The Playwright at His Desk

AbstractWhen scholars began to write the history of kabuki in the early twentieth century, the early modern practices of corporate authorship posed a problem to a literary historical tendency to focus on creative genius. “The Playwright at His Desk” examines the ways in which the history of authorship in nineteenth-century Japan imagined the place of the playwright in relation to images that both imagined the author as a solitary figure dreaming up his work and depicted the author as a figure ensconced in the milieu of the commercial stage and subjected to the demands of actors, theater managers, and the playgoing public.