The Nine Magazines of Kodansha (1934) is the autobiography of the Japanese publisher Seiji Noma, owner of the Kodan Company, publishing several million-selling magazines and a daily paper. Born in 1878, Noma grew up in that period of rapid transition which joined old and new Japan – the wearing of swords by samurai had only been banned two years before his birth. Hereditary social divisions were collapsing, and the young Noma seized his opportunities to make his way in the new Japan.

Steven E. Barkan is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Maine. Over his career, his teaching and research interests have included criminology, the sociology of law, and social movements. In addition to his many publications in these areas, Professor Barkan is past president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP), served as chair of the SSSP’s Law and Society Division and on the council of the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Law Section, and is past president of the Textbook and Academic Authors Association. Most recently, he published the eighth edition of Criminology: A Sociological Understanding (Pearson 2023), the updated second edition of Health, Illness, and Society: An Introduction to Medical Sociology (Rowman & Littlefield 2023), and the third edition of Sociology: Understanding and Changing the World (FlatWorld 2021).