18 | Mass Media and Historical Change
xylographic prints covering a circulation of at least three hundred and maybe
up to ten thousand copies (Sohn 1998: 28). Book production thus not only
served to stabilise the new regime, but also to promote Neo-Confucian state
doctrine, with the intention of thrusting aside Buddhism by means of new
rituals and scriptures. A study of the flourishing Chinese book market between
1550 and 1650 moreover reveals cultural and socio-historical causes. During
this time, a rapid increase in population stimulated the demand for books,
and production costs could be kept low due to the large number of workers
(Chow 2004; Brokaw 2005: 10). Also, book distribution was improved during
this period. Since a collective written language existed in China despite hun-
dreds of different dialects (but seldom used in books), the entire country was
targeted for distribution. This had not only economic significance, but the
media market also contributed to imagining China as an entity and, at least
potentially, promoting a collective public sphere. This strengthened China’s
cultural coherence, which, however, remained visual. After all, printing did
not contribute to the establishment of a collective spoken vernacular language
(Chow 2004: 245) – in contrast to Europe, where Latin had established itself
as the written language and increasingly gave way to vernacular print-work
from the sixteenth century onwards.
These findings on the development of printing caution us not to deduce
causalities from media innovations too hastily. Printing was evidently respon-
sible for a whole range of consequences. At the same time, the above exam-
ples illustrate that the element of technical distinction should never lead one
to assume the socio-cultural meaninglessness of Asian print media. It is thus
imperative to view xylographic printing in Asia not so much as an artistic pre-
stage of movable type printing, but rather as a self-contained medium in Asia
(Chow 2004: 246).
With a view to the Asian continent, it is reasonable to ask how far Guten-
berg himself knew of and was inspired by its development. Based on a rather
limited number of literary references, there is some speculation that reports on
Asian printing practices found their way to Europe through Mongolian con-
querors or tradesmen along the Silk Road, but there is no conclusive evidence
to support this (cf. Sohn 1972: 217, 228; Kapr 1988: 113–20). However,
even the technical differences alone illustrate the independence of Gutenberg’s
letterpress printing from the Korean invention. Gutenberg’s manual casting
procedure for letter reproduction, which enabled him to produce an unlimited
number of facsimiles of the same letters, in itself constitutes a distinctive tech-
nique of type making. The typesetting methods also differed, as the Koreans
used standardised printing plates with fixed framing (Lie 2003: 74; Yukawa
2010: 356). Also, whilst it is well known that Gutenberg’s invention oper-
ated with a mechanical printing press, the Koreans practised hand printing
until the nineteenth century. Due to this technical discrepancy, it has been