In one beautiful day in the city of Edo,
there was a great beautiful fire.
A teenage girl named Oshichi ran with her family
to a Buddhist temple not yet touched by flames.
While taking shelter there, Oshichi found two things:
a young acolyte studying at the temple, and love,
both often found at temples.
After the flames died and their family home was rebuilt,
the family moved back.
Oshichi returned home, but left her heart at the temple.
She learned that young handsome monks were trouble,
sweet sweet trouble.
She longed to see her Buddhist booboo,
and so she did the obvious thing.
She started another fire,
hoping her family would find shelter again in the temple.
Unfortunately, the authorities caught her
and burned her at the stake.
This event happened in 1683,
and Oshichi’s tragedy quickly reached the ears of people all over the country,
and came out their eyes.
How did this local news story
sweep through Japan like fires through Japanese cities?
It was thanks to these Japanese news bards
who went around singing her story.
Imagine if after some tragic news event,
somebody makes a song about it.
🎵 He was a terrorist today 🎵
🎵 setting a bomb in the subway 🎵
🎵 Didn’t have time to read the plans, 🎵
🎵 so he blew off his own hand 🎵
They were called yomiuri 読売, literally “reading vendors.”
They peaked during the Edo [1603 - 1867] and early Meiji [1868 - 1912] periods,
roaming the streets bringing news to the public in the form of song.
You could usually recognize a yomiuri from a mile away.
They often wore a straw hat that made it a bit hard to see their faces.
Even at night because they cool like that.
Some also played an instrument like a shamisen or a drum,
but most just tapped a stick on a wall or something.
Sometimes all you need is a beat to make a banger.
Where there were streets, there were street performers,
people who sang, danced, or did shows while selling things.
Yomiuri were one type of these merchants.
They sold news.
And they were beloved by the government,
because government officials just loved to persecute them and throw them in jail.
You see, their news was often biased and inaccurate,
and sometimes felt a lot like harassment.
But we’ll get to that later.
So why did they sing the news instead of just narrating it?
Well, would you rather hear someone talk in a biased way about the next election,
or sing in a biased way to the tune of Despacito?
🎵 Did he win again, watch out Mexican people 🎵
Songs attracted customers better than not songs,
so some news singers would set up a stall on the side of the road,
serenading the crowd to get people to buy their news sheets and pamphlets.
Some stood in a busy spot and gave full-blown concerts to the crowd.
But the most common ones walked the streets in groups.
You know in old movies when the world was black and white,
they had those kids holding stacks of newspapers yelling
“Extra! Extra! Read all about depression”?
The streets of Japanese cities had news sellers yelling
“Hey, this is incredible! Hey, this is awful!”
Things like that.
If you saw someone on a city street decked out in a straw hat and shamisen ensemble,
get ready for some entertaining news that you can’t trust.
But not only in cities.
These masters of melody also traveled to the countryside,
where people dropped their hoes and bebes to see the performance
when they heard the yomiuri was in town.
Not much to do in country villages except bebes and hoes.
All this song and dance was so they could sell these news sheets,
made of cheap paper that could be printed quickly.
They didn’t last long, but neither did current events.
What did they print on these reports?
Anything to get you to read them.
There were news stories about fires, suicides,
natural disasters, murders, fights, politics,
and anything weird or crazy.
When a fire happened, they printed maps of places that burned down.
They always had interesting news stories,
but if you wanted accuracy,
it was like having someone cut the fingers from your hand,
you couldn’t count on it.
Some performers were so good they made s--t information sound really convincing,
not unlike most videos on YouTube.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,
most YouTube videos have s--t performers too.
On the priority list of worthy news stories, accuracy was at the bottom.
What mattered to a yomiuri was if a story could grab attention,
and if they could make a killer performance.
The most successful performers had huge productions with a whole stage and a cast.
And if you liked their tunes, they had the lyrics for sale.
One of the most popular stories were tales of double love suicides,
when star-crossed lovers killed themselves
because they read too many tales of double love suicides.
The corpses of Romeo-sans and Jurietto-chans
were sprawled all over the pages of the yomiuri news.
Hey they had a hard job.
They had to get customers to buy a news report on the spot.
The show was just a little sneak peek to get people pumped.
You like the tip? Well then you’ll love the entire length.
Of the report.
Now you might think that singing little jingles
around the block was pretty harmless,
but these were often jingles about
political scandals and town gossip and secret love affairs.
A song about cheating hits different when you realize it’s about you.
Yomiuri liked to sing right outside the houses
of the people in the news,
which was annoying if you did something bad,
and even more annoying if you didn’t.
Imagine having someone s--tting on you outside your door,
but you’re not sure how to feel about it cuz it’s catchy af.
Yomiuri were very honest…
about the fact that they could be bribed to be dishonest.
For the right fee, you could find a yomiuri to spread lies about your enemies.
They did sell news stories that were straight facts and figures,
but those didn’t do well.
The public of the Edo Period wanted to be fed news through a more creative straw.
So yomiuri spiced things up with acting, poems, songs,
anything to make news events more entertaining or controversial.
And if they had to tweak some facts
or make up some details or make up whole stories,
no big deal.
Never let reality ruin good reporting.
Yomiuri themselves made fun of their own questionable standards.
Here’s one news report.
At first it seems like a typical story,
until you read the first word of each line.
Not everyone was into it.
There were haters who were above these tabloid type stories from talentless hacks.
They called consumers of yomiuri news foolish and immature,
before turning around and creaming their pants over underage kabuki actors.
The Edo government always had their eyeballs out
for things that harmed the public morals,
and their gaze landed on yomiuri performers.
In 1684, the authorities slammed the ban hammer, banning those who
“irresponsibly print and walk around selling short songs,
currently fashionable things, and reports of unusual contemporary occurrences.”
The arrests came.
Publishers were not allowed to print such materials.
One might say, “Wow the government cared so much about stopping misinformation,”
but one is stupid.
The authorities were most worried about politically damaging information.
After that ban, similar bans passed in later decades.
History tip: Every time you see multiple bans of the same thing,
it probably means the bans ain’t working.
The later bans all had the same basic text:
“You guys, this activity is already prohibited, but y’all relentless.”
It couldn’t be stopped.
The demand was too high and the profits higher still.
Often, the authorities turned a blind eye towards the news singers,
and showed them a frowny face instead,
partly because the laws never directly banned yomiuri,
only the selling of indecent stories.
Who’s to judge if a love triangle was indecent, or a healthy relationship?
There’s nothing more beautiful than the love between two people
while another is watching.
Life in the crowded cities of Japan wasn’t all sunshine and sushi,
with cherry blossoms growing on the streets.
Poor people also grew on the streets.
It’s hard to blame them for choosing to sell whatever they could for a few coins.
In 1852, a boy of 11 named Masakichi had a bad morning.
He was arrested for selling news reports.
When questioned, he told the police that he only got into this line of work
to support his disabled father.
The policeman saw that Masakichi was a good son,
and gave him 200 coppers and told the boy to find another line of work.
The policeman’s aides were also moved by his story
and bought the rest of Masakichi’s news prints for another 200 coppers.
And they let him go.
That’s it.
You didn’t expect a wholesome story did you?
Sometimes yomiuri sold reports that were too pervy.
They often sang lewd songs about famous beauties of the time,
and got hit with another ineffective ban against singing songs about popular idols.
There was an official guild of publishers and bookstores
who were supposed to make sure no one printed undesirable materials,
but they had to grapple with the fact that undesirable materials
were much desired by the public.
“There’s a new shogun? That’s neat.
The neighbors are divorcing? Tell me everything from the moment they were born.”
And then there were the small independent publishers
who ignored the guild and printed news sheets anyways.
These rebel publishers printed most yomiuri materials.
The business of selling short news stories on single sheets of paper
was killing it in Japan like the Japanese killed bebes.
Up until the mid-1800s…
when a new player entered the game,
and he was a beast.
It was called the newspaper.
These new businesses were centralized, cranking out a ton of stories.
Newspapers kept getting cheaper.
There were even public reading rooms for
people to come and read, even if you were poor.
One of the most successful early newspapers was even called Yomiuri Shimbun 讀賣新聞,
and it’s one of the five major newspapers in Japan today.
Newspapers were trampling all over yomiuri territory,
pissing on it and marking it theirs.
They also one-upped the street sellers by including
serialized fiction stories on the pages.
People had to keep on buying to hear what happened next.
The yomiuri sellers were being pushed out.
They tried doing other things like
selling newspapers on the street, singing about politics,
and performing songs.
But the world had passed them by, and the profession died out.
It was hard work being a news merchant,
maybe they should have tried selling something else,
like Japanese clocks that were unique in the world.
Click here to learn about them.
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