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Japanese scroll - views of Holland. 阿蘭陀眼鏡之絵 [Oranda Megane no-e] n.p. n.d. (18th or early 19th century). 245x29cm, ink and colour on paper. Blank lead in stained and chewed with stains along, and a piece from, the bottom edge of the first view; rumpled. Five scenes each 38cm wide with blank spaces joined between each. Au$2750
This is what anglophones like me, with characteristic sensitivity, used to call Chinese whispers. I've chosen to call this scroll Dutch whispers: a perfect example of a landscape imagined from second hand - at best - reports. No-one in direct contact with a Dutch trader in Nagasaki would have able to walk away with these views uncorrected. Perhaps more telling is that our artist had scant access to European engravings which were being passed around select circles by the end of the 18th century. They may have seen late 16th century Japanese paintings of the Portugese or those breeches were passed down as oral history. Our artist never got near Nagasaki, saw anyone Dutch, or knew anyone who had.
Oranda Megane literally translates as Hollander glasses or spectacles, no-e just means picture. So does this mean that the viewer can see the world as the Dutch see it?
This is no child's drawing. Neither is it the work of a great artist. But it is by someone who was, at least, well trained with a brush. Often reports and drawings of foreign doings were recorded and copied by scribes for circulation among officials and the well connected. But any educated person was expert with a brush. This looks more personal, maybe even fun give the possibly poetic title, than anything official. It has the essentials: dikes and canals, windmills, massed colonades, multi storey buildings and tall chimneys ... too many hills and mountains but how could any Japanese picture somewhere as flat as Holland? So a fair bit of detail, all the important stuff, has been gathered, digested and incorporated into these views of the Dutch home planet.
Iwahashi Zenbei (or Yoshitaka depending on the transcriber). 平天儀圖解 [Heitengi Zukai]. Osaka, Ikeuchi Yahe &c 1802 (Kyowa 2). 27x19cm (with small variations); [4],38 double folded leaves (the last, the colophon, to be a single leaf pasted down to the back cover); woodcut illustrations throughout, three with moving parts. Light browning; an outstanding copy in unbound sheets, folded but untrimmed and unstitched. Au$1200
A quite remarkable, say I, copy of this guide to Zenbei's Heitengi - a set of astronomical volvelles - issued the year before, and an introduction to astronomy by Japan's leading telescope maker. So, in it's way something of an advertisement - almost a trade catalogue - and it includes a full page illustration of what must be one of his telescopes. Among the celestial and world maps and observations of planets and the moon he made, there is one of Zenbei's three sunspot drawings done in about 1793. Of course we all want a matching set of the volvelles now ... good luck and if you get there before me I curse all your electrical appliances.
This book had no title page, the title is on the binding label, so this set of sheets is absolutely complete.
Risho. 花火秘伝集 [Hanabi Hiden-shu]. Naniwa (Osaka), Kawachiya Genshichiro [c1817 to 1825]. 15.5x10cm publisher's cloth with remnants of the printed label; 39 double leaves and colophon page inside the back cover, double page frontispiece, woodcut illustrations, some full page. A wormed copy, carefully repaired with washi placed within each folded leaf and the stitching renewed. Most of the worming is towards each end, particularly the back, but there is not so much in the way of serious loss and the whole is legible and remarkably clean and fresh for a book like this. Specially when compared to the only other copy I've ever had in my hands. Au$4500
The first Japanese book on fireworks. One issue of this is dated 1817 but CiNii, the NDL and Waseda are not certain enough to assign a date to the others. Philip's Bibliography of Firework Books does list it but only from a translation of the Kokusho Somokuroku (the national bibliography of books before 1867) entry provided to him by the British Library. There it is dated c1825 and Philips states that no more than six copies are extant in Japanese libraries. This can be revised a touch, not a lot:
This copy is identical to the NDL copy online.
Identical but for wrapper colours to Waseda's copy - including no hint that there was ever a title inside the front cover - until we get to the colophon leaf which is very different. They both bear the name of Kawachiya Genshichiro, both in Shinsaibashi but Osaka rather than Naniwa. Their copy was co-published by Suharaya Mohei of Nihonbashi in Edo (Tokyo) who must be part of the Suharaya/Kinkado tangle.
Cinii finds five entries, three at Tenri University.
Tokyo University's copy is dated Bunka 14 (1817) in the colophon. The colophon, still Kawachiya in Shinsaibashi but Osaka rather than Naniwa, is very different. That copy has an illustrated title page inside the front cover, unlike any other I've found.
Kyushu University doesn't mention colophon or publisher.
Tenri University has a colophon in line with Waseda; they may also have another incomplete copy.
The title translates as firework secrets and, like many trades, the secrets were kept in the trade. Until this book and for at least another fifty years the secrets of fireworks were held in manuscripts. The attrition rate for a book like this with an audience of black-thumbed, fire-prone pyrotechnists must have guaranteed not too many secrets leaked out.
Ogata Korin & Nakamura Hochu. 光琳画譜 [Korin Gafu]. Toto (ie Edo ie Tokyo), Kinkado n.d.. Two volumes 26x19cm publisher's yellow wrapper with title labels, accordion folding; 25 double page color woodcut plates. Wrappers marked and dusty; rather good. Owner's seal at the beginning and end of Yoshizawa Juminato (? - not sure of the reading of this given name); a name that occurs in some good books. Au$4000
Hochu's re-invention of 17th century Ogata Korin is the beginning of a world invasion of form and style that is now familiar to all of us. It took most of the century to be re-invented again in Japan and reach the west but we are now well and truly conquered.
This beautiful book is not the 1802 printing, despite the evidence of Union Catalogue Database of Japanese Texts, confident assertions of many prestigious libraries and optimistic booksellers. Neither is it the 1826 second edition; it is better. When not dated 1802 this Kinkado edition is often referred to as 'after 1868'. Is this because Kinkado's colophon comes from Toto (eastern capital) rather than Edo, the old name before the name change from Edo to Tokyo in September 1868? If so then the cataoguers never saw the probable 1802 printing because the colophon of Omiya Yohei also comes from 東都 - Toto - Eastern Capital. Kinkado's name appears on prints and books from the late 18th right through the 19th centuries, so that's not much help.
Now, Kinkado and Omiya Yohei are the same company. Kinkado was founded by Omiya in the last decade of the 18th century. Suharaya Sasuke bought into Kinkado Omiya Yohei in 1806 and took over in 1823. He adopted the name Kinkado - I can't discover when - and passed it on to his heir.
I have only found three or four books with the Omiya colophon, none of them after 1804. Neither does Kinkado appear as prolific publishers. The main business was wholesale and paper.
Kinkado also published an edition of Oson Gafu (1817), a neo-Korin cousin to our book, apparently using the original blocks in maybe the 1840s. A later edition has Tokyo on the title page and the colours are brasher. Their colour grammar, Usuyo Irome (1826), comes with a Kinkado colophon or a Kinkado and Suharaya Sasuke colophon. Both place Kinkado at Nihonbashi, Edo where they had been since Omiya Yohei's time. The address was used or not used according to no discernible rule. What seems to be a printing of the Korin Gafu from these same blocks appeared with no colophon. And Suharaya Sasuke could be any one of at least three generations, no-one seems sure who was who. In short, it's a jungle. Kinkado's great bird books, the Taka Tagami and the Shucho Gafu, are Meiji productions and are identified as such.
When I say this is better than the 1826 edition it's an unreliable judgment. I've compared this copy with every image of every edition I can find online and all I've really learnt is that no two copies are the same. Not even of this edition. The 1826 printing uses recut blocks, as does this printing, so the original blocks vanished pretty fast. They should have passed from Omiya Yohei to Suharaya Sasuke if Omiya ever had them. Hillier confused me by talking of a second impression and a second edition without making it clear whether they are or aren't the same thing. Recut blocks can't, or shouldn't, be called another impression. Was that careless proof reading or is there another early printing without the hand colouring?
But it's clear that Kinkado used a copy of the 1802 original, ignoring the edition in between. Most of Hochu's techniques and tricks are here: bokashi, tarashikomi and karazuri. In order: colour graduation; applying ink to still wet ink; embossing. What's not here is the extra hand colouring Hochu added but it's often hard to tell.
I've never held a copy of the 1802 edition. Not being friends with many billionaires I'm not likely to. In the meantime, unless there is some other evidence kept secret by those cataloguers who designate it as Meiji there is no reason to accept that. It doesn't sit with other Kinkado books; it doesn't make sense.
Russian ship kawaraban. 亞魯西亞舩 [Aroshiafune]. n.p. earlyish 19th cntury. 33x44cm woodcut with hand colouring. A small hole up towards the top left corner; a nice copy. Au$800
I continue to be impressed by the ability of Japanese artists to deliver a true picture of something they've never seen, nor met anyone who has. But the captions puzzle me. Things like sea miles, directions, and so on are often provided on pictures of foreign ships but here not only have the details been left out but whatever ship was on the picture that provided the captions has obviously been ignored. When news broke of the sighting of an alien ship a canny printmaker often dug out an antiquated Dutch ship, changed the flags and added whatever gossip and rumours reported. Not so here. I do wonder what that fluffy pendant (fox tail?) is meant to be.
Fireworks 星山流相圖書夜之業 [Hoshiyama-ryu aizusho yanogo?]. n.p. 1837 (Tenpo 8) Manuscript 23x16cm plain wrapper, 12 double leaves (ie 24 pages) plus five unbound double leaves and a single sheet with a carefully measured diagram; illustrations through the rest. Dated Tenpo 8 on what must be the last loose leaf with a red seal that I can't decipher. Au$250
Rocketry as weapon rather than fun, though firing off a rocket always has some element of fun. The loose leaves are clearly a continuation of the bound work - the first leaf has a repeat of most the title and we finish with a kind of colophon - but despite a few red numbers I can't swear they are complete.
Kurofune Kawaraban. Perry and the Black Ships in Japan. 海陸御固泰平鑑 [Kairiku Okatame Taihei Kagami]. n.p. n.d. [1853?]. Woodcut 40x62cm on two joined sheets. A few small holes, rather good. Au$350
After Perry's MacArthur-Terminator like threat to return after his first visit in 1853 the defence of Japan became paramount and these defence or peace (taihei) prints blossomed. With the number of variations on a theme produced, the prints sellers must have been flat out keeping the populace up to date with the defences around what is now Tokyo Bay. This one is the most cluttered - which is a good thing - I've seen, with ships, bristling fortifications, and bits of landscape everywhere.
These illicit illustrated news sheets - kawaraban - for the streets were produced by the million for a couple of hundred years so of course few survive. They were produced for anything more interesting than the drop of a hat and the arrival of the Black Ships, the American ships commanded by Perry in 1853, and the return of the beefed up squadron in 1854 to close the deal, eclipsed any and all tiresome earthquakes, fires, plagues, famines, murders and scandals. For most Japanese this was the same as a squadron of alien space ships arriving on earth now. These prints are the kurofune (black ship) kawaraban.
Perry and the black ships 異国船帰帆之図 [Ikokusen Kihan no Zu]. n.p. n.d. [1853-54]. 24x34cm colour woodcut. Old folds and some rubbing round the edges; a couple of tiny pinholes; rather good with pleasing colour. Au$6000
Fabulous, in both senses of the word, rare, and satisfyingly baffling. Even with some help from the accompanying poetry this print defies comprehension. It can only be explained with surmises. Starting with the title which can translate as Foreign ship returning home, who can explain why the ship is sailing towards the astounding fish that is Japan and why the look out is pointing that way? A reasonable guess is that artist couldn't find a better old ship print to work from, the picture works better this way, and the rest is unimportant detail. Why the important men are vomiting over the side we will soon learn.
That fish - fugu - pufferfish - exists by itself in another print, Fugu no Zu, a surimono like print that is known by the copy in the Tokyo Metropolitan Library in one of the volumes compiled by Mokitsu Hachiya. Mokitsu was a Tayasu Tokugawa official and writer.
Some of the same text appears on both. Which print came first seems unknown. The fugu on its own seems likely but, while very similar, our fish is much more carefully detailed, usually a sign of the original. What is certain is that both prints appeared between Perry's first visit in July 1853 and his return in February 1854.
The first line of text on the fugu's back reads Hachiman Daibosatsu - Hachiman Great Bodhisattva. By this time Hachiman had evolved from being a god for farmers and fishers to being a god for samurai. That fugu is a floating armory: weapons, armour and regalia, including the crests of three clans defending japan on Odaiba, the artificial island near Shinagawa. Just the sight of that poisonous puffer has sickened the Americans and sent them rushing home, backwards, for a home cooked meal. I think that's what some of the text suggests.
As far as the text on both prints goes I would have a better chance of choreographing a dance from it than reading it. I suspect the modern Japanese reader is also stumped by the poetic allusions and puns: the few notes I have found either miss the point or don't attempt to explain it. It is satirical but is it satirising only the Americans fleeing Japan as all unwelcome foreigners before them? Is it also satirising Japan's defenders, the massed clans around Tokyo harbour? Would they be pleased to be a fugu? Is this why the print is so decidedly anonymous?
This has been called a kawaraban which I think breaches the spirit of what a kawaraban is: a cheap illicit news sheet for sale on the streets; but I won't make a fuss about it. I've traced three copies: Tokyo university in a collection of satirical prints before and after meiji - they date it to 1864 but that must be the date of the collection, not this print; Stanford copy in an album of drawings and prints relating to the black ships and foreigners; and a copy in the Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, Leiden.
Kawaraban. Perry and the black ships. 三都** : *乃色はなし [Santo** ; * no Iro wa Nashi]. np nd (mid 19th century). 18x24cm woodcut. A bit nibbled in the right margin, very good. Au$100
A mysterious little kawaraban that has so far defied interpretation thanks to that damn cursive script. It all seems to relate to one event and since there are cannons, clan banners, a steam ship, and a person very much like the usual portraits of American marines I claim it's Perry's visit. How that includes what look like chopsticks, a tatami and a bonsai ... ? I guess they make characteristic Japanese gifts but that doesn't explain some other things here.
Flags. 萬国旗鑑 [Bankokukikan] n.p. Shokokan 1853 (Kaei 6). 72x165mm publisher's wrapper (most of the title label gone); [2],44,[2] double leaves, 240 colour maps on 88pp, colour woodcut title, four pages of the text at the start and two at the end. An outstanding copy. Au$1250
A captivating and rare little encyclopedia of world flags. Essential at a time when it seemed that more of them were likely to be seen around Japan. But Japan had a long history of fascination with flags, banners and heraldry; there are no end of such books and manuscripts going back centuries which carry the history of the country, its rulers and wars. So curiosity about the heraldry of the outside world went in tandem with language, history, science ...
The colophon states this was first published in 1846 but I haven't found any actual copy, only this or the 1854 edition from a different publisher. I did find another book with the same title but it turned out to be an eight leaf manuscript. Cinii finds six entries, three each of the 1853 and 1854 editions and I think all those libraries illustrate their copies online. It's easy to see the book online but you won't see a copy like this.
Hashimoto Sadahide (aka Gountei Sadahide aka Utagawa Sadahide). 横濱土産 (often written as 横浜土産 these days) [Yokohama Miyage]. n.p. n.d. [186-?]. Two volumes 18x12cm, original decorated wrappers, (worn but solid) with original printed label on the first volume and an old manuscript replacement on the second; 50 folded leaves all with colour woodcuts. Stitching renewed not too long ago by the look of it; certainly thumbed but good luck finding a copy that hasn't been thumbed more than this. Au$2500
Yokohama Miyage (souvenir) - in the forefront of the rush to Yokohama after it was opened as a foreign port in 1859 - was published in five parts in 1860 and perhaps 61 by Gifuya Seishichi. What we have here is a compilation of the five parts without title pages and colophon. I can't find anyone who can explain all the ways the work was issued, in fact I can't anyone with a complete copy in any form.
With all that, this is absolutely as issued, divided exactly in half in the middle of part three. NIJL (National Institute of Japanese Literature) illustrates the Yokohama City Library copy of the first volume identical to ours. Waseda has a copy in the same wrappers with parts four and five together. They also have parts one to three in the original form.
Sadahide was undoubtedly the greatest portraitist of Yokohama. His landscapes interest me less than his people but they are scrupulous. Many of the double page views could be put together into long panoramas. Yokohama is at this time, as seen by a bird and Sadahide, a pretty grim looking huddle of barracks and sheds. Up close it gets a lot more lively.
Fireworks. 花火新伝事法 [Hanabi Shin Den Jiho]. n.p. [1865] (Keio 1). Manuscript in ink, 24x15cm cloth covered boards lettered by hand; 20 double page spreads 20x24cm mounted on card and framed with grey paper. Front margin wormed spreading into the top margin but barely into the framed sheets; last few leaves chomped in the gutter. None of this is as fatal as it sounds. On the back cover is another inscription dated 1886 (Meiji 19). Au$500
A very cool pyrotechnist's working book, even with the chewing, unlike anything else I've seen. Someone put in a fair bit of work to make a working book into an album. The title can be translated as New Methods of Fireworks. There are almost no published manuals of Japanese fireworks before the 20th century. Risho published a small book in 1817 and that is properly rare. Such information was occult knowledge, circulated in manuscript and passed from master to apprentice. I can't claim expertise but having seen a few 18th and 19th century fireworks manuscripts I am yet to see a second copy of any. It makes sense that every maker had their own method and styles and most every manuscript was peculiar to that.
CORNELL, Sara S. 地学初歩 Cornell's Primary Geography for the Use of Schools. First Edition. [Chigaku Shoho]. Yedo. [Edo (ie Tokyo), Watanabe [1866?]. 18x12cm publisher's wrapper with printed label; [72]pp on double folded leaves and seven folding colour maps, two colour maps and some illustrations in the text. Au$500
I wonder what, if anything, a Japanese student made of Miss Cornell. After her nonsense about Japan, how could anything else she said be taken seriously? Miss Cornell's Primary Geography - one of a string of geographies she prepared for all stages of schooling - first appeared in New York in 1855. Here we are introduced to the concept and working parts of a map, then run through a brief introduction to the regions of the world.
There seems to be two printings of this "First Edition"; one dated "the 2nd year of Kei-ou" (1866) on the title and apparently without a colophon; the other (our copy) not dated, with a colophon. In this undated copy the text is within borders, the other not. Waseda University also has a third, quite different printing but their copy is severely defective and has no title page or colophon. A Japanese translation was made in 1867. Worldcat finds only one copy of this outside Japan.
SWIFT, Mary A. 理学初歩 (cover title). First Lessons on Natural Philosophy, for children. [Rigaku Shoho]. Yedo (Tokyo) 1867. 16x11cm publisher's pattern wrapper with printed title label. Illustrations throughout, one with handcolouring. Stitching broken; a used but most acceptable copy. Ownership has been claimed in pencil in English at the back - which would be the front for a Japanese book. Au$165
This is part one of two and a new edition enlarged, but this is repeated from the title page of whichever edition was used as the copy book. The second part was published in two volumes, maybe a bit later. A quick look at Worldcat might convince us that the libraries of the world are swimming in copies of this but a run through the first dozen or so entries found one copy of part two of part two - in Japan. Several cited libraries deny that they have any copy, even an electronic copy.
Before we feel too sorry for Japanese children: from what I can gather this first generation of western primers produced in 1866 and 67 were for the bakumatsu schools which were to train officers and future diplomats. Which is not to say that children escaped unscarred as public education spread to the masses.
Airships. Four illustrations, three of airships and one of a balloon in a tree, on one sheet. n.p. n.d (187-?). Engraving 40x45cm, folded. Au$165
A mysterious print with no indication of who produced it. Each illustration is numbered and captioned in Japanese and three are dated to their original appearance: 1852, 1870 and 1872. They all seem to be from French originals. Number one has "Art de Tuer" in the caption and is supposed to be the wreck of the balloon with Leon Gambetta (escaping from the siege of Paris) on board in 1870; number two is Giffard's 1852 steam powered airship; number three is, I think, a Dupuy de Lome airship of 1870; number four is the Dupuy de Lome airship of 1872.
Was this a supplement to something? Such things are usually identified. Are they proofs? Until someone finds another copy it is all up in ... sorry.
Writing. 真字行書草書 : いろはにほへとちりぬる: 真行草之事 [Shin Gyosho Sosho : Irohanihoheto Chirinuru : Shingyoso no Koto]? n.p. [c1870?] 17.5x8cm publisher's wrapper (faint signs of a missing label); folding out to 143cm with lots of small colour illustrations on a yellow background. Some worming, nothing serious. Ink inscription on the back cover. Au$400
This most charming guide to hirigana, katakana and western letters and numbers is a mystery to me. I'm not even sure which small panel has the title and a fair bit of searching has got me nowhere.
Iroha can be translated as ABC - from the maybe C11th poem which is used to order kana.
Miki Kosai (and/or Utagawa Yoshimori?). Wayou 字混部類 (和洋字混部類 on cover label). [Wayo Jikon Birui]. Tokyo, Hozando and others 1872 (Meiji 5). 18x12cm publisher's wrapper with title label (marked and a bit used); 30 leaves (60 pages) with small illustrations throughout. Inscription on the back cover; a voracious but neat bug has chewed a hole through the top margin of the first nine leaves and stayed outside the page borders; the first few illustrations with some neatish colouring. In all pretty good. Au$500
An endearing and uncommon little guide to placing stuff in the modern world: lots of common enough items and some that would soon become common, like clocks, binoculars, uncomfortable chairs, and cameras. Each is illustrated, named and described in Japanese and named in western capitals. But in phonetic Japanese, not English or any other European language, what would become romaji.
Miki Kosai signed the preface but Waseda attribute the book to Utagawa Yoshimori who presumably did the pictures. I'm inclined to believe Waseda. This is called part one but it seems no part two has ever been seen. Worldcat finds the NDL entry and a copy at the Huntington.
