Advertising fan sample books. 優美団扇見本帖 + 優美団扇新画帳 [Yubi Uchiwa Mihon Jo] + [Yubi Uchiwa Shin Gacho] + six actual advertising uchiwa - fans. n.p. c1930. The first: 23x25cm publisher's colour illustrated wrappers, ribbon tied; title leaf, 81 leaves (four of these form two designs with one of each being a layer with cutouts over the other). Covers ragged, a few leaves with closed tears near the beginning; the album has been damp at some time and colours drifted to nearby leaves in places but all acceptable enough. The second: 25x25cm colour printed wrapper; ribbon tied; 42 leaves. Used and well thumbed but solid and decent enough.The fans each about 40cm top to tail. Au$2100

Two (but not a pair) of these rare sample books of elegant (yubi translates as elegant) uchiwa - non folding fans - used for advertising; messages were on the back. Now, pattern books of properly elegant fan designs have a long history and are a dime, well, a few thousand dollars, a dozen. It would be hard to get together a dozen of these crass commercial sample books, for much the same reasons as their sister hikifuda books: any that did survive are usually dismembered and sold page by page.
The accompanying fans do not actually appear in either book but that is a matter of variation on a theme. The family likeness is unmistakable. As is the likeness to hikifuda (large handbills or small posters) of the period: the artwork, printing and colours come from the same people. The designs range from revolting to most smart. Luckily few are truly revolting.

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Moga illustrations. 家出娘のヌウちゃん [Iede Musume no Nu-chan]. n.p. c1930? Four ink and wash drawings on light card from about 10x22cm to 22x18cm. The first titled in pencil (Iede Musume no Nu-chan dai 5 kai translates as Runaway Daughter Nu-chan part 5). One to three are numbered in pencil; number three includes some embossing. Au$200

Four engaging and stylish small drawings which I take to be magazine illustrations for chapter five of a jazz age story all too familiar - the corruption and downfall of an innocent young woman. All very much ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) fashion of the late Taisho and early Showa period. The story of Nu-chan and where it might have appeared remains a mystery to me but I really want to see it all. Could it be there was a happy ending?
Moga = modern girl.

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Fire safety poster. 火の用心 [Hinoyojin]. n.p. [193-?]. Colour poster, 66x51cm on original patterned mount, 88x61cm, with metal strips at top and bottom. Some rumpling. The mount and strips are original but the brown paper backing looks much more recent. Au$300

Spendidly dramatic and helpful with a line up of the likely suspects in the bottom corner: the matches, the cigarette and the neglected candle.
The caption below the poster is separately printed, identifying the local fire department: Yamaguchi Prefecture.

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School posters. 姿勢圖 - 教室常備用 [Shiseizu - Kyoshitsu Jobi-yo]. Osaka, Teikoku Kyoiku Shiryo Henzan Kyokai [1930s?]. Four colour litho posters 79x55cm. A little browning, a couple of small nibbles; an excellent complete set in the original cardboard tube with printed title label. Au$250

Now this is education from first principles. Girls and boys learn how to stand and how to sit and it's easy to see the difference. From here we can go on to reading, writing and arithmetic. These were produced by the imperial education body who certainly knew what's what.

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Shochikuza. Shochikuza News. Osaka, Shochiku 1931-32. Nine issues, 22x15cm publisher's colour illustrated wrappers; mostly four pages and covers. Au$500

A small, well chosen group. Shochiku, now part of the megafauna of Japanese entertainment, spread into film from Kabuki in 1920, built Japan's first western theatre in Osaka in 1923, and soon had a chain of cinemas showing foreign movies. This was their weekly news letter. I think the cover was shared but the contents were printed for each theatre. Inspired and aspiring young designers presumably worked on the usual terms: no credit and less money. There is quite a bit of remarkable anonymous graphic art of the twenties and early thirties with the Shochiku-za banner. Not all of it is good but what is can be fabulous. As the thirties progressed the adventurousness evaporated and by the mid-late thirties they looked like film magazines from anywhere.

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Manga. 人生漫画帖 [Jinsei Mangacho]. Tokyo, Kodansha 1932 (Showa 7). 20x14cm publisher's colour printed cream cloth and colour printed slipcase; 330pp and publisher's advertisements; colour frontispiece. illustrated throughout, the first 32 pages in red and black, the rest in black. Spine a touch browned, edges and case a bit more so; a remarkably good copy of a book born to be a grubby wreck. Au$300

First edition; jazz age manga for grown up kids by a gang of manga stars.

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Wada Sanzo. 色名総鑑 (増訂版) [Shikimei Sokan (Zoteiban)]. Tokyo, Hakubisha 1935 (Showa 10). 19x11mm publisher's cloth case with 171 mounted colour samples on 57 accordian folding leaves; and card bound book; 182,8pp. Colour samples named in Japanese, English and occasionally French or German; table of multi language lists of colour names. Usual offsetting, nice copy in mildly used publisher's printed card case. Au$850

Second edition, enlarged and revised, of Wada's first serious attempt at colour nomenclature published in 1931. I can tell you there are a few more pages and eleven more colour chips in this edition. There seem to be significant changes in the text volume but I can't read them. Several colours have changed - that is the hue, tint or shade, not the name - and seem to this untrained eye to accord better with their names, though I would still pick an argument with his 'fawn'.
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.

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Shimiguzumi. 住宅建築図集 [Jutaku Kenchiku Zushu]. Tokyo, Shimiguzumi 1935 (Showa 10). 30x23cm publisher's cloth (marked) in shabby but intact card case; profusely illustrated with photos and floor plans, three colour plates. Au$250

Residential architecture - some 200 houses and a few hotels and inns - built between 1906 and 1934 by building and engineering giant, Shimiguzumi - designers and builders to royalty, corporations and plutocrats. Naturally taste plays little part in building for the ultra wealthy and here we have a casserole of traditional Japanese and western mansions and strange, sometimes disturbing, hybrids in between - and a fair bit of high class modernism.
Shimiguzumi, now Shimizu, goes back to the beginning of the 19th century and they went early into Yokohama, embraced modernity, built the first western hotel in Japan, and really took off. They were also canny about publicity, issuing a smart series of cards illustrating their major works in the 1890s, two albums of their banks and office buildings in 1915, and followed this present book up with another devoted to their hotels the next year and haven't stopped for long since.
Of course this book is not just a boast or cynical publicity. Here's a rough translation from president Shimizu's preface: "Residential architecture is currently in a period of transition.We cannot be satisfied by simply copying European and American architecture, nor can we be satisfied with traditional Japanese-style architecture ... The purpose of compiling this work into an illustrated book is to provide useful materials for both design and construction, in hopes of furthering the complete development of residential architecture."

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Advertising Sugoroku. 商賣繁榮雙六 [Shobai Hanei Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Sankosha 1935 (Showa 10). Colour broadside 80x56cm, folded as issued. Minimal signs of use, a pretty good copy. Au$300

A proper aspirational sugoroku for girls and young women. Prosperity is the reward for the perfect modern girl: good husband, handsome family and shopping, shopping shopping. This shopping game advertises the glamorous range of businesses in Notagawa - now part of Higashiomi, more or less half way between Kyoto and Nagoya. The same game, relabelled, was used for businesses of Matsumoto City. A very similar - a few panels the same - but not so modern game - more kimonos, fewer cars, furs and bobbed or marcelled heads - with the same title was issued the year before by the newspaper Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun for readers in the Iwamurata-machi area. You don't waste a good idea and a decent bit of artwork.

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Shipping. More Than Twenty Knots - MS Canberra Maru - MS Tokyo Maru - New freighters on the Japan Australian service of O.S.K. Line. Osaka, OSK 1936. 23x19cm publisher's colour printed wrapper; 8pp including cover, map, plan and a couple of photo illustrations. Au$75

"Functional superiority" is evident in the speed and capacity of these two new launched ships.

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Kurita Jiro (illustrator). 小学科学絵本 : 砂糖 [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Sato]. Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this worn and browned but all there); colour and b/w illustrations throughout by Kurita. Some browning of offsetting. Au$80

This is volume 12 of the 12 volumes series Shogaku Kagaku Ehon - elementary science - devoted to sugar. This is a quite exciting and vivid series hidden under dreary dustwrappers so it is natural to discard the dustwrappers immediately. They seemed inexplicable to me until I realised that many of these artists were in disgrace with officials and neither high modernism nor the fanciful were suitable for anyone let alone an impressionable child. The dustwrappers are the book equivalent of thick rimmed glasses and a false moustache. Proof that communists and such troublemaking artistic riff-raff can't be trusted.

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Yamashita Ken'ichi (illustrator). 小学科学絵本 : 石油 [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Sekiyu] . Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this used: browned and a bit chipped); colour and b/w illustrations by Yamashita throughout. Some browning here and there. Au$150

This is volume 10 of the 12 volumes series Shogaku Kagaku Ehon - elementary science - devoted to oil. This is a quite exciting and vivid series hidden under dreary dustwrappers so it is natural to discard the dustwrappers immediately. They seemed inexplicable to me until I realised that many of these artists were in disgrace with officials and neither high modernism nor the fanciful were suitable for anyone let alone an impressionable child. The dustwrappers are the book equivalent of thick rimmed glasses and a false moustache. Proof that communists and such troublemaking artistic riff-raff can't be trusted.

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Yamashita Ken'ichi (illustrator). 小学科学絵本 : 石炭 [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Sekitan] . Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this used: browned and a bit frayed); colour and b/w illustrations by Yamashita throughout. Some browning here and there. Au$125

This is volume 9 of the 12 volumes series Shogaku Kagaku Ehon - elementary science - devoted to coal. This is a quite exciting and vivid series hidden under dreary dustwrappers so it is natural to discard the dustwrappers immediately. They seemed inexplicable to me until I realised that many of these artists were in disgrace with officials and neither high modernism nor the fanciful were suitable for anyone let alone an impressionable child. The dustwrappers are the book equivalent of thick rimmed glasses and a false moustache. Proof that communists and such troublemaking artistic riff-raff can't be trusted.

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Kurita Jiro. (illustrator). 小学科学絵本 : 食物 [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Shokumotsu] . Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this a bit browned and smudged); colour and b/w illustrations throughout by Kurita. Some browning. Au$80

This is volume 7 of the 12 volumes series Shogaku Kagaku Ehon - elementary science - devoted to food. This is a quite exciting and vivid series hidden under dreary dustwrappers so it is natural to discard the dustwrappers immediately. They seemed inexplicable to me until I realised that many of these artists were in disgrace with officials and neither high modernism nor the fanciful were suitable for anyone let alone an impressionable child. The dustwrappers are the book equivalent of thick rimmed glasses and a false moustache. Proof that communists and such troublemaking artistic riff-raff can't be trusted.

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Yamashita Ken'ichi (illustrator). 小学科学絵本 : 家 [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Ie] . Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this used: smudged and a bit frayed); colour and b/w illustrations by Yamashita throughout. Some browning here and there. Au$100

This is volume 8 of the 12 volumes series Shogaku Kagaku Ehon - elementary science - devoted to housing. This is a quite exciting and vivid series hidden under dreary dustwrappers so it is natural to discard the dustwrappers immediately. They seemed inexplicable to me until I realised that many of these artists were in disgrace with officials and neither high modernism nor the fanciful were suitable for anyone let alone an impressionable child. The dustwrappers are the book equivalent of thick rimmed glasses and a false moustache. Proof that communists and such troublemaking artistic riff-raff can't be trusted.

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Manchuria colonisation. 満洲移住百問百答 [Manshu Iju Hyakumon Hyakuto]. Manchuria Nichinichi Shimbun 1937. 19x13cm publisher's illustrated wrapper (a bit used); 138pp, some photo illustations and diagrams. Au$275

Everything a poor Japanese farmer needed to know about resettling in Manchuria in 100 questions and 100 answers, published by the Manchuria daily news. This was the Manchuria Million Houses Plan, created in 1936 and put into action in 1937, which was to see a million households of poor farmers resettled in northern Manchuria over the next twenty years. It seems that of the almost quarter of a million settlers abandoned there when the Soviets invaded at the end of the war about half made it back to Japan.
Worldcat finds no copies, neither does NDL, and CiNii finds a scant handful in University libraries.

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Coal mine. 炭礦 [Tanko]. Tokyo, 1940 (Showa 15) Colour poster 53x77cm. A little dusty and frayed around the edges. Au$175

Mines sure came a long way from the hell for the choiceless, the bereft, and the suicidal that Soseki wrote about in 1908. That was a copper mine, I admit, but by 1940 underground workers in coal mines weren't just women and convicts. Unless of course you were forced labour from Manchuria, China, or Korea. Still, all that has nothing to do with the shining, automated, downright pretty, triumph of tidy technology we have here. The artist is K. Homma.
This is from a series of educational posters for schools, Wakamoto Kyoiku Kakezono. This changed my preconceptions about life in a coal mine so I wonder what else they published in the series. I might have to change my mind about a lot of things. I've found no mention of any other posters in the series.

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