Katawa Musume (The Deformed Girl)

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Katawa Musume ["The Deformed Girl"]

Fukuzawa, Yukichi [text by]. 

[Tōkyō]: Fukuzawa Yukichi, Meiji 5 [1872]. 

A short satire attacking the traditional Japanese custom of married women blackening their teeth and shaving off their eyebrows, by the famed reformer, educator, and expert on Western civilisation Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901). The work is one of Fukuzawa's least-known publications and possibly his only humorous composition. Katawa Musume influenced the publication of several satires in the following year, including a work titled Katawa Musuko ("The Deformed Son") and one of the author Mantei Ōga and the artist Kawanabe Kyōsai's earliest collaborative zasshi-format works - Tōsei Rikō Musume ("A Clever Woman of the Present Day"). Fukuzawa's Kairekiben was published in a similar (hanshibon zasshi) format in 1873. The format of these publications may have informed the style Kyōsai used in the following decades in his collaborations with Ōga and the publisher Yamazakiya Seishichi. Katawa Musume was probably published by Keiō Gijuku (Keio University), of which Fukuzawa was the founder. An extremely scarce Fukuzawa-bon, no physical copies of which were traced outside of Japan in OCLC. 

One karitoji-bound volume, complete, on double leaves, traditional East Asian binding style (fukurotoji). Original wrappers somewhat soiled, foxed, and creased, with a few wormholes and an ink mark. Minor foxing, marks, creases, and small wormholes internally. Housed in non-original folding case. 5 leaves. 22.4 x 15.6 cm.

Katawa Musume (The Deformed Girl)
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