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Horizontal and Vertical Writing

yevgeny

先輩
21 Sep 2007
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Hi,

I would like to know what is the percentage of books, magazines etc. with vertical writing (right-to-left) from all Japanese books.
Before recently I thought that most belletristic books (fiction) are written up-down, while the science books and magazines are written horizontally.

Thanks,
Yevgeny
 
Seems to be on a book-by-book basis.

I've seen magazines written both ways.
I've seen non-fiction written both ways.
I've seen fiction written both ways.
I've seen science fiction written both ways.
...etc
 
Without quoting any actual figures, I think it's safe to say the following are mostly vertical:
novels
"scholarly paperbacks" (ツ新窶「ツカナ津?
comics

The following are mostly horizontal:
self-help books (foreign language learning, employment, PC-related)

Magazines, and other types of books are likely to be either, with certain trends towards one or the other, depending on the content.
 
Can I conclude from your answers that such books as:

- medieval stories and novels such as Genji Monogatari, Taketori Monogatari, Makura no Sōshi etc.
- contemporary (last 100 years) stories and novels by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Kobo Abe, Haruki Murakami etc.

are written mostly vertically?
 
Can I conclude from your answers that such books as:

- medieval stories and novels such as Genji Monogatari, Taketori Monogatari, Makura no Sōshi etc.
- contemporary (last 100 years) stories and novels by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Kobo Abe, Haruki Murakami etc.

are written mostly vertically?
No, not necessarily. Traditionally, Japanese had been written vertically (right to left) in any type of book (as well as handwritten letters, etc.)

It's only with the spread of PC use (and alphanumeric characters used in computing) during the past couple of decades that horizontal (left to right) way became widely popular.

So, it all depends on the publisher and its decision on which way would be preferred by the readers and/or which way it likes.
 
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- medieval stories and novels such as Genji Monogatari, Taketori Monogatari, Makura no Sōshi etc.
If you're talking about the original versions, then definitely. Horizontal writing in Japanese was nearly non-existent until the 1900s. Modern versions would also be vertical more than 95% of the time, I believe.

- contemporary (last 100 years) stories and novels by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Kobo Abe, Haruki Murakami etc.
Same here. I've never seen a Murakami book that didn't have vertical writing. Perhaps one of those authors' short stories might appear in horizontal writing in a magazine from time to time, but that would be somewhat unusual.

Of course, as Epigene pointed out, nearly all Japanese writing on the internet is horizontal, regardless of the genre.

But I forgot to mention that the vast majority of (printed) newspapers are vertical writing as well.
 
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