VERNE, Jules and Inoue Tsutomu. 学術妙用 : 造物者驚愕試験 [Gakujutsu myoyo : Zobutsusha kyogaku shiken]. Tokyo, Kochisha 1887 (Meiji 20). 18x12cm, publisher's cloth backed colour illustrated boards; [6],142pp, four litho plates. A touch of surface nibbling to the front edge of the front cover, some natural browning of the paper; an outstanding, obviously unread copy. Au$850

First edition. A translation from Dr. Ox's Experiment - the English version of Fantaisie du Docteur Ox. Inoue was a busy translator with a specialty in Jules Verne and I wonder how he handled Verne's extended mockery of the Flemish. Not that the Japanese haven't mastered regional insult, but how aware was he that this is pretty much the whole novel? Did he give his characters a Kansai accent?

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Yanagisawa Bunzo &c. 怪談累物語 [Kaidan Kasane Monogatari]. Osaka, Konomura Shosuke 1889 (Meiji 22). 18x13cm publisher's colour lithograph boards with cloth spine; [4],56,[2]pp on double folded leaves, one double page and four single page illustrations. Mild browning, a pleasing fresh copy. Au$500

First edition of this version of the Kasane ghost story, a story that bulges with murder, greed, curses, possession and guilt. Supposedly based on a true story the saintly monk Yuten stars as the exorcist, and was the inspiration for prints, books, rakugo, kabuki and film.
The double leaves seemed a bit extravagant for a book like this but all the paper is re-used from some other job with printing on the other side. This is a 'ball cover' (boru hyoshi, apparently a corruption of 'board') book - a signal of modernity and the Japanese equivalent of a yellowback: flimsy western style bindings with lithograph covers that rarely survive in such good shape. Worldcat finds only the NDL entry and a search of CiNii found no more.

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Chinese Immigration. Petition. Arrest of Chinese Immigration. Laid upon the council table by the Honorable W.H.F. Mitchell ... 15th July, 1857. [with] Influx of the Chinese. Petition ... 7th August 1857. [with] Influx of the Chinese. Petition ... 7th August 1857. [with] Petition. Influx of Chinese ... 12th August 1857. [with] Influx of the Chinese. Petition ... 2nd October 1857. [with] Report of the Select Committee ... on the subject of Chinese Immigration, together with proceedings of the committee and minutes of evidence. Melbourne, Govt Printer 1857. Six papers foolscap, disbound; the petitions one page each, the report viii,28pp. Au$750

The first petition, from the Local Court of Castlemaine, is the more verbose about the evils and dangers of the Chinese inundation but unspecific about remedies, calling only for more cogent legislation. The second, also from the Local Court of Castlemaine brings a memorial unanimously approved by "large and influential meetings". The third is from members of the Local Court of Fryer's Creek. The fourth, from the inhabitants of Geelong, is brief and firm, calling for a poll-tax and the outlawing, with severe penalties, of the Chinese passenger trade and the last is from some 1600 gold miners and residents of Campbell's Creek calling on the government to rid them of these Pagan idolaters.
The committee, chaired by Pascoe Fawkner, examined a proposed bill to regulate the Chinese population and a number of witnesses, including a couple of detectives, the Chinese Protector at Sandhurst who was either the most ignorant or most honest of the witnesses, William Young, the missionary who produced a report on the Chinese of Victoria a decade later, and local merchant Kong Meng who spoke of some atrocious behavior by Europeans on the goldfields. The act, printed at the end, is recommended with a couple of amendments and consists of a hefty poll tax and punitive licensing system.

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BRONSON, Clark H. Twice a Man. A psychological romance. Chicago, Bronson & Co. 1904. Octavo publisher's olive cloth decorated in green and gilt (spine a little dull and faded); frontispiece portrait, illustrations by French. Natural browning of the paper, a rather good copy. sold

Only edition of this rare oddity, a novel of "double memory" in which the hero has two lives thanks to a kind of amnesia. As the author says himself, "It contains humor and pathos, sentiment and philosophy" and in case this alarms the shy reader, it also "abounds in dialogue and dramatic situations". At the end is an appendix with two authentic cases and the author's theory followed by three closely packed pages of enticements for readers, booksellers and canvassers.
While priced at $1.50 a copy will be mailed to anywhere in the world, whether England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Australia, Van Dieman's Land, New Zealand, India ... for $1.40. Customers in all these places have closely held their copies: Worldcat finds only three copies, all in the US.
Bronson self published a book of verse in Iowa some years earlier and Bronson & Co apparently existed only for this novel.

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Imaginary Voyage. Voyage de Robertson, aux Terres Australes, traduit sur le manuscrit Anglois. Amsterdam 1766. Duodecimo contemporary calf (tips a little worn); with half title. Light browning, a rather good copy. sold

First edition of this French - and only French; it is yet to exist in English - imaginary voyage to Australia which apparently was very soon re-issued with signature G mostly removed and replaced - an attack on parliament replaced with an attack on the encyclopedistes - and a new title page dated 1767. This was worked out in the Davidson sale where both issues were offered and comment made on the "marked rarity of this 1766 first issue". It was reprinted in 1767 using the second text.
It is time for booksellers and academics to stop repeating that this is sometimes attributed to Louis-Sebastien Mercier, occasionally offering Barbier as their authority. Barbier is clear, quoting M..... , ex-royal censor, that Mercier was enlisted by Paris bookseller Herissant to hastily hastily write some acceptable filler so's the book could be sold in Paris. Thus replacing a very mediocre section with an even more mediocre section according to either M..... or Barbier, who adds that copies of both must be owned to have the complete text. There was no reason to hide Mercier's authorship of the whole book by then.
So, is this the first suppressed Australian book?

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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.

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Hashizume Kan'ichi. 英語字類 [Eigo Jirui]. Tokyo, Seishido 1871 (Meiji 4). 18x12cm publisher's wrapper (mottled, title label chipped); [4],56pp, a few small woodcuts. A bit of worming to a few leaves but nothing serious; a rather good copy. sold

A charming introduction to the English alphabet in its three forms: upper and lower case and longhand followed by a useful vocabulary which, leaving aside the iffy spelling, might reward study as an exercise in word association.
Hashizume, the translator, produced quantities of handy guides to English and useful translations, most of which are idiosyncratic in their choices of what is considered essential to any Japanese setting out to learn English. This might be my favourite.

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Film kawaraban. 紫頭巾 : 大強盗 : 殺人事件 [Murasaki Zukin : Dai Goto : Satsujin Jiken]. n.p. n.d. [c1923?]. Lithograph (?) broadside 33x66cm. Folded and somewhat rumpled, a stain over to the right and browning around the printed areas. sold

And I think this might be my favourite kawaraban. Kawaraban - illicit news sheets for the streets - were produced by the million for a couple of hundred years up to the later 19th century so of course few survive.
This exciting but typical example is news of the mysterious people's hero of late 18th century Tokyo, Purple Hood (Murasaki Zukin). But the first appearance of Purple Hood was, I believe, the 1923 movie 'Ukiyo-e Murasaki Zukin', the debut work of screen writer Susukita Rokuhei. There were several sequels and remakes over the next century.
I presume this at first glance convincing kawaraban was produced as publicity but I can't find a whisper of its existence anywhere. Then again, not much survives of the movie apart from a few names. One give-away is the brown around the printed parts - oil soaked in from using an oil based ink. Then it's easier to decide it is a lithograph and the paper is just not right for even a c19th woodcut, and a print this size would be on at least two sheets.
Still. it's a clever and sophisticated idea to come up with not just an approximation of a contemporary news sheet of the hero's time but to take the trouble to pretty much get it right.

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Kurofune Kawaraban. Perry and the Black Ships in Japan. 改正泰平鑑 [Kaisei Taiheikan]. n.p. [1854]. Woodcut 40x61cm on two joined sheets. sold

After Perry's MacArthur-Terminator like threat to return after his first visit in 1853 the defence of Japan became paramount and defence or peace (taihei) prints blossomed. Up to date news of the clans massed around Tokyo Bay must have been issued every morning and when Perry did indeed return his ships - in all sorts of imaginary forms - were added to the maps.
This is called a 'revised' map and my guess is that those amorphous boats parked where Perry anchored were a rushed block cutter's best effort to get the news out before anyone had time to dust off an old Dutch ship print and mount wheels and a funnel.

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Kurofune Kawaraban. Perry and the Black Ships in Japan. 泰平安民画図 [Taihei Anmin Gazu]. n.p. [1854]. Two joined woodcuts 56x39. Ragged and some small holes near the centre but not bad. sold

The top half is a detail of defences and the bottom half a pleasingly incongruous view of the ships: from the rear they are old Dutch ships and from the side they are rather good renderings (or rendering - it's one ship repeated) of the American paddle steamers.

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Catalogue - fashion. Cleghorn & Harris, Cape Town. A Journal of Fashions for the Summer Season 1902-3. The company 1902. Folio (37x25cm) publisher's printed wrapper with onlaid colour illustrations (a colour view of their building on the back); [2],142pp illustrated throughout in line and half-tone. Used with some minor flaws, a more than decent copy. Order form detached at the end but the gent's half still present. Au$350

An expansive and handsome catalogue of dress of all layers for all occasions for women, men, children and infants. As well: fancy work, drapery and haberdashery, household goods, stationery, clocks and watches, and a couple of pages of cricket equipment. How many catalogues like this Cleghorn and Harris issued remains a mystery to me; I can't find a record of any catalogue anywhere, including South Africa.

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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.

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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.

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KESTEL, R.W.O. Radiant Energy, a Working Power in the Mechanism of the Universe. Port Adelaide [printed by F. Cockington] 1898. Slender octavo, excellent in publisher's cloth, front lettered in gilt; iv,99pp & errata slip, six plates. Au$750

The frontispiece of experimental apparatus must be one of the best examples in the history of Australian scientific illustration: a new theory explaining the workings of the universe can be tested with a decapitated corrugated iron water tank, two rules and a ball on a string. It also, just in graphic terms, has a radiant energy of its own.
This is a stylish little book and has a stylish and reasoned generosity not always present in such works: "the difference in the two theories does not at all effect the accepted laws of the force of gravity, as given us by Newton". As to considerations of a Newtonian universe he points out that "of two theories, if one can be demonstrated by .. experiment and the other cannot, I prefer the former." An humane execution.
Kestel was an Adelaide builder, sometime mayor of Port Adelaide, and determined autodidact astrophysicist. I don't think he published any more but he did lecture, with demonstration, a belligerent South Australian Astronomical Society (apparently he had to elicit a promise that his audience would not interrupt again) in 1901. This book was belatedly reviewed in Nature, in 1903 where our condescending reviewer, after pulling the rug out from under Kestel's credentials -"none but a discerning reader will profit by its perusal" - allows that a couple of his intriguing notions that may be useful to real scientists. Kestel didn't live long enough to see the review. (Thanks to Pioneer Books for their diligent note on Kestel).

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Catalogue - optical and scientific instruments. Osumi Gensuke 大隈源助 - 御眼鏡類 ... 磁石時計類 ... 唐物類 ... [Osumi Gensuke - O megane-rui ... Jishaku tokei-rui ... Karamono-rui ...]. Tokyo, Osumi [c1870?]. 24x35cm woodcut broadside. Old folds, a nice copy. Au$450

Hikifuda - an advertising handbill or small poster - for the firm of Osumi Gensue who was a glass maker, inventor of an oil lamp, and a maker and importer of scientific, optical and surveying instruments in the late Edo early Meiji period. Osumi produced a number of these hikifuda from about 1850 to 1870 and, while some advanced merchants changed their address from Edo to Tokyo before the official move in 1868 I can't confidently claim that Osumi was one of them, so I'll date this to soon after.

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BRADLEY, F.H. Essays on Truth and Reality. Oxford Univ Press 1914. Octavo, very good in publisher's cloth (with just a bit of wear to the tips). Au$100

First edition. With the 1931 ownership inscription of Swedish philosopher Torgny T. Segerstedt whose doctoral thesis was 'Value and Reality in Bradley's Philosophy'.

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Communications - Japan. Post. A handmade (draft? mock up?) picture book or sketches for paintings on telecommunication and post in Meiji Japan; with "Post" scrolled across what passes for the title page. n.p. c1900 to 1906. 21x29cm patterned wrapper; 27 full page ink drawings (18 coloured) and three pages of text, mostly on translucent drawing paper, mounted on 15 double leaves. Album paper and some drawings spotted. The figure on the title was cut from a drawing of women operators near the end; a figure in another drawing has been redrawn and overlaid on the original; captions sometimes in ink, sometimes in pencil and sometimes not there; drawings of the telegram boys and the women operators exist as ink and as coloured drawings; all signs of work in progress Au$3000

Something of a marvel and mystery. Two of the drawings are signed Asahi but I find no other clue to who made this and why: was it a commission by the Ministry of Communications for a picture book? an exhibition? for a publisher? Our artist has been given access to the inner workings of the service so this is not the fancy of an idle amateur. Tejima Asahi (or Kyokko depending on the reading) has been suggested as the artist but since I can find nothing more than his date of birth it doesn't help me much. And I'm not sure it matters much.
Shibata Shinsai produced a similar series of paintings drawn from life showing the workings of the post office in 1884 that were exhibited at the New Orleans World Fair. Now, here, we have new uniforms, bicycles, telegrams and telephones to celebrate. Which makes the date more definite than the artist: bicycles for telegram boys were introduced in 1892 and in 1906 red was gazetted as their official colour; public telephone boxes appeared in 1900.
I don't believe a finished book or an exhibition of finished paintings from our album appeared. Shibata's paintings are a singular treasure of the Postal Museum, reproduced on the covers of their journal, where a lot of time and effort has gone into the study of their collection of paintings, prints and advertisements that show anything of the postal service. I was struck by just how ubiquitous telegram boys, postmen and parcel deliverers are in scenes of busy Meiji life and how many letter boxes and telegraph poles feature in the symbolic frames within frames of popular prints. It's unthinkable that anything like this album would be ignored and nothing else like this seem to exist.
The drawings are variable in finish and finesse - until we come to the young women telephone operators where the lines are fluid and confident. Was it because our artist had still models to capture? because he had more time? or because he enjoyed drawing women much more than men?
I read somewhere that women did not work nightshifts on the switchboards until complaints about the rudeness and unhelpfulness of male operators saw them banished altogether.

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Kyokutei Bakin. [sometimes called Takizawa Bakin]. Yoshitoshi. 夢想兵衛胡蝶物語 [Muso byoe kocho monogatari - A Dreamer's Butterfly Tale]. Tokyo, Haishi Shuppansha 1882 [Meiji 15]. Two volumes 225x155mm, publisher's embossed yellow wrappers; a half-page, ten double page and five full page woodcut illustrations by Yoshitoshi. A tiny bit of nibbling to a couple of page edges, a good fresh copy. Au$450

Bakin's imaginary voyage fantasia was first published in 1809-10 and this is, I deduce, the second edition, revised or corrected from Bakin's own copy of the first edition; the first with Yoshitoshi's illustrations. Further editions followed thick and fast but apart from a partial translation in The Chrysanthemum (Yokohama 1882) I can't find an English version exists - particularly frustrating as Yoshitoshi's illustrations are magnetic. The surreal and grotesque are always hard to resist - and Yoshitoshi was a master among masters. I don't think I've ever seen a better illustration, a better description, of the world of an opium smoker.
The best account of the book I've found is in a 1909 letter from Minakata Kumagusu to the publisher Gowans & Gray who had approached him for a translation of a Bakin work of his choice. He chose this, "the only book that ever took me out of bed 30 minutes sooner than I wished to get up", and described it as something like Gulliver's Travels in which a man, decided there is nothing more to learn in his own land, determines to travel the world. He is told the means - a kite - in a vision and sets off to explore the lands of Infancy, Lust (high, medium and low grades), Drunkenness, Greed, Trouble, Sorrows, Falsehood and Happiness. Unfortunately Gowan & Gray wouldn't spring for Kumagusu's fee and that was the end of that. At least we have Yoshitoshi.

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Japanese textiles. Sample book of woven ribbed silk and brocades for decoration and furnishing. n.p. late 19th, early 20th century. 35x48cm stitched with card wrapper on the back, front wrapper gone but contents complete; 113 samples on both sides of 33 leaves, several more blank leaves. Thoroughly used, staining of the paper but the textiles in good shape. On the back cover is the name Takahashi Masajiro or Seijiro. Au$1300

Size does matter. Small can be elegant and fetching but, with things like this, big is best. Several of the samples cover the full page and all the others are plenty big enough to get the full effect of colour and pattern. What doesn't come through in these pictures is the polish.
Very much a working haberdasherer's sample book, several still have attached paper tags with handwritten numbers and descriptions and a few have small pieces of contrasting or harmonising fabric pasted on for effect. I've seen heaps of Japanese sample books for dress fabrics of all kinds but I don't remember ever seeing an unequivocal furnishing fabric book anywhere near this date. I'm too ignorant to know how and where these fabrics were used; to me they they seem too bold for scrolls and screens and I wonder whether heri - the binding of tatami - is one use. Heri was, I'm told, a significant indication of wealth and class. Still, these are modern fabrics - they are jacquard woven - at a time when western and traditional rooms could sit side by side in one house.

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YOUNG, Thomas. An Account of Some Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphical Literature, and Egyptian Antiquities. Including the author's original alphabet, as extended by Mr. Champollion ... London, Murray 1823. Octavo uncut in modern quarter cloth & boards; xvi,160,[2,4 adverts]pp, illustrations of hieroglyphs through the text. Some light spotting or browning. sold

First edition. Tart and a little peevish, not without cause, but not an ungenerous book. This is an I-told-you-so book, and we should be thankful for Champollion's reticence about credit due to Young for his translation of the 'demotic' text of the Rosetta stone and his deduction that hieroglyphs were a phonetic alphabet. That ostensibly forced from Young this full account of his researches, discoveries and their consequent acceptance and use by Champollion.
Young is peevish in his determination to retain the term 'enchorial' rather than Champollion's 'demotic' on the grounds of precedence; he is not gentle when describing the errors of his predecessors and contemporaries; and he relishes the over-reaching cupidity of Drovetti, the French Consul at Alexandria who, realizing that he owns an inscription greatly desired by Young, holds out for too much for too long, by which time new discoveries make his treasure obsolete. But Young is equally generous in his praise of many of his fellow scholars and, however much it seems to grate at times, gives full recognition to Champollion - given that we understand how much Champollion's successes rest upon Young's original ingenuity.
He excuses his foray into the hieroglyphic world as his "Jubilee Year" - time and effort honorably earned from his scientific and medical work - and reminds us that his remarkable work in one field should not dim the brilliance of his efforts in the other. Not all of this book is dredging up old news. He descibes and translates some texts lent to him by George Grey which provided some remarkable discoveries, making this book "the last milestone in Young's distinguished Egyptological career" (Iversen).

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Hikifuda. 山石原 ... [Yamaishihara ...] Osaka 1891 (Meiji 24). Colour woodcut 38x26cm. Two horizontal folds, a nice copy. Au$100

An example of a somewhat western aesthetic style (ie inspired by Japan) applied to the authoritive detail of a currency note or share certificate. In other words, here is a company or product to be trusted. Absolutely.
Hikifuda - small posters or handbills - were usually produced with the text panel blank. The customer, usually a retailer, had their own details over printed, so the same image might sell fine silk or soy sauce.
Yamaishihara is an area south west of Osaka and the timetable is for 1892. The rest is up to you.

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Hikifuda. Hikifuda with lucky gods Ebisu and Daikokuten on the telephone. n.p. [Osaka? 189-?] Colour woodcut 26x38cm. A crooked fold and a few small marks; quite good and bright. Au$300

Ebisu and Daikokuten did embrace modernity - or rather, wanted to play with every new gadget and fashion - so naturally they would want to play on the telephone. Surely they had plenty of spirit messengers among their retinues. Apparently public telephones only became available in 1890, until then they were reserved for the government, police and select companies.
I can't read the centre panel which tells us who was selling what and I don't understand the signifance of 753 which is the number in both telephone booths and the banner on the right. Something to do with Shichi-Go-San? November 15? Sorry.
But there would be no point to this hikifuda unless it was timely, that telephones were brand new, in the same way that this pair were pioneer joyriders in a motor car and donned military uniforms during the Russo-Japanese war.
Hikifuda - small posters or handbills - were usually produced with the text panel blank. The customer, usually a retailer, had their own details over printed, so the same image might sell fine silk or soy sauce.

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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. Au$300

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.

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WYLIE, I.A.R. [Ida Alexa Ross]. The Paupers of Portman Square. London, Cassell [1913]. Octavo publisher's cloth blocked in black. A bit of browning, a rather good copy. Au$165

First edition? Published in London and New York in 1913. So how much did Wylie draw on her own childhood for this novel of feckless parenthood? The ever reliable Spectator dismissed it with customary contempt: "Seldom have we met people so amazingly unlike real men and women," but I suspect they would have regarded a biography of Wylie's father equally unlikely. She wrote this of her father: "From the day of his birth to the hour of his death he never had a penny that he could legitimately call his own. If by some strange chance he had earned it, he already owed it several times over, and it was only an additional reason for borrowing more. Quite often he didn’t have a penny of any sort, and there were days in our large absurd house in London when there was no food for anyone except the bailiff occupying our one completely furnished room." (My Life With George).
For those who care, I find only one copy of this Melbourne born author's book in any Australian library: Adelaide University.

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Catalogue - safes. Nagayama Safe Co. 長山式金庫目録 [Nagayama Shiki Kinko Mokuroku]. Tokyo, Nagayama 1911 (Meiji 44). 18x13 publisher's printed wrapper; [34]pp interspersed with a scattering of varied decorative tissue leaves, halftone illustrations. Au$300

Safe catalogues are hard to find. The first few photos illustrate the burning of a small structure with one of their safes inside and the open safe safe and sound, so to speak. But I find it hard to believe that a company that would go the trouble of mounting a small protective tissue over the illustration of the portraits of the emperor and empress inside the safe would deliberately put their portraits anywhere near a fire.

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Mill, John Stuart and Nakamura Masanao. 自由之理 [Jiyu no Ri or Jiyuno Kotowari depending on the transcriber]. On Liberty. Shizuoka, Kihira Ken'ichiro [1872]. Five volumes in six books 23x16cm, publisher's yellow wrappers with title labels. Preface in English signed EWC, this was Edward Warren Clark who taught science in Shizuoka and, later, Tokyo. Covers a bit marked, an excellent set with the original printed outer wrapper (fukuro). Au$2750

The first Japanese edition of Mill's On Liberty - a book that Douglas Howland (in Personal Liberty and Public Good) tells us was "reportedly read by the entire generation of educated Japanese who came of age during the restoration".
I hoped to be able to nail down any issue points and clear up any confusion between the two forms this book takes: the five volumes bound as six books, as here, with volume two divided into two; or bound as five books. The confusion is heightened because many libraries and cataloguers use the 1871 date on the title, ignoring the preface dated January 1872.
I thought that a sort of colophon for Dojinsha - Nakamura's school - pasted inside the last back cover might help, but that leaf appears in both versions. Only the cover labels seem to be different. I've found nothing in any language that examines the printing history and while the rule of thumb - everywhere in the world - is that the more costly version - in materials and time - usually came first, I've had to conclude that there isn't any discernible priority and the difference may well be where, rather than when, the books were bound.
Nakamura's translation of Smile's 'Self Help' was also published by Kihira in Shizuoka and it seems that Kihira Ken'ichiro existed as a publisher only for Nakamura's translations of these two books which he made in Shizuoka - home of the deposed Tokugawa shogun - where he taught after his return from England in 1868 until 1872. In other words, Nakamura was really the publisher of both books.
Worldcat finds five, maybe six, locations outside of Japan - one in Britain, the rest in the US - all but one are catalogued as 1871.

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Matoba Seinosuke. 旅のしるべ [Tabi no Shirube] Osaka, Shobundo 1900 (Meiji 33). 22x15cm publisher's colour woodblock creped wrapper (chirimen) with thread ties; folding colour woodcut frontispiece and ten photo plates. Some browning and minor signs of use; a very good copy. sold

First edition of this appealing but impractical railway travel guide. After the preliminaries it does get practical and pretty dull but that cover and the kuchi-e (the frontispiece) are in remarkably good shape for a fairly substantial travel guide that has seen any use.
That train does look more 1870s than 1900 but I'm sure the rest is up-to-date; the dapper travellers inside are. And you can be sure there is a copy of this guide in that elegant bag.

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Fukuzawa Yukichi [as by Katayama Junnosuke]. 西洋衣食住 [Seiyo Ishokuju]. n.p. 1867 (Keio 3). 15x11cm publisher's wrapper with title label; 40pp, woodcut illustrations throughout. A pleasingly used copy with carefully penned English alphabets on the front and inside both covers; the second annotated and the third quite elaborate capitals. Au$450

A winsome little educative work that could be a guide book, social anthropology, a study in material culture or a shopping list. Published on the eve of the Meiji and reform, this describes the appearance, purpose and use of western clothing - top to toe, utensils, furnishings and accessories like hairbrushes, umbrellas and watches.
This came after Fukazawa's near monumental 'Seiyo Jijo' and 'Seiyo Tabi Annai' - descriptions of the west from the missions to America and Europe - but wasn't published under his own name until the 1891 collected works. So we now have historians speaking of Fukazawa's 1867 book while librarians and sometimes booksellers catalogued it under Katayama - who seems to have been something of a literary hack who wrote the preface and apparently prepared the book for Fukuzawa. I read somewhere and can't find it again that the editor of the recent collected works found a difference between this original and the 1891 text and restored this.
There is a lot of useful information for Japanese travellers here: don't slurp the soup, and remember the chamber pot (helpfully illustrated in place under a bed) has only one purpose.

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Manga for school

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.

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PATON, G.P. Letters and Sketches from the New Hebrides. London, Hodder 1894. Octavo publisher's cloth; 382pp, illustrations. A nice, bright copy. Au$50

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Kimoto Motoo. 新案 明治婦人双六 [Shin'an Meiji Fujin Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Fujin Sekai 1910 (Meiji 43). Colour lithograph 51x79cm. A couple of pinholes in folds, rather good. Au$300

An aspirational record of the life of the modern Meiji woman. Women do work, as telephonists, as teachers, typesetters, maybe even as a doctor. All can be balanced with a satisfying family life. This was the new year gift from the magazine, Fujin Sekai: Woman's World.

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Chung Teong Toy. Ah Toy v. Musgrove. A copy of the report of the arguments and judgment in the case of Ah Toy v. Musgrove - Supreme Court of Victoria. Melbourne, Government Printer 1888. Foolscap, excellent in a modern plain wrapper; 164pp. Au$750

A quick dash through Quick and Garran's Annotated Constitution reinforces the sense of the momentous that surrounds this case. Toy v. Musgrove appears again and again cited as a "great" and "celebrated" case. Chung Teong Toy, a thwarted Chinese immigrant who arrived in Melbourne on the Afghan in April 1888, brought his case - backed by the Chinese Residents Association - against Musgrove, the Collector of Customs, for refusing to accept payment of the poll-tax of ten pounds demanded from Chinese immigrants.
Without getting too bogged down in details Musgrove's defence was that he had been ordered to refuse entry to all the Chinese on the Afghan. The Supreme Court found - four judgments to two - in favour of the plaintiff and ruled that the Colony did not have the right to exclude aliens. One of the Justices - Justice Williams - was reluctant to concur; it left the colony "in this most unpleasant and invidious position", unable to prevent "the scum or desperadoes of alien nations from landing ... whenever it may suit them." This of course was unacceptable and an appeal was made to the Privy Council.
In the meantime the colonies used quarantine regulations to exclude Chinese immigrants where they could and quietly let in some handfuls where they couldn't do otherwise. Amongst the outrage and furor the suggestion was made that the authorities knew they were acting illegally; a sardonic Melbourne journalist wrote, "But isn't it a curious thing that our authorities should have been induced to go to illegal lengths under the spur of excitement and public clamour. I am told privately that at the time they were warned by council that they were exceeding the limits of their constitutional prerogative, but they felt so sure of having the public at their back that they took the risk. And now an opium-smoking, yellow-skinned Mongolian has given them a lesson they (or rather the country) will have to pay for to a pretty tune." (from the Traralgon Record, 14 Sept 1888).
The appeal to the Privy Council not only succeeded in 1891 but, as I understand it, fortified the bastion of government immunity by refusing to accept that an alien "can, in an action in a British court, compel the decision of such matters as these, involving delicate and difficult constitutional questions affecting the respective rights of the Crown and Parliament, and the relations of this country to her self-governing colonies." It should be noted here that I came across this quote not by reading the Privy Council decision but reading the summary of 'Fong Yue Ting v. United States' in the US Supreme Court in 1893. Saddest from this distance is that, reading of the activities of the Chinese Residents Assocation, it appeared to many that progress was made: the short-lived victories of this case and the grudging admission of those handfuls of Chinese immigrants seemed a great step forward.
Of course all colonial governments doubled their efforts and collectively triumphed with the White Australia Policy come federation. What I can't find among the thousands of words written about this case is what happened to Chung Teong Toy.

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MANSON, Marsden. The Yellow Peril in Action. A possible chapter in history. Privately published, San Francisco, January 1907. Octavo publisher's printed wrapper; 32pp (including two blank leaves at the end), folding map. Au$125

A salutary piece of yellow peril literature, this is the history of the war between the USA and China - with help from Japan - in 1910. I can tell you now it didn't end well for America. Manson was the San Francisco City Engineer during the immediate post earthquake years and some of his predilection for technical detail has crept in here. This understandable desire to reinforce polemic with fact is the mark of the amateur and usually the reason why such tales are forgotten but Manson hasn't tried to disguise his aim with fiction: a fair bit is straightforward xenophobic agitprop.
I wonder how much the cataclysm of the San Francisco earthquake and fire had to do with this but I find no direct mention. Is it odd that it went to press so soon after the quake - Manson's preface is dated December 1906 - without a word? Did Manson think the shock of the quake was a good prompt for a battered public to take notice of an even greater threat? Certainly there was a movement to push the Chinese out of central San Francisco as rebuilding began. Was this a misguided bit of timing that guaranteed his book would be ignored?

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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.

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Asian labour in Queensland. Eleven parliamentary papers relating to the introduction of Chinese or 'Coolie' labourers from India: Asiatic Labour ... 1861; [with] Asiatic Labour (Despatches relative to.) ... 1861; [with] Coolie Immigration (petition in favor of.) ... 1861; [with] Chinese and Coolie Immigration ... Petition ... 1862; [with] Coolie Immigration. (Petition.) ... 1874 [with] Immigration of Chinese and Indian Coolies ... 1875; [with] Coolie Immigration. (Petition.) ... 1882. [with] Labourers From British India. (Further Correspondence ...) 1883; [with] Correspondence respecting Proposed Introduction of Labourers from British India ... 1884; [with] Labourers from British India (Further correspondence ...) ... 1884; [with] Labourers From British India. (Further Correspondence ...) 1884. [with] Labourers From British India. (Further Correspondence ...) 1885. Brisbane, Govt printers 1861 - 85. Foolscap, stitched, stapled or loose as issued; 4pp on three leaves; 15pp; 1pp; 1pp; 1pp; 17pp; 1pp; 13pp; 16pp; 4pp; 1pp; 4pp. One of the single leaf petitions a bit ragged round the edges. Au$650

More than 70 foolscap pages of depressing reading as the landowners of Queensland seek to introduce the cheapest possible labour while the rest of white Queensland seeks to keep them out. Just by the way, was it cheaper to buy and keep a slave or import indentured labour? A good field hand in antebellum America was a serious investment. By the 1880s it becomes apparent that Queensland governments seek not to offend powerful landowners nor risk the outrage of an electorate confronted with unwhite immigrants; they are busy sidestepping.
The early petitions make the point that it would be "unjust, even if it were practicable" for any Anglo-Saxon to "perform field labour under a tropical sun" while a thriving Queensland cotton industry stocked with Coolies would go a long way toward the abolition of slavery elsewhere.

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MACKAY, Kenneth. The Yellow Wave. A romance of the Asiatic invasion of Australia. London, Bentley 1895. Octavo publisher's cloth; folding map and six plates by Frank P. Mahony (two form a double page spread in two panels). Edges rubbed but a rather good copy. Au$1250

First edition, the same sheets were re-issued a couple of years later as an 'Australian Edition', either form is hard to find. This is by no means the first invasion of Australia novel - an earlier generation's fear of the Russians had produced at least two, and Robert Potter had, in The Germ Growers (1892), written what was possibly the first ever alien invasion novel - but it is early for the Yellow Peril.
The Japanese defeat of Russia a decade later sparked a number of invasion novels but the rabidity of the White Australia movement had produced little more than inflamatory articles and cartoons until this. The Russians are not forgotten - they figure at the centre - but it is the Mongol horde that will (the book is set sixty years into the future) sweep down through Queensland using the land grant railways. This is a long and complicated novel, as much a romance as political hobbyhorse.
Mackay was a politician who had published some outback fiction and horsey verse to a good reception - when was the last time you saw verse reviewed in newspapers' sporting pages as quoted at the end of the book? Here he happily mixes in society life, horse racing and a tragic love affair.

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SAMUELS, Lieut. Edmond. An Illustrated Diary of Australian Internment Camps. By an Australian officer of the guard. Sydney, Tyrrells [1919]. Small quarto publisher's illustrated wrapper; 52pp, numerous photo illustrations. A rather good copy. Au$300

The Michelin guide to Australia's concentration camps. For the privileged internee the Belle Epoque did not end with the outbreak of war and their imprisonment. Samuels reviews Holdsworthy: "dozens of small cafes ... several theatres ... picture shows ... gymnastic halls, massage chambers, hot baths ... "; Trial Bay: "the finest tennis courts I have ever seen ... surfing, fishing, boating ... a concentration camp that undoubtedly must be one of the most comfortable in the world"; and Berrima: "a charming site for a concentration camp ... the best concentration camp to be found anywhere," where the internees built "rest houses" along the river bank and marvellous boats: hydroplanes, seaplanes, gondolas, submarines, steam tugs and a zeppelin. At the end of a parade of these boats a submarine attacked a boat which was "set alight and sunk, and the occupants swam to shore." The delights and privileges of being a prisoner of Australia, or more correctly a privileged prisoner of Australia. One captain drew £300 a month and even the drag for the carnival was unstinted: "Many were dressed in female clothes, carefully decked out ... even to wigs and expensive underwear". This may be unrelated to the "keen friendliness shown by many Australian girls who were visitors".
I'm not sure whether Samuels was the scribbling pharmacist or the pharmaceuting scribbler. Following this debut book he penned some hit pop songs of the twenties, apparently had his musical produced in London by the distasteful Lord Sempill in 1935, knocked out a novel or two, some verse, and mopped it all up with his autobiography in 1972. His Sydney pharmacy, in Castlereagh Street, was touted as the haunt of visiting stars.

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CAPES, B.E.J. [Bernard]. The Mill of Silence. Chicago, Rand McNally 1897. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in gilt and green. A bit used, a few spots, a large owner's name on the front fly; still a most acceptable copy. Au$500

First edition of this long neglected thriller, a murder mystery soaked in horror and the uncanny, missed by bibliographers for a century. Doubtless the innocuous title and sylvan binding is partly to blame. An American book but an English story by an English writer, it was well enough described by the Star reviewer in Christchurch, New Zealand: "The author ... dearly loves the handling of the grim, the uncanny, and the morbid; he is a master in the painting of suffering humanity, suffering as a shuttle tossed by the hand of Fate." (Star, 1903, review of the later London edition). Not just humanity, our narrator can't even walk home through the woods without stumbling over a bunny "with glazing eyes and the stab of the ferret tooth behind her ear."
Secret after secret is unveiled in paroxysms of terror and hatred but babbling madness usually raises more questions than it answers. Does anyone survive the book? I'm still wondering.

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PEARSON, W.W. For India. Tokyo, Asiatic Association of Japan 1917. Octavo printed wrapper (marked); x,59pp. A bit used but a good enough copy. Au$60

Home rule for India propounded to the Japanese by Tagore's sometime secretary and a principal in the movement for the abolition of indentured Indian labour throughout the empire. Here he takes particular issue with the proposition that Japan would be asked to assist England in the event of a revolution in India, arguing that Japan's natural sympathies should lie with India.

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THOMSON, J.J. The Electron in Chemistry. Philadelphia, Franklin Institute 1923. Octavo publisher's cloth; 144pp, figures through the text. Au$50

Five lectures delivered at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. "In these lectures he proposes a model of the atom in which the stability of the electrons is obtained by a different method from that ... which he had employed earlier. He had probably never been very well satisfied with this hypothesis." (Rayleigh; J.J. Thomson, 1942).

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