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Chui, Bianca Man Yan

University of British Columbia

Popularized in the Edo period (1603–1868), sugoroku is a type of Japanese printed board game similar to snakes and ladders, with the objective of reaching the final square. This thesis focuses on Edo-period sugoroku adaptations of the comic novel Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige (1802–1814). Written by Jippensha Ikku (1765¬–1831), the kokkeibon (comic novel) bestseller Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige narrates the misadventures of the protagonists Yaji and Kita as they travel along the Tōkaidō (the Eastern Seaboard Highway) from Edo (present-day Tokyo) to Kyoto. Through an investigation of four examples ranging from the 1830s to the 1850s, I explore how episodes of Yaji and Kita’s journey are visually and textually represented in a game format of fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō. Chapter 1 introduces Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige and the four sugoroku examples, while Chapters 2 to 5 look at specific episodes that occur in certain play squares, beginning with the starting square of Nihonbashi or Kanda Hatchōdōri, moving to the play square of Odawara, continuing to the rest stop at Hakone, and ending with the goal square of Kyoto or Ise Shrine. Chapter 6 concludes the thesis by highlighting similarities and differences between the four examples. The primary goal of this study is to provide a close reading and contextual analysis of visual and textual content in sugoroku adaptations of Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige, focusing on how episodes of the kokkeibon are transformed from a humorous narrative text into a highly visual board-game. By contrasting the text and visuals from the Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige narrative by Jippensha Ikku (1802–1814) with the content found in sugoroku board games, I show how producers navigated the distinctions between reading a story and playing a game. The primary goal of this study is to provide a close reading and contextual analysis of sugoroku adaptations of Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige through its textual and visual content, focusing on how episodes of Ikku’s Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige narrative are transformed from a humorous narrative text into a highly visual board-game.

Text

2024-09-12

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89221

Asian Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/