In nineteenth-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) commercial publications designed for entertainment also included multifarious advertisements for cosmetics and medicines, doubling up as publicity materials. Shikitei Sanba's shop (Shikitei Sanba mise 式亭三馬店) is renowned for having enthusiastically propelled the creation of such materials.
The present contribution, penned by a group of like-minded scholars who are part of the Research Group on Early Modern Japanese Literature (Kinsei bungaku kenkyūkai 近世文学研究会), offers the diplomatic and semi-diplomatic transcriptions of one of these items. It takes the form of a board game known as sugoroku 双六, more precisely e-sugoroku 絵双六 (pictorial sugoroku) similar to the European game of the goose, designed as a complimentary gift for the customers of Sanba's shop. It is part of a group of materials that are particularly valuable for the study of the advertising culture of early modern Japan. The material transcribed here is known under two titles: Nigiwai Shikitei masaru sugoroku 賑式亭まさる双六 (The Bustling Shop of Shikitei Sanba: a Sugoroku Board Game, around 1848) and Edo no mizu masaru sugoroku 江戸の水まさる双六 (The Water of Edo from Shikitei Sanba's Shop: a Sugoroku Board Game, 1864). Both are kept at the National Diet Library. As their titles imply they focus on Shikitei Sanba mise itself, displaying 22 items that could be purchased within. But there is an interesting twist: each item is personified as a famous kabuki actor. Whilst the contents of the two materials are almost identical, we note differences in how the actors are depicted.