes commissioned workshops to print sheets informing of new edicts or disasters affecting other regions of Japan. Yet over time the printers gained greater independence, and what was at first a dry report began to take on the form of colorful, drama-filled tales.

With each passing decade kawaraban became a more inseparable element of Edo life. On the Nihonbashi bridge, outside the Nakamura-za theater, at the Uogashi market, or in the narrow streets of Asakusa one could see people bent over fresh sheets. Their hands smelled of ink, their eyes followed woodblock illustrations of burning districts, their ears absorbed the calls of kawaraban-uri, the street vendors who, with a single sentence, could turn a tragedy into a vivid tale, and a curiosity into a mysterious wonder.

One could say that with the birth of kawaraban, the urban imagination of Edo was born as well — collective, intense, prone to emotions and gossip. They shaped shared memory of events, created myths, and fueled conversations in teahouses, theaters, or sentō (what were sentō? – check here: Sentō Bathhouses in Shogunate-Era Japan – Dense Steam, Quiet Conversations, the Scent of Damp Pine). Kawaraban were like the pulse of the city — beating unevenly, in the rhythm of sensation, but alive, deeply human.

Scene II

The Ansei Earthquake, the tenth month of the second year of Ansei (October 1855)

Edo smelled of smoke, ash, and fear. Barely two days had passed since the catastrophe, and the city still seemed to tremble, as if the earth itself could not calm its anger. In the night, when the houses collapsed, people tumbled out of their futons barefoot, ran into the streets in thin yukata, tripping over shattered roof tiles, abandoned geta sandals, and shards of pottery. Now, in the pale rays of the autumn sun, Edo looked different — the streets were buried in rubble, the canals were full of timber and smashed barrels, and a haze of dust and soot hung in the air.

But amid the silence and the weight of disaster, voices suddenly rang out. At every crossroads, by every temple, and on every bridge, the characteristic calls of kawaraban-uri — the street sellers of printed sheets — could be heard. They shouted so loudly that their voices carried over the ruins:

• “All the houses have fallen! Run, run!”
• “Asakusa and Honjō have burned too!”

Their hands were black with ink, their clothes stained with fresh dye, and the bundles of sheets they held were still wet. They smelled of resinous wood, sumi ink, and damp washi paper. These kawaraban were produced in haste — the woodblock workshops (those that survived) worked without respite, from dusk till dawn. The rhythmic tapping of chisels echoed in the alleys as craftsmen carved into wooden blocks images of collapsed houses, burning bridges, and crowds of fleeing people.

The illustrations on the sheets were dramatic: dark trails of smoke billowed over Edo, the rooftops looked like matchsticks tossed into the flames, and tiny human figures, cut with a few dynamic strokes, ran while carrying children, chests, and purses of money. The headlines were brushed in thick strokes, as if the text itself were trembling with horror:

「大地裂け、火の海と化す！」
(Daichi sake, hi no umi to kasu!)
- “The earth splits, the city becomes a sea of fire!”

People crouched in the streets, spreading the sheets across their knees, reading together — even those who could not read themselves listened to the voices of their neighbors. Small clusters formed around the ruins of homes; someone whispered, someone else wept, someone repeated the words from the kawaraban:

— “They write that it’s the wrath of Namazu… that it’s punishment for loosening morals…”

Rumors and superstitions mingled with facts. Some kawaraban presented numbers and maps of destruction; others described miraculous signs — it was said that foxes had been seen fleeing en masse from the rice fields on the night before the quake (foxes are creatures cleverer than humans in Japanese folklore — they could have known earlier: "Foxfires" in Old Edo – A Nocturnal Gathering of Kitsune in Hiroshige’s Ukiyo-e); the water of the Sumida was said to have turned red. Sensation was part of life in Edo, and the kawaraban perfectly sensed the city’s pulse — they did not merely report reality, they interpreted it, built a shared memory, and reinforced people’s beliefs.

The Tokugawa shogunate tried in those days to issue official kōsatsu (高札) edicts, set up at street corners, but their dry formulas were lost in the din. The kawaraban won out with emotion. Their illustrations moved people more than any words — they were the mirror of collective fear, and at the same time its catalyst.

By the Asakusa Kannon temple, a woman in a faded yukata knelt, holding a sheet before her like an amulet. Beside her, an elderly man murmured a prayer to Jizō Bosatsu, the guardian of the souls of deceased children. In the shadow of the great pagoda, someone recited the entire kawaraban text aloud for a small group of illiterate laborers. Their faces were pale, their hands black with dust.

These sheets were something more than a newspaper. They were tools for taming tragedy. They allowed people to name fear, to feel community, to find in the chaos some kind of meaning — even if it was a meaning grounded in superstition, the wrath of gods, or signs from the heavens.

As the sun hid behind the hills of Ueno, people could still be seen on the smoldering ruins of their homes, reading kawaraban by the light of andon oil lamps. The kawaraban were not only witnesses to the disaster. They preserved it, giving it image, language, and meaning. Thanks to them, Edo could tremble together, weep together, remember together.

What kawaraban looked like

When a kawaraban vendor spread out a stack of freshly printed sheets in the street, still smelling of damp sumi ink, it was impossible not to notice their distinctive appearance. These were one-time, ephemeral publications, created to convey news as quickly as possible — and yet in their simplicity there was a peculiar Edo aesthetic.

They were most often printed on single sheets of washi (和紙) paper — thin, light, and inexpensive, handmade from the fibers of paper mulberry kōzo, mitsumata, or gampi. Depending on the workshop and available materials, the size of kawaraban varied, but two formats dominated:

• ōban (大判) — about 39 × 26 cm, used for more elaborate reports with illustrations — note that most vertical woodblock prints, like Hiroshige’s “100 Views of Edo,” use precisely this format.
• chūban (中判) — about 26 × 19 cm, more popular for shorter, cheaper prints.

There were also miniature, almost pocket-sized kawaraban, but most were large enough to spread across one’s knees and read together.

The printing technique was the same as in ukiyo-e: mokuhanga (木版画) — traditional Japanese woodblock printing. First the craftsman horishi (彫師) carved the text and illustration into the wooden block, then the surishi (摺師) applied sumi ink with a brush and pressed the sheet onto the paper. For the most dramatic events — major fires, earthquakes, public executions — color was sometimes used as well. Additional blocks were prepared for red (beni 紅) or indigo (ai 藍 — more here: Blue Japan – how indigo 藍 (ai) dyed Edo and became the color of work, purity, and harmony). Intensely red patches might appear, for example, in illustrations depicting seas of flame during fires or rivers of blood in accounts of crimes. However, in most cases, kawaraban were black-and-white, printed at lightning speed, often in the hundreds, sometimes thousands of copies.

The content of kawaraban combined text and illustration, but the proportions depended on the subject. In the case of natural disasters, the illustration dominated — it could take up as much as two-thirds of the sheet. Flames engulfing entire districts of Edo were carved, the outline of the Sumida full of drifting debris, dramatic escapes of people with children on their backs. In reports of executions or famous trials, emphasis was placed on the details of the convicts’ faces, their clothing, and the place of the event. For miracles, monsters, and wonders of nature, the illustration became even more theatrical — two-headed calves could be seen, giant fish pulled from rivers, or strange signs in the sky.

Headlines were always written with thick, expressive brushstrokes to catch the eyes of passersby. Dramatic, archaic forms of classical Japanese were often used, ending with 〜なり (nari), which gave them the tone of an official, almost ceremonial proclamation:

「本所大火、江戸半焼なり！」
(Honjō taika, Edo hanshō nari!)
- “Great fire in Honjō, half of Edo burned!”

Headlines also featured deliberately exaggerated words such as 大地裂 (daichi sake – “the earth splits”), 火の海 (hi no umi – “a sea of fire”), or 大異変 (daiihen – “great tragedy”), which stoked emotion. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Although the aesthetics of kawaraban are sometimes compared to ukiyo-e, their function was different. Ukiyo-e were works of art, carefully detailed, often richly colored, created for collectors. Kawaraban were quick, mass-produced prints — the informational function was more important than artistic refinement. The drawings were simplified, the contours thicker, details often omitted to speed production. Yet in this simplicity there was a certain raw expressiveness — the illustrations were dynamic, often highly suggestive, conveying emotion as strongly as the words themselves.

An interesting detail is that some kawaraban contained maps — especially after major fires or earthquakes. They depicted entire quarters of Edo, marking burned districts, collapsed bridges, and temples that had survived. For the inhabitants of Edo, this was not only a way to grasp the scale of the tragedy, but also a practical aid — the maps let them check whether the homes of their relatives had survived.

Typical kawaraban in Edo were surprisingly simple — most often they took the form of a single sheet (ichimai-ban 一枚版), printed only on one side. This one-sheet format was their hallmark: speed, accessibility, and low cost were what mattered. Washi paper was thin, cheap, and easily torn. Kawaraban lived briefly — like the emotions they described. On the sheet were combined headlines painted in thick brushstrokes, dynamic illustrations, and short blocks of text meant only to complement the image. Usually one sheet was enough to tell of a fire, an execution, or a miracle.

Exceptions appeared only at times of truly great disasters, such as the Ansei earthquake of 1855 or the immense fires that destroyed entire districts of Edo. In such cases, printers prepared expanded editions: two, sometimes even three sheets joined into a folding set (orihon-gata kawaraban 折本型瓦版). Alongside dramatic illustrations, they added maps of burned districts, lists of victims’ names, or detailed descriptions of events. Yet these were exceptions, available mainly to wealthier merchants and craftsmen. On ordinary days kawaraban remained an ephemeral medium of the moment: meant to deliver sensation, to shock, delight, or frighten — and then to vanish, making way for the next news. For this reason, their form was light, fast, and perfectly suited to the life of the city.

The paper used for kawaraban was of low quality — thin, easily torn, often slightly yellowish. They were not created with durability in mind. People bought them, read them, discussed them, sometimes pasted them on walls, but most were thrown away or burned after a few days. This is why so few survive today. Those that do are a priceless window for historians into life in Edo — they allow us to see not only what happened, but also how people thought about it, how they interpreted the facts, what they believed, and what they feared. One might think at least the blocks survived. And indeed, most of what we know of kawaraban comes from blocks, but they too were very fragile — made of soft wood, which after hundreds or thousands of impressions became completely illegible.

One could say that kawaraban were as fleeting as Edo itself — cheap, mass-produced, impermanent. And yet their dramatic illustrations, expressive headlines, and the smell of fresh ink still give them an aura of extraordinary authenticity. They show more vividly than anything else what the city lived by, what its emotions were, its rhythm and its imagination.

The sale and circulation of kawaraban

In the urban din, the loud voices of kawaraban-uri (瓦版売り) — wandering news sellers, easily recognized by the bundle of freshly printed sheets held high above their heads — could always be heard. They set the rhythm of information flow in Edo. They moved between bridges, temples, fish markets, teahouses, and even the entrances of kabuki theaters. Their calls were short, rhythmic, full of emotion, like fragments of a performance:

「吉原で心中だ！花魁と客が心中したぞ！」
(Yoshiwara de shinjū da! Oiran to kyaku ga shinjū shita zo!)
- “Lovers’ suicide in Yoshiwara! An oiran and her client took their lives together!”

Sometimes they read the headlines in a theatrical tone, as if reciting a kabuki drama — with pauses, sighs, and raised voices. They were at once actors, narrators, and vendors. Many knew the whole text, or in the case of multi-page prints, entire sections of the kawaraban by heart, and could summarize the content for those who could not read. In the chatter of Edo they were sometimes called yomi-uri (読み売り) — “reading sellers.”

Kawaraban were sold wherever crowds gathered: on bridges, by the Asakusa Kannon and Zōjō-ji temples, near the Uogashi fish markets, outside the pleasure houses of Yoshiwara, and at the edge of the theater districts of Sakai-chō. The street landscape of Edo was full of such points where “hot news” found its audience. The price of a single sheet was quite low — usually around 16 mon, roughly the cost of a bowl of miso soup or a handful of rice. This meant that kawaraban were available to almost everyone: from wealthy merchants to laborers, porters, and prostitutes.

People often read them together. Someone would crouch in the street, spread a sheet across their knees, and read it aloud to a group of neighbors. In the sentō bathhouses, people gathered in a corner to view the illustrations and listen to the stories. For the illiterate, kawaraban became a window onto the world — thanks to vendors who skillfully combined dramatic description with gossip, provoking laughter, astonishment, and fear. Thus a shared language of emotions emerged. The inhabitants of Edo did not just learn the facts — they lived them together.

Who published kawaraban?

Behind every fresh piece of paper stood the woodblock workshops — usually small, family-run studios scattered throughout Edo. Together they formed a dense network of rapid responders to events. When a fire broke out, a strange fish fell from the sky, or a public execution was announced, the master of the workshop would immediately gather carvers and printers. At night, the rhythm of chisels carving dramatic illustrations and headlines into wooden blocks filled the air, and by morning the kawaraban-uri were already heading into the city.

What made kawaraban unique was the absence of centralized control. The Tokugawa shogunate censored primarily political publications — information about foreign policy, edicts, or disputes within the government was tightly controlled. Kawaraban, however, focused on disasters, miracles, crimes, scandals, monsters, and wonders of nature, and so they enjoyed relative freedom. Thanks to this, they could play on emotions, use dramatic metaphors, and embellish the facts.

Competition was fierce. Several workshops could simultaneously release their own versions of the same story, differing in the details of the illustration, the drama of the headlines, or even entirely contradictory “facts.” After the Ansei earthquake of 1855, dozens of different kawaraban circulated: some depicted the giant catfish namazu, others mapped the burned districts, while still others described miraculous survivals. The more unusual and striking the illustration, the better the sheet sold.

The mechanism resembled today’s “breaking news” and “clickbait” — the workshop that first released a kawaraban with a strong headline earned the most. Workshop owners had their own networks of informants: firefighter acquaintances, merchants, people loitering around offices, who supplied them with news faster than the competition. Printers in Edo were thus not only craftsmen but also hunters of sensation.

As a result, the streets of Edo often swirled with multiple narratives of the same event. This meant that kawaraban were not a simple record of facts, but a living, many-voiced social commentary. Their diversity reflects the city’s pulse: Edo did not have a single view of reality, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of small stories that coexisted side by side.

The decline of kawaraban

Everything began to change in the 1860s, when waves of Western influence reached Japan and with them the modern press. The Edo period was drawing to a close, and after the Meiji Restoration (1868) the first multi-page newspapers appeared, such as the Yokohama Mainichi Shinbun (1871). They used Western typographic printing technologies, introduced regular editions and thematic sections. In a world that suddenly sped up and opened to contact with foreign countries, the one-sheet kawaraban began to lose their relevance. The city now needed more than news of fires, miracles, and monsters — readers wanted information on politics, trade, and the world beyond Japan.

And yet kawaraban did not vanish entirely. Their style, aesthetics, and language deeply permeated the emerging Meiji press. The new newspapers employed illustrations modeled on woodcuts, and the sensational tone of their headlines echoed the cries of the old kawaraban-uri shouting on the bridges of Edo. The old printing techniques gave way to modern ones, but the need for drama, speed, and vivid imagery remained unchanged. One might say that kawaraban were the foremothers of Japan’s popular press, whose echoes can still be heard today even in manga and anime.

Today the surviving kawaraban are priceless historical artifacts. They are not only a source of knowledge about events — fires, earthquakes, executions, or miracles — but, above all, testimony to how the people of Edo understood the world. They reveal emotions, fears, and fascinations — they let us feel the rhythm of the city’s life. In their simplified illustrations and loud headlines lies the pulse of daily existence, something we will not find in the shogunate’s official chronicles.

Kawaraban are therefore not merely old newspapers. They are the living voices of Edo. One can hear in them the calls of street vendors, smell the damp paper, see the trembling hands of readers as they gazed at news of tragedy. In these sheets there is raucous laughter at gossip, the shared whisper over a tale of a miracle, the groan of fear at news of a cataclysm. Kawaraban are the memory of the city.

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 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

  Mike Soray

   (aka Michał Sobieraj)

未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

Mike Soray

(aka Michał Sobieraj)

Write us...

Ciechanów, Polska

dr.imyon@gmail.com

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