Lit. small red book. A type of *akahon 赤本. Woodblock printed picture books with red covers, apparently first published in the 17th century. Some sources suggest that the books were published from the Enpō 延宝 (1673-81) to the Hōei 宝延 (1704-11) eras, and may be older than the akahon in origin. The akakohon was about 12 x 9 cm (as opposed to the 18 x 13 cm size of akahon) with a cover *hyōshi 表紙, that is red and five or six leaves of folded double pages. They were published as one booklet or in sets of two fascicles. The text would take up approximately the upper one-fourth of each page with the illustration taking up the lower three-fourths of the page. Stories were primarily fairy tales for children. The style of illustration often followed that of Hishikawa Moronobu 菱川師宣 (ca. 1618-94). One example of akakohon is a book of the Kyōhō 享保 (1716-36) era, the Nezumi no hanami 鼠花見, illustrated by Kondō Kiyoharu 近藤清春 (fl. ca. 1704-20). The term akakohon came into use after the beginning of the Meiji period. Before that, the books were simply called kohon 小本. Around the Kyōhō era, a few very small akahon were published, called hiinamamehon 雛豆本.