p4
Tanaka Hisara. 女子スポーツ双六 [Joshi Supotsu Sugoroku]. Shufunotomo 1925 (Taisho 14). colour broadside 95x64cm. Small tears around the edges; pretty good. Au$325
This extra large and stylish manga game was the new year gift from the magazine Shufunotomo - housewife's friend. There's something not often seen here: girls being strenuous and competitive to the point of sweating. Recurring through the game is a fierce battle between two girls, one in red stripes and one in blue. Along the way they shake hands. Those are patterned stockings, by the way, not a skin disease.
Tanaka was a specialist in moga - modern girls - through the twenties.
Manga for schools
Okamoto Ippei. 児童漫画集 [Jido Mangashu]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1927 [Showa 2]. 22x15cm cloth backed publisher's colour illustrated card wrapper; cover, illustrated title in red and black and one colour plate by Ippei, seven full page illustrations in colour, profusely illustrated in b/w by any number of artists. An uncommonly good copy. Shogakusei Zenshu no.23. Au$150
The Shogakusei Zenshu, or Complete Works for Elementary Schools, runs to some 88 volumes of educational texts and literature - much of this in translation - few of them seem elementary, and how many publishers of such series would include manga?
Ippei, radical and scallywag, was the king of newspaper cartooning as Rakuten ruled the magazines in Taisho and early Showa Japan. It was Ippei that brought the American comic strip to Japan and he heads, with Rakuten, the lists of idols and inspiration of many modern manga artists.
Shimizu Taigakubo. 電気教育雙六 [Denki Kyoiku Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Katei no Denki 1927 (Taisho 16). Colour broadside 79x54cm. A touch browned, a pinhole in one fold; rather good. Au$600
This delightful and most uncommon game was the new year gift from the magazine Household Electricity. Many of the advantages of electricity are self evident but I discovered that a decently lit house cuts down on wife beating.
Taigakubo was, with Rakuten and Ippei, a founding member of the Tokyo Manga Association.
Smoca advertising. Kataoka Toshiro etc. スモカ広告作品集 [Smoca Kokoku Sakuhinshu]. Tokyo, Seishindoshoten 1928 (Showa 3). 22x15cm publisher's printed wrapper; [2],213pp, profusely illustrated throughout in b/w (a few folding). Signs of use and some browning; a pretty good copy. Au$400
The first and hardest to find of Smoca's compilations of their advertising, six more followed over the next thirteen years. Smoca's success - they are still going - was through clever advertising. From the start, in 1925, the company's founder, advertising man Kataoka Toshiro, hired the best artists and cartoonists.
Smoca, in case you wondered, was then a tooth powder for smokers.
Motomatsu Goro. 漫画廣告創作集 [Manga Kokoku Sosakushu]. Tokyo, Seishindo 1928 (Showa 3). 27x20cm publisher's cloth decorated in pink & gilt, printed card slipcase (marked); [2],204pp, profusely illustrated in black & white plus seven colour plates. A little offsetting; a nice copy of a book that invites continual thumbing. Au$650
Manga in advertising. A delight.
Kon Wajiro. 新版大東京案内 [Shinpan Dai Tokyo Annai]. Tokyo, Chuo Koronsha 1929 (Showa 4). Octavo publisher's illustrated boards and slipcase; 380pp and four double page maps, illustrations throughout, several full page. An excellent copy of a smart but badly put together book. Au$400
First edition of a new guide to a new Tokyo by the founder of Modernology. This is not a guide to carry round, the flimsy construction puts paid to that if you try. Tokyo is divided into culture, purpose and theme more than districts. It comes out of the years spent documenting Tokyo and its people after the 1923 earthquake - what is now called urban ethnology - and work done with other designers and architects shaping the new Tokyo. It is sort of an adjunct and a preface to the Modernologio books to come in the next couple of years.
Kitazawa Rakuten. 楽天全集 [Rakuten Zenshu]. 1-3, 5-7, 9 [all published]. Tokyo, Atoriesha (Atelier) 1930-31 (Showa 5 - 6). Seven volumes 27x20cm publisher's colour illustrated cloth, illustrated card cases; hundreds of colour and duo-tone illustrations. An excellent set. Au$1100
The complete works, such as it is, of the king of magazine cartoons and/or manga - Rakuten. It took me a while to figure out why I could never find a complete set of all nine volumes - such a thing doesn't exist - and even longer to find a good set of what does exist. I put a fair bit of that down to decades of Japanese booksellers, also unaware, deciding they have incomplete sets and selling them piecemeal. Add to that these are books that are usually thumbed into grimy exhaustion and you can see why I'm smug about this set.
I'm yet to find an explanation for the two gaps but these weren't published in order; some later volumes appeared before the first. The Mayan(?) on the covers is reading a manga. On the back he is laughing so hard he has dropped his book. Unlike me his Japanese is excellent.
Borraginol poster. ボラギノール : ぢ痔に [Borraginal : Dji Ji Ni]. Osaka? Takeda (c1930?). Colour printed poster on light cotton (muslin? calico?), 117x86cm. Rumpled and some marks but rather fresh and bright. Au$200
As made clear, piles need make no inroads on a man's life, habits and comforts. Borraginol, a still made hemorrhoid treatment, was Japan's first scientific/chemical treatment developed in 1921 at Kyoto University. Posters printed on fabric - rather than banners or flags - must be pretty uncommon, no? So what was the purpose?
Kon Wajiro & Yoshida Kenkichi. モデルノロヂオ - 考現学 [Moderunorojio - Kogengaku]. (Modernologio on the cover). Tokyo, Shun'yudo 1930 (Showa 5). 26x20cm, publisher's decorated cloth blocked in white, red and black; 361pp, profusely illustrated throughout, a few photo or colour plates. Light browning, much less than usual; a remarkably good copy of a book that invites continual thumbing. Au$1150
First printing. This is an extraordinary book; the gospel of Modernology. Kon and Yoshida have compiled an encyclopaedia, surely unsurpassed, of the apparently ordinary, of the people of Tokyo, fit to provoke unseemly enthusiasm in theoreticians and urban planners ever since. I gather that Kon's thesis - born out of watching the people of Tokyo begin to rebuild after the 1923 earthquake and fire - is that those who do the planning, designing and official building know nothing of what people actually do, what they own and how they use those things - how they live and who they are.
Kon Wajiro & Yoshida Kenkichi. 考現学採集 (モデルノロヂオ). [Kogengaku Saishu (Moderunorojio)]. Tokyo, Shun'yudo 1931 (Showa 6). Quarto publisher's cloth blocked in red and white (spine a little rubbed), rather browned but solid illustrated slipcase; [2],323pp, photo illustrations, hundreds of line drawings and diagrams (one with colours added), endpaper map. A few blotches and small flaws, quite good. Au$750
First edition of the companion to the 'Modernologio' of the previous year - together they are the gospel of Modernology. Kon and Yoshida here collect data to extend their extraordinary encyclopaedia of the people of modern Tokyo. Their thesis was that those who do the planning, designing and building know nothing of what people actually do, what they own and how they use those things - how they live and who they are. I can't imagine anything you might ever think about and a lot you would never think about that isn't collected here. How you walk, where you walk, what you carry, how you carry it, where you dance, how you dance, how you sit, where your shelves are and what's on them, in your cupboards ...
Wada Sanzo. 色名総鑑 [Shikimei Sokan]. Tokyo, Shunjusha 1931 (Showa 6). 20x12cm publisher's cloth case with title label with 160 mounted colour samples on 56 accordian folding card leaves; and wrappered book; 178pp and some tables (two folding). The usual offsetting of the card and still a nice enough copy in the original printed card outer folding case (this with a chipped spine repaired on the inner hinges). Colour samples named in Japanese, English and occasionally French or German; two of the tables are multi language lists of colour names. The top edge of the colour cards are gilded and the apparently plain paper lining of the case has a pattern of transparent glazed shapes printed on it. sold
First edition of Wada's first serious attempt at colour nomenclature. Wada, though at the top of the art ladder in Japan, insisted on pursuing new directions and founded the Japan Standard Color Association, now the Japan Color Research Institute, in 1927. In these early years science, art and aesthetics went hand in hand.
Itagaki Takao & Horiguchi Sutemi [editors]. 建築様式論叢 [Kenchiku Yoshiki Ronso]. Tokyo, Rokumonkan 1932 (Showa 7). 20x18cm publisher's cloth, printed card slipcase; 711pp, photo plates, illustrations plans and diagrams through the text. An excellent copy, Au$1500
First edition of this near massive collection of writings on style in architecture put together by the indefatigable champion of modernity, Itagaki, and pioneer of modern Japanese architecture, Horiguchi. The book might be titled 'style' but there's a lot of serious thought in here by the heavyweights of the new movement in Japanese architecture.
Apart from Horiguchi, contributors include Ichiura Ken, Yamada Mamoru and Taniguchi Yoshiro. Kawakita Renshichiro, who placed pretty well in the 1930 international competition for the Ukraine state theatre, details the structure of the designs. Saito Torao contributes what appears to be a ferociously technical study of the airport in modern cities. Itagaki writes on the Roman dome and Horiguchi on the philosophy and composition of the tea room - in its way the apotheosis of modernism.
Okamoto Ippei, Tsutsumi Kanzo & Aso Yutaka. 制服の花嫁 [上中下] [Seifuku no Hanayome]. Tokyo Asahi Shimbun 1933 (Showa 8). Three volumes 26x19cm publisher's colour illustrated wrappers; 32;24;24pp, illustrations printed in black and orange throughout. Expected browning of the cheap paper but pretty good. sold
Volumes one, two and three each by a master of modern manga: Ippei did the first, Kanzo the second and and Yutaka the last. The title more or less translates as 'Bride in Uniform' and it seems to involve a love triangle as two men compete for the young woman, though why and how she's in uniform beats me. That's about all I can tell you. Along the bottom of each page runs a comic strip that is a complicated version of the tortoise and hare race.
Ippei needs no introduction to regular readers of my lists, Kanzo is less well known now but was a prodigious newspaper and magazine cartoonist or manga reporter, and Yutaka was of course the inventor of Nonki Na Tosan, Japan's first regular comic strip.
Advertising. Katsumi Tsuji. 傑作廣告圖案大集成 [Kessaku kokoku zuan daishusei]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1934. 27x20cm publisher's illustrated cloth, illustrated slipcase; 320pp with hundreds of illustrations (eight pages in colour, the rest in varying monochromes). Minor signs of use, rather good. sold
A splendid compendium of modern advertising layout and typography; there are examples from Europe and America but fortunately the bulk is Japanese. Both the book cover and the slipcase are pretty smart, the slipcase in particular. The 'AD' design on the cover of the book is a direct link to the Art Directors Club, presumably this is a forerunner of the current Tokyo Art Directors Club.
Posters. 商業美術展ポスター集成 [Shogyo Bijutsuten Posuta Shusei]. Osaka, Shogyo Bijutsu Renmai 1934 (Showa 9). 27x20cm publisher's patterned boards and slipcase printed in orange and black (this fairly rubbed but solid and presentable enough); [5]ll and 104 b/w plates printed on one side. Au$300
Short on colour maybe but still a good exhibition of modern Japanese poster designs mounted by the Commercial Art League (Shogyo Bijutsu Renmai). Designs - not printed or published posters - with artists all identified. Not such a rare book but hard to find in better than revolting condition.
Kawakita Renshichiro & Takei Katso. 構成教育大系 [Kosei Kyoiku Taikei]. Tokyo, Gakko Bijutsu Kyokai Shuppan-bu 1934 (Showa 9). 22x16cm publisher's colour printed boards (a bit spotted with small surface scrapes at the tips); [2], 12 plates (four colour), 520pp, profusely illustrated throughout. Some spotting around the edge; a rather good copy of a vulnerable book. Au$1650
First edition. A textbook in a way but a remarkable and thoroughly modernist one. Much influenced but, I'm told, not slavishly, by the Bauhaus method of teaching, this education in design or composition contains both the philosophy and practice of Kawakita's Shinkenchiku Kogei Gakuin (School of New Architecture and Design) successor to his Seikatsu Kosei Kenkyusho (Research Institute for Life Configurations).
The book apparently caused some unhappiness among cutting edge architects who complained that it was too abstract but was hugely popular among art teachers. This might explain why the book seems so hard to find: a bunch of black thumbed, paint spattered art students soon puts paid to any book. Worldcat finds only the NDL entry.
Smoca advertising. Kataoka Toshiro etc. スモカ広告作品集 第五輯 [Smoca Kokoku Sakuhinshu Daigoshu]. Osaka, Sumokasha 1937 (Showa 12). 22x15cm publisher's printed red wrapper; [8],176pp, illustrated throughout including two mounted colour plates. Minor signs of use and some browning; quite good. Au$400
The fifth of Smoca's compilations of their advertising, seven appeared between 1928 and 1941. Smoca's success - they are still going - was through clever advertising. From the start, in 1925, the company's founder, advertising man Kataoka Toshiro, hired the best artists and cartoonists.
The colour illustrations are two of Smoca's series of face and teeth posters - about the last and probably the two dullest after the weird and sometimes disturbing series issued over the previous decade.
Smoca, in case you wondered, was then a tooth powder for smokers.
Kawakami Sumio. 工藝 ９６巻 [Kogei no.96]. Tokyo, 1939 (Showa 14). 23x15cm publisher's illustrated wrapper; woodcut and enamel on the cover, [4], colour woodcuts on two leaves, mounted photo plates on 17 leaves, 64pp of text with small illustrations, publisher's adverts. A nice copy in original wax paper wrapper. Au$200
This issue of Kogei (craft) is devoted to Kawakami. His work is charming, simple to the point of naive so of course it isn't. Kawakami nursed a nostalgia for a time he did not experience. I'm sure there's word for that which isn't nationalism, xenophobia or popularism. In his case it was the printed Meiji enlightenment and the confusion of westernisation that fascinated him and it is easy to see the models of early Meiji primers for children in his prints.
Miwa Takehisa. スラングと進駐軍略語集 [Surangu to Shinchugun Ryakugoshu] Neo-Practical English Series for Neo Japanese [cover title: New Words and Essential Abbreviations]. Tokyo, Jitsuyoeigokaiwagakuinshuppanbu 1946. 18x13cm publisher's printed wrapper; [2],62pp. Very little of the expected browning, an excellent copy. sold
A rare colonial dictionary. The preface pretends that this about learning English now that the war is over which may be all-a-hunky but is nonsense. This about learning American, specifically the American spoken by soldiers - the occupation forces. The first entry is A-bomb, followed by ace, Adam and Eve (two eggs - never heard that one), air arm, air-conditioned, Amgot .. past chowmobile, cop, ear wardens, fubar, gob, hep cat, japs, nips and krauts, war brides .. to yank. The abbreviations are real milspeak. Jitsuyoeigokaiwagakuinshuppanbu, which cries out for an abbreviation, translates as Practical English Conversation Academy Publishing Department.
Worldcat finds no copies outside Japan.
Werewolf
Street Kamishibai. Yodogawa Manpo & Kahi Ryuji? 狼男 : 3巻 [and] 4巻 [Okami Otoko : 3 kan ... 4 kan]. np. Sadamusha? 195-? Each episode has ten handpainted and varnished sheets on heavy boards, 26x36cm. Text handwritten on the back. These have been wet along the right edge and there is damage. Stamps of the Osaka and Nagoya kamishibai ethics committees, which my informant speculates were self proclaimed entities that existed nowhere other than as stamps on a handful of stories. Au$750
If you've looked at published kamishibai and wondered how it could ever have been popular ... it wasn't. The published stuff was almost all heavy handed propaganda and improving drivel produced without any artistic skill or imagination by government and education agencies and pressed on children in schools. Real street kamishibai was produced by hand by the kamishibai men themselves or by associations - such as the Sadamusha - that acted more or less as lending libraries. Which is not to say that a hell of a lot of street kamishibai wouldn't be described kindly as 'naive'. But enough had to be compelling to bring and keep audiences. Specially through hundreds of episodes, which some stories ran for.
Kamishibai was not long lived. It was more or less born with cinema and died with television, and the greatest works, as far as they have survived, were produced toward the end, during the occupation after the war. The connection to film serials is inescapable of course but kamishibai is not burdened with technical restraints. If you can imagine it, you can draw it and you can tell the story.
Here are two complete episodes of Okami Otoko which translates as werewolf or wolfman. It is, I'm told, the revenge tale of Yagi Harusaku, a one legged man who turns werewolf at full moon. Unfortunately, without an episode showing that I don't know whether he's still a leg short in wolf form. I wonder whether anyone living knows the whole story. As far as I can figure, when the kamishibai industry ground to a halt the kamishibai men just packed away, or threw away, whatever episodes they had. If a large hunk of a story or, something I've never seen, a whole story was held by the association you can be sure it was dull, rarely wanted.
Kamishibai are public stories usually told by kamishibai men who set up a folding stand on the back of their bicycles and acted the dramas illustrated on the cards. With the plates in order, the text for the first picture is on the back of the last. The sheets are transferred to the back as the story continues; the text for the second picture is on the back of the first, and so on.
Now with extra blood!
Street Kamishibai. Gataro & Yaeko? 死神むすめ : 13巻 [Shinigami Musume : 13 kan]. np. Sadamusha? 195-? Ten handpainted and varnished sheets on heavy boards, 26x36cm. Text handwritten on the back. Edges worn and minor scrapes and blemishes as expected. Stamps of the Osaka and Nagoya kamishibai ethics committees, which my informant speculates were self proclaimed entities that existed nowhere other than as stamps on a handful of stories.
Added is the wrecked but complete episode 23, also ten cards. The left hand quarter has been wet and is quite damaged but it is certainly worth saving. Au$1000
This is the complete episode 13 of what might be translated as 'Death's Daughter' which I'm told is a story of horror and revenge but I doubt that anyone living knows the whole story. As far as I can figure, when the kamishibai industry ground to a halt the kamishibai men just packed away, or threw away, whatever episodes they had. If a large hunk of a story or, something I've never seen, a whole story was held by the association you can be sure it was dull, rarely used. Here, I've traced only episodes 10 to 15* which all seem to have come from the same source. How many episodes were there? Who knows.
*Episode 23, now added from the same source and unlikely to be supplemented, doesn't help with the plot but it does ratchet up the tension. Is it all as brutally murderous as this? I suspect so.
It's pretty fabulous, no Golden Yasha but a fair slice of that essential overwrought pervasive dread and stark fear.
