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The power of power
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 bashing.
Taigakubo was, with Rakuten and Ippei, a founding member of the Tokyo Manga Association.
OLIPHANT, Mrs. [Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant]. A Beleaguered City being a narrative of certain recent events in the city of Semur, in the Department of the Haute Bourgogne. A story of the seen and the unseen. London, Macmillan 1880. Octavo contemporary gilt vellum with a stiff yapp front edge, all edges gilded (spine slightly darkened). Endpapers spotted, a handsome copy inscribed on the title: "For Harriet Kingscote with love and good wishes. M.O.W.O." Au$1500
First edition of this occult fantasy - in which the dead of Semur teach the living a lesson - that is better than modern critics might have you believe. Even the tackiest passages of wish fullfilment are balanced by the clean edge of ... hardly realism, but certainly a quiet sardonic humour.
Harriet Kingscote was probably family - a Louisa Oliphant married a Kingscote in the 1840s - but then, every family that had a whiff of the peerage was family. It was hard not to marry your cousin. Mrs Oliphant did. The inscription is dated four years after publication and in the meantime she had published another hundred or so books probably, but A Beleaguered City was one of the very few of her novels that she liked.
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 competition between two girls, one in red stripes and one in blue. Along the way, with first and second medals, they shake hands.
Tanaka was a specialist in moga - modern girls - through the twenties.
Chiarini's Circus. Chiarini's Circus and Menagerie. Complete Congress of Wonders and Marvels. n.p. 1887 (Meiji 20). Lithograph(?) kawaraban style poster or handbill 27x35cm. A blotch or two, crumpled along the top edge, pretty good. I find it hard to tell the difference between a woodcut and lithograph when they are unevenly inked and printed. Au$550
Chiarini's circus spent months in Japan in 1886 and 1887 and the Emperor saw his first circus. And being true royalty he was generous in his appreciation, not like a certain modern bunch who will reward with a handshake and have their accountant bill the nation for new gloves. Chiarini's was the circus for much of India, south east and east Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Latin and South America. They were indefatigable travellers.
I gather it was the scale of the spectacle, the horse riders and the animals that enraptured the Japanese; they already had plenty of great acrobats. I read somewhere that the first Japanese given official permission to leave the country were acrobats snapped up by the canny Richard Risley whose circus had been allowed into Japan in 1864 but no further than Yokohama. In this poster the stars are hard at work and are identified.
Kawaraban. 亜墨利加婦人 : 唐大清南京人 [Amerika Fujin : To-Dai Nankinjin]. n.p. [185-?]. Woodcut 31x24cm. Rather good. sold
This friendly, if tangled, double portrait tells us that this is an American woman and a Chinese man and includes some phonetic translations from English words. But that is no American woman and the alphabet is Russian. There were a number of these sort of guides to the pesky foreigners who were beginning to swarm around Japan like jackals around a small but plump antelope. How useful they were as spotter's guides ...
Kawarabans were illicit illustrated news sheets for the streets and 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.
Kawaraban. 欧羅巴人図 [Yoroppa Jin Zu]. n.p. [mid 19th century?]. Woodcut 31x24cm. Rather good. Au$600
Europeans - this is a handy guide to the pesky foreigners who were beginning to swarm around Japan.
Kawaraban. 北亜墨利加内合衆國 [Kita Amerika-nai Gasshu Kuni?]. n.p. [mid 19th century?]. woodcut 31x24cm. Rather good. sold
An American and a Russian, I believe.
Shimizuya Tsunejiro (publisher). 和洋四體以呂波 [Wayo Shitai Iroha]. Tokyo? Shimizuya Tsunejiro mid 19th century. Woodcut in three colours 37x25cm. An excellent copy. Au$500
This elegant table teaches how to write hiragana phonetically with the English or romanised alphabet - what was to become romaji. The Portugese missionaries had formulated a romanised system so that missionaries could instruct their Japanese victims without having to learn how to read Japanese but once they were tossed out of Japan such a system was quickly forgotten. It was only with the opening of Japan followed by the Meiji restoration and orders from the top that modernisation must follow that making Japanese intelligible to westerners became a desirable skill.
In the bottom left corner are numbers.
FYNE, Neal. The Land of the Living Dead : A narration of the perilous sojourn therein of George Cowper, mariner, in the year 1835. London, Drane [1897]. Octavo publisher's illustrated pale green cloth blocked in black (spine a bit browned); eight plates by E.A. Holloway. A rather good copy of a book that resents handling and aging; inscribed and signed by Fyne. Au$1250
First edition; a South Seas lost race thriller and hardly utopian. A ruthless godlike figure holds the power of life and death over his subjects, exploiting a decent bit of scientific investigation by someone at sometime in a sinister and lethal Wizard of Oz (or perhaps certain churches?) bit of imposture.
A couple of experts have conjectured that Neal Fyne is a pseudonym since no other books appear under that name. But a pamphlet, I suspect poem, 'In the Middle Watch' by Neal Fyne appeared in 1891 and Drane advertised, in 1897, that The Fulfilment of the Prophecy and Other Stories by Neal Fyne, Author of "The Coffin Shop," "Land of the Living Dead," etc. etc. was in the press. This is not necessarily a lie; the press could well be the cupboard in the corner where dubious manuscripts were kept. Neither does it prove the pseudonym notion either way. The inscription here doesn't help: it shows only that Fyne was not giving anything away if that wasn't his name.
By the way, if you type the phrase "land of the living dead" into Trove's newspaper search you will find a 1945 letter describing Sydney suburb Artarmon as the land of the living dead. I've driven through or by Artarmon countless times on my way to or from somewhere else but I couldn't tell you where it begins and where it ends, whether it has a main street or any sort of shopping centre. Nor whether it has any living inhabitants.
Japanese textile samples. A sample book of bright patterned silk, much of it creped. n.p. [1920s or 30s]. 30x21cm flexible boards; about 800 or more swatches on both sides of 50 double folded leaves. Well used with pieces clipped from many swatches and the occasional missing piece. Au$600
This is probably the most vivid and cheerful sample book I've had. I would have guessed these are artificial silks but random picks discovered only silk. Cheap and cheerful has been a marketing ploy for centuries but every now again there is reversal; these were not so cheap.
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.
Iehara Masanori & Shiozu Kanichiro. 学校必用 - 色図問答 [Gakko Hitsuyo - Irozu Mondo]. Kyoto, Shiga Shinbun 1876 (Meiji 9). 21x15cm publisher's wrapper with title label; [2],40,[2]pp on 22 double folded leaves, two colour charts and small colour squares through the text, hand coloured. Owner's inscription on the back wrapper; used but pretty good for an old school book. Au$500
Western colour theory introduced to Japanese students. This was, according to one historian and repeated by others, first published in 1873 but I can't find any copy earlier than 1876. I have read that it is a copy of an American book by Marcius Willson but I think there is some confusion. Willson produced wall charts for American schools that were used in Japan and I suspect that in 1873 wall chart no. XIV was introduced. His accompanying writings on color in his 'Manual of Information and Suggestions for Object Lessons' - the work cited - are nothing like this. In any case he seems to have borrowed Field's chromatics. So it was English colour theory that made its way into Japan first.
HOLDEN, Robert. Photography in Colonial Australia. The Mechanical Eye and the Illustrated Book. Sydney, Hordern 1998. Quarto publisher's cloth and card slipcase; photo illustrations. Unused. Au$35
Essential within the world of early photographically illustrated books but I find I have three copies more than I need.
FLETCHER, Henry. The North Shore Mystery. Melbourne, George Robertson 1899. Octavo publisher's colour illustrated boards. Binding rubbed and scraped with some paper gone from the spine; paper browned. Not a bad copy. Au$750
First edition of this rare Sydney thriller, a locked room mystery for anyone who believes in the innocence of the victim's wife supposedly sleeping next to him when he was stabbed.
Despite damning it for modern readers as "almost as fascinating as Mystery of a Hansom Cab", the Adelaide Advertiser does "strongly recommend" it. The Melbourne Herald is more enthusiastic than the Sydney Morning Herald which stops just short of sneering. In Launceston (The Federalist) it is thought that those who like sensational tales of the seamy side of life will be fascinated while back in Adelaide (The Register), most worthy of remark is that the constable/detective of the novel who has a London University BA misquotes Shakespeare and has poor grammar. Returning to Sydney, the Sydney Mail first teases us with, "a strong flavouring of barmaids, bookmakers and murder" before dismissing it as "on the ordinary level of the sensational yellow-back."
The end of the world
世界不転覆諭 [Sekai fu Tenpuku Satoshi]. Tokyo Hasegawa Tokusaburo, October 1881 (Meiji 14). Colour woodcut 50x36cm. Old folds and signs of use; pretty good. Au$1250
Mother Shipton in Japan and the end of world over 15 days. Word somehow spread, at the time of a series of natural disasters, that some 15th century westerner had prophesised the end of the world in 1881 and it looked very much like it was happening. I can't find any indication that Mother Shipton has been identified in Japan but she must be our culprit. Or rather, since Mother Shipton's prophecies only began appearing a century or so after her death, supposing that she did exist, in this case the blame lies with Charles Hindley, hack antiquarian and bibliographer, who published an authentic version of her prophecies in 1862 which included the 1881 prophecy and, in 1873, confessed that he made it up.
A chilling sort of butterfly effect, in that an amusing jape in Brighton, England ends up apparently causing despair and suicides in Japan twenty years later. What is curious is that these prints and pamphlets are labelled a 'delusion' of the end of the world but this did not stop despair and it certainly didn't affect the sales of all these prints. Fujimoto* quotes from a 1925 interview with someone who remembered the fuss and spoke of crowds in the print shops every day and the rising number of suicides. I gather the authorities lost patience and cracked down pretty quick. Naturally all those books and prints have pretty much vanished.
*This intriguing, to me puzzling, large print is no.19 in a deduced list of 19 items put together by Naoki Fujimoto for an article on the delusion in a 2010 NDL newsletter. Quite a few of those were listed as unseen. This is one of them.
GASPAR, Camille. The Breviary of the Mayer van den Bergh Museum at Antwerp. Brussels, Weckesser; NY, Stechert 1932. Quarto, loose as issued in publishers' printed card portfolio; 82pp and 73 colour plates. Au$100
Edition of 300 copies in English.
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. A square red stamp in the top corner of the first page of each volume with faint signs of characters, no other signs of ownership. A rather good set. Au$1500
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.
Hikifuda. 醤油塩炭 ... [Shoyu Shio Sumi ...] np [190-?]. Colour lithograph 25x37cm. Pretty good. Au$150
An almost average street scene in late Meiji Japan but: without the telegraph poles and power lines, bowler hats and cyclist it could be a street scene generations earlier.
Hikifuda - small posters or handbills often handed out as seasonal gifts - 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. This one, from a Nishinomiya (between Osaka and Kobe) dealer, indeed sells soy sauce, salt, sake and charcoal - tradition kept alive in the modern world.
Catalogue - hats. Watanabe, Tokyo. The Watanabe's Catalogue : Full fashioned and hand finished. Y. Watanabe & Co., .. Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo, [1924]. 23x15cm colour illustrated publisher's wrapper; 6pp, profusely illustrated with photo illustrations. An old fold, small stains. Au$150
72 models of hats for men and women; not just women, mogas - modern girls - jazz age women. So, flappers and cool, sinister men; the stuff of dreams. Mention is made of the first anniversary of the 1923 earthquake but the "New Fashion 1924" on the front cover is an even better guide to its date.
Catalogue - cars. Peugeot. 402 Peugeot Fuseau Sochaux Enchantement ... [cover title]. Peugeot, printed by Drager [1935?]. 14x20cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper, spiral bound; 16pp including covers on seven leaves, all in colour, one a double page folding leaf. Au$250
Of course a luxury Peugeot catalogue is going to be ineffably French but an effable part of that, here, is not the message that owning this car will garner you beautiful women - being a Frenchman you already have all the charm any man could hope for. No, for the price of a 402 you possess and control the spirit and passion of a sleek beautiful woman.
[ARNOLD, John]. Product Design 2.734 Case Study on Arcturus IV. "Pre-Publication Copy - Not to be Reproduced" [MIT 1952 or 53?]. Quarto publisher's printed wrappers, stapled; 74 leaves lithographed on one side, illustrations. A very good copy. Au$1500
One of not so many joys of mid-century America. This is an early version of the entrancing case study created by John Arnold for his design course at the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering. In the year 2951 intelligent life was discovered on the planet Arcturus IV which sparks the interest of Massachusetts Intergalactic Traders Inc. and this elaborate mock up of reports, correspondence and designs conveys what is known of the planet, the birdlike Methanians and what might be designed for and marketed to them. This is, of course, American capitalism on a rampage and while it seems the Methanians need things with many of the same functions that the average suburban American wants (and thus all that this and any other world wants), the notion of bending the way industrial designers think about their task is pretty radical stuff.
An enlarged version appeared in 1953; Worldcat finds no copies of either.
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.
Carpentry. Hiroka Yasanori. 番匠町家雛形 [Banjo Machiya Hinagata]. Nihonbashi (Tokyo), Suharaya Mohei 1770 (Meiwa 7). Two volumes 26x18cm publisher's wrappers with title labels (a bit nibbled); diagrams and working drawings. Some worming but nothing too serious. Au$165
A pattern book for house framing, rooves and so on.
I've wondered who these early building manuals were for. Not just in Japan; in England and Europe I think they were for owners and architects - once such a thing existed - to get some idea how how a building was constructed. In Tokugawa Japan, where control of the building trade was fiercely held by one or two families and the master carpenter was the architect, why were they published? Were they text books to be used within the family and guilds - by senior craftsmen who could read? Or were they spoilers by would be competitors trying break the stranglehold on trade secrets.
Most surviving copies of these pattern books are grimy wrecks which suggests either apprentices or tradesmen fairly low on the pecking order used them but did books for actual working people exist in the west or east at this time? What need was there for a man with saw, mallet and chisel to know how to lay out a complex roof? Titles usually state they are for master craftsmen but what need of them did they have? Building regulations changed suprisingly often from the middle of the 17th century onwards - which is when these books began to proliferate - so were they to brush up on the latest standards? When there's a fifty year gap between the first and second edition? That's what edicts are for. There must be studies of the books and their purpose but I'm yet to find anything in English.
Carpentry. Suzuki Shigeharu. 大匠手鑑 [Taisho Tekagami]. Nihonbashi (Tokyo), Suharaya Mohei 1764 (Horeki 14). Four volumes 27x18cm publisher's wrappers with title labels; a couple of diagrams in the first volume, illustrations and working drawings throughout the rest. A touch of worming; pretty good. Au$200
Probably first published in 1721; I found no editions between that and this one and then no more until the 1980s. A pattern book for shrine or temple carpenter/builders which seems to start with site - the first diagram explains points of the compass - and goes through framing and rooves to interior shelves and carving designs.
Kimono design. Kyoto Koekai Design Department. 登美草 [Tomikusa]. Kyoto, Torii Saikodo 1915 (Taisho 4). 55x39cm cord tied publisher's patterned boards with title label; 52 leaves: one leaf of text, 50 colour lithograph plates, one leaf with colophon. Some wear to edges and marks on the covers, minor signs of use inside; pretty good. The numbering gets a bit confusing after plate 30 but the total agrees with the NDL entry. Au$850
Forget the quality, feel the size. Is this the largest kimono pattern book ever published? Feel the quality anyway; this is a high class production. Worldcat finds the NDL entry but CiNii comes up empty.
SLEE, Richard & Cornelia Atwood PRATT. Dr. Berkeley's Discovery. NY, Putnams 1899. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in gilt, black and white. Minor signs of use; rather good. Au$385
Only edition, I believe, of this sci-fi murder mystery thriller. The single minded American scientist somehow wins a gorgeous young French wife and still can't stay away from the lab. He is begged to put his earth shattering new discovery to work in solving a brutal murder and discovers that the piece of brain he has grafted into an ape, cultured, sliced up and is recovering images from the memory cells is his wife's.
CLEGG, Thomas Bailey. The Bishop's Scapegoat. London, John Lane 1908. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in gilt black and cream. Minor signs of use, a bit canted; quite good. Au$350
First, probably only, edition of Ballarat bred Clegg's thriller murder melodrama mostly set in New Caledonia. Clegg was a journalist, lawyer and magistrate who in the eighties had investigated the penal system in New Caledonia and the indentured labour industry in Queensland. The cane fields found their way into his 1907 novel 'The Wilderness' and New Caledonian prisoners into this.
It may be a spoiler but I'll tell you anyway: the men on the front cover are the Bishop of Capricornia who murdered his brother-in-law in Paris and the Frenchman sentenced for that murder. But rest easy, there is a twist.
GRIFFITH, George. Brothers of the Chain. London, White 1900. Octavo publisher's grained cloth blocked in gilt and black. A rather good, bright copy of a book that usually hasn't aged gracefully. Au$325
First edition, second issue with a cancel title; copies are known to exist with the title dated 1899, but not many. The colonial edition though is dated 1899. One of Griffith's baroque thrillers of particular interest to us in the Pacific. "In the triple-walled fastness of the Central Prison on Ile Nou, in New Caledonia there exists, so those who should know, say, the head centre of the most mysterious and the most terrible secret society in which men, or rather fiends in human form, ever bound themselves together." This is not from the novel but from Griffin's Pearson's Weekly article - Griffin building a buttress of supposed fact to support his fiction. The book itself leaps around the world, from Park Lane and Paris to the seas off north Australia and New Caledonia.
Trove finds only one copy, in the Ron Graham collection at Sydney University. His non-fiction follow-up on the convicts of New Caledonia, In an Unknown Prison Land (1901), is well represented.
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.
Kimishima Ryuzo. 花ことば双六 [Hanakotoba Sugoroku]. Shin Shojo 1918 (Taisho 7). 55x40cm colour broadside. Rather good. Au$200
This decorative but not always gentle sugoroku about the meaning of flowers was the new year gift for 1918 from the magazine Shin Shojo - New Girl. There is too much pain and misery here for me; a tough bunch these new girls.
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.
HADDON, A.C. & James HORNELL. Canoes of Oceania. Honolulu, Bishop Museum 1936-37-38. Three volumes large octavo publisher's printed wrappers; numerous photo illustrations and line drawings throughout. An excellent set. Au$1750
Hard to find complete in such good shape, this is the definitive work. I: The Canoes of Polynesia, Fiji, and Micronesia by Hornell; II: The canoes of Melanesia, Queensland by Haddon; III: Definition of Terms, General Survey, and Conclusions by both.
ROCK, Gilbert. [ie John Alexander Barr]. Colonists. Illustrating goldfields and city life in Australia between 1851 and 1870. Dunedin, Wilkie & Co 1888. Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper; 152pp. Staple stains and minor signs of use; a rather good copy. Au$800
A later issue of the first edition of this rare thriller - the wrapper illustration is dated 1906. A lousy title but replete with murder, revenge, conspiracy ... and I'm only reading from the chapter titles. The misleading title no doubt helped this being well represented in Australian libraries and led to Ferguson recording it, cementing its rarity now. This was published in London, Toronto and in New York (in the Magnet Detective Library) as The Mystery of Golden Gully which barely exist in libraries. Gilbert Rock was missed by Loder.
Barr published a few novels all in a rush, including two thrillers under the name Gilbert Rock and his lost race thriller Mihawhenua under the name Brock but his own story is perhaps more exciting. A Dunedin lawyer, he petitioned in 1888 for a protective tax on all imported literature, assuring the government that he was "prepared to supply the colonial market with literature if inducement offers." All his known novels then appeared by November.
Soon after he did 'the Pacific Slope' (a great term I hadn't heard before), abandoning his family and absconding with many thousands of his clients' pounds either lost or in his pocket. Here Barr vanishes from view except for a startling piece in the Auckland Star of October 1 1894 in which is mentioned a letter just received by Sir George Grey from the author of Mihawhenua with a return address but an indecipherable signature. No-one could decipher the signature so Grey's secretary cut the signature from the letter and pasted it onto the reply. No connection was made between the author of Mihawhenua and the missing lawyer. A final glimpse is a London death notice in 1907 which identifies him as a former solicitor of Dunedin and tells us he has been living in England with his wife and family for five or six years. I guess it was the same family. So, it it a coincidence that this was reissued at about the time that news of his death reached Wilkie & Co?
The dedication, to the colonial press in "grateful acknowledgment," of his thriller, By Passion Driven, was declined on conscientious grounds by the Christchurch Telegraph who said, "What object Mr Gilbert Rock could have had we do not know". Perhaps his dedication was for The Daily Telegraph who described his Colonists as "not a badly told story".
WALSH, M.C. The Golden Idol. A tale of adventure in Australia and New Zealand. Chicago, Donahue Henneberry 1891. Octavo, very good in publisher's green cloth stamped in blind; frontispiece. Au$450
Only edition it seems, though there is nothing American about this book except the imprint. Classed as a lost race novel but this race is so thoroughly lost they don't make an appearance; it's their treasure that is hunted and all we meet are some anonymous dusky savages.
I suspect Walsh was a bit of a sook:- "As Holcroft had an exceedingly bad headache, they did not travel fast ... the constant roar of the rushing water had given Rex and Holcroft bad headaches ... they were soon chilled through, and as a matter of course their sufferings were severe ... Holcroft suffered much from rheumatism ... for the nights were exceedingly cold ... Holcroft began to feel a touch of the fever ... but fortunately Hawley happened to have some of the Elixer of Yucca ...". A tale of adventure in Hypochondria I think. Still, there are plenty of thrills, a murder, a wicked conspiracy and the lost finally re-united.
Okano Sakae 少年飛行雙六 [Shonen Hiko Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shonen Sekai 1912 (Meiji 45). Colour broadside 55x79cm. With some short tears around edges and along folds repaired. Pretty good. Au$400
This delightful illustrated journal of a boy's flying adventures was the new year gift from the boy's magazine Shonen Sekai. It's on a waxy paper that may have seemed a good idea when new but does not handle handling so well. This is very much the best copy I've seen so far, not that I've seen many.
Okano Sakae was one of the generation of artists who came through the western painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts at the beginning of the century, later a pupil of Kuroda Seiki, and collaborator with fellow Hakubakai students on the five volume Nihon Meisho Shasei Kiko.
CHAMBLESS, Edgar. Roadtown. NY, Roadtown Press [1910]. Octavo publisher's cloth blocked in white with an onlaid colour illustration; [6],172pp. A little flaking of the white blocking, an excellent copy. Au$750
The deluxe issue: for an extra ten cents ($1.35 against $1.25 for plain) you could buy this with the cover illustration hand coloured. Now one of the more arcane and elusive utopian schemes for a new kind of city, leading to a new society. Roadtown is a ribbon, the extreme lineal city. At the bottom, underground, is the railway - noiseless and smokeless - above come housing, work and communal areas - each home with its own plot of land - and at the top is a promenade. In short the perfect blend of the virtues of city and country.
What surprises from this distance is how much apparently sensible support Chambless garnered. Construction was to be prefabricated concrete and Edison donated his patents; transport was by monorail and Boyes donated his patents; there was a pretty impressive list of people lending their efforts, both practical and rhetorical. Ten mile stretches of experimental or exhibition Roadtown seemed likely, even imminent, for years but Chambless beavered away at Roadtown for almost forty years, until his death in 1936, to wind up virtually forgotten.
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. Au$650
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.
For Neo-Japanese
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.
