The was a genre and type of early modern Japanese

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

. It came into being late in the Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

 during the 19th century. As a genre, it depicted the comical behavior occurring in daily life of the commoners.

The kokkeibon genre is the successor of the dangibon

Dangibon

The was a pre-modern Japanese literary genre. Texts were written in a humorous, satiric sermon-style with the purpose of educating the masses. It is type of gesaku.-Developments:...

 genre. Jippensha Ikku's

Jippensha Ikku

was the pen name of Shigeta Sadakazu , a Japanese writer active during the late Edo period of Japan. He lived primarily in Edo in the service of samurai, but also spent some time in Osaka as a townsman...

 Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige (1802-1822) is identified as the first representative novel. A less strict definition includes the dangibon as an "early kokkeibon".

Kokkeibon generally consists of dialogue between the main characters and includes illustrations. The genre was most popular between 1804 and 1830 and is most representative by the works of Jippensha Ikku and Shikitei Sanba

Shikitei Sanba

, better known by his pen name , was a Japanese comic writer of the Edo period....

.