Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on nineteenth-century scrapbooks’ materiality as a site that both represents an ephemeral record constituting textual heritage, and a material practice of documentation that allowed an heritagisation process of the ephemeral.

Paper long abstract:

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the awareness of the fragile nature of paper as a material object ignited among intellectuals a rush to collect and preserve evidence of everyday urban life of Edo. This trend took the shape of different cultural practices that involved the ephemeral reality of the quotidian “as an object of historical inquiry” (Zwicker 2009). This trend witnessed the growth of the individual practice of collecting ephemera and broadsheets in scrapbooks (harikomichō) such as Shikitei Sanba Otoshibanashi chūkō raiyu. Scrapbooks constitute a real attempt to save from oblivion some of the more volatile products of Edo’s vibrant publishing market. They also represent a unique object fashioned from mass-produced material that mirrors the programmatic action of ‘heritagisation’ (Harrison 2013) executed by the collector.

Overlooked in Japanese scholarship because of their intrinsically popular nature and the problem of their materiality, this paper explores the world of nineteenth-century scrapbooks both as an ephemeral record constituting textual heritage, and the material practice of documentation as a heritagisation process of the ephemeral.

An analysis of the scrapbook Shinobigusa will be presented for the first time. Compiled by the historian Saitō Gesshin in 1843, it collects ephemera and various illustrated materials related to the urban life and customs of Edo from 1804.

The analysis of the compiler’s preface to his scrapbook will allow this paper to rethink the act of collecting as a process of heritagisation and better understand the nature of the “heritage discourse” on the everyday in nineteenth-century Japan. The analysis of Shinobigusa’s ephemera will also illuminate different methodologies for navigating these kaleidoscopic materials, as scrapbook materiality raises many questions about the accessibility of its contents. Scrapbooks challenge the theoretical division between intangible heritage and textual heritage as they are uniquely fashioned manuscripts that give access to a vast amount of ephemeral records of the intangible heritage of Early Modern period daily life.