Idly Scribbling Rhymers

How can literary forms fashion a nation? Though genres such as the novel and newspaper have been credited with shaping a national imagination and a sense of community, during the rapid modernization of the Meiji period, Japanese intellectuals took a striking—but often overlooked—interest in poetry’s ties to national character. In Idly Scribbling Rhymers , Robert Tuck offers a groundbreaking study of the connections among traditional poetic genres, print media, and visions of national community i