History
Popular literature has a long tradition in Japan. Even though cheap, pulp novels were present in Japan in years prior, 1975 is considered by some to be a symbolical beginning of the history of ranobe. That is when Sonorama Bunko was created; it was the first of several imprints that published pop-lit paperbacks resembling modern ranobe in terms of poetics. Science fiction and horror writers like Kikuchi Hideyuki or Yumemakura Baku started their careers through those.
In the 1980s, epic novels by Tanaka Yoshiki — Legend of Galactic Heroes and Heroic Legend of Arslan — took young male Japanese audiences by storm. Also, RPG-inspired Record of Lodoss War novels achieved popularity. All of those were later animated.
The 1990s saw the smash-hit Slayers series which merged fantasy-RPG elements with comedy. Some years later MediaWorks founded a pop-lit imprint called Dengeki Bunko, which produces well-known light novel series to this day. The Boogiepop series was their first major hit which soon was animated and got many anime watchers interested in literature.
Dengeki Bunko writers continued to slowly gain attention until the small light novel world experienced a boom around 2006. After the huge success of the Suzumiya Haruhi series, suddenly the number of publishers and readers interested in light novels skyrocketed.
Light novels became an important part of the Japanese 2D culture in late 2000s. The number of ranobe series put out every year increases, the most celebrated artists from pixiv illustrate them and the most successful works are animated and made into comics and live action movies.
Read more about this topic: Light Novels
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