Kanagaki Robun

Kanagaki Robun (仮名垣 魯文) was the pen name of Nozaki Bunzō (野崎 文蔵) (1829–1894), a Japanese author and journalist.

Career
Kanagaki Robun, the son of a fishmonger, was originally known for light fiction in the gesaku genre. He is said to have met painter Kawanabe Kyosai while writing an account of the 1855 Edo earthquake on the day after it happened. Kyosai's sketch of a catfish, accompanying Robun's text, was Kyosai's first single-sheet ukiyo-e woodblock print. Its commercial success saw Robun producing a sequence of catfish pictures (known as namazu-e). In 1874 the pair collaborated to create what was effectively Japan's first manga magazine, Eshinbun nipponchi (Illustrated News).

In 1874 Robun turned to journalism, joining the Yokohama mainichi shinbun and going on in 1875 to found his own newspaper, the Kana-yomi shinbun (Kana Newspaper). His newspaper pioneered the genre of "dokufu-mono," criminal biographies of female outlaws, and Kanagaki Robun's own Tale of Takahashi Oden the She-Devil (written rapidly after Takahashi Oden was beheaded for killing a man) is the most famous example of the genre.

He also wrote illustrated biographies, including an adapted biography of Ulysses S. Grant published for Grant's 1879 visit to Japan.

Works

 * Collected Rumors of Ansei (安政風聞集) (1856)
 * Account of the Ansei Cholera Epidemic (安政頃痢流行記) (1856)
 * Journey on Foot to the Western Sea (西洋道中膝栗毛) (1870–76), a parody of Jippensha Ikku's Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige
 * The Beefeater (安愚楽鍋) (1871)
 * The Cucumber Messenger (胡瓜遣) (1872)
 * Connoisseur of Western-Style Cuisine (西洋料理通) (1872)
 * Chronicle of the Saga Telegraph Line (佐賀電信録) (1874)
 * The Tale of Takahashi Oden, the She-Devil (高橋阿伝夜叉譚) (1879)
 * A Japanese Print of Hamlet (葉武列土倭錦絵) (1886)