Japanese childrens historical fiction up to 1983: a critical assessment of its place within Japanese childrens literature

The publishing of children's books in Japan has had a relatively short history, beginning only in the late nineteenth century. Whilst historical fiction has formed an important part of children's literature published since that time, it has not previously been the subject of any comprehensive study. The aim of this thesis is to trace the progress of Japanese children's historical fiction and to look at the influence of Japanese society. The study shows that since its inception Japanese children's historical fiction has neither reached a high level of quality nor apparently become very popular with children. Until the late 1950's there was no real historical fiction produced in Japan - historical stories were little more than short recounts of events written only to instruct children how to behave and to influence them to support the state and its policies. From the late 1950's, however, real children's historical fiction began to be produced with long stories, plots and developed characters. Since then the genre has become established and many works have been published. During this time it has in the main shown consistent strengths and weaknesses. Most works have all the essential historical features but have serious literary flaws - in particular a lack of interesting plots and characters. The main reasons why these literary weaknesses have occurred appear to be firstly that children's historical fiction has been written to teach the child reader how to behave, and secondly that authors have concentrated on providing historical information instead of interesting plots. Whilst the weaknesses have apparently been recognized by children themselves, as demonstrated by their preferences for other fiction and biographies, influential adults - in particular librarians and critics- continue to value a historical novel on the instruction it contains rather than the pleasure it gives to the reader.