The draft dodger's handbook

Inaba Eiko. 徴兵免役心得 [Chohei Men'eki Kokoroe]. Osaki Naosaburo 1879 (Meiji 12). 17x11cm later wrapper with manuscript title; illustrated title/self wrapper and eight leaves. An excellent copy. Au$500

The guide to exemptions from conscription into the new Imperial Army. Conscription rolled out slowly across Japan from 1873 and one of the most useful exemptions was being a first son; which meant a rash of adoptions preferably into a family where conscription hadn't yet arrived. Fukuzawa wrote about "sons who do not know where their fathers live" and I read somewhere that one of Japan's great literary heroes - Soseki maybe? - registered himself in Hokkaido to escape the draft.
Of course money solved everything: an exemption or proxy fee meant that someone else took your place and I would guess that no true aristocrat would dream of having a son drafted; they were already in military school and officer training. So, naturally, peasants filled the draftee ranks and not all peasants were happy about this. There were 'blood tax' riots, the most furious in Okayama where authorities adroitly charged 20,000 rioters, executed a dozen or so and gaoled a few dozen more.
Without money, a good solid disease, disability or an affable sonless family this little pamphlet was your best friend. Worldcat finds no copies and CiiNii finds one, at Tokyo University. It's often cited by academics but as they mostly repeat each other's mistakes I doubt many have seen it.

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横文字いろは - 早けい古 [Yokomoji Iroha - Haya Keiko]. Yokohama? Sanoya Tomigoro [c1870?]. Woodcut on four joined sheets that folds from 15x7cm out to 130cm. Decorated title panel printed in blue and black, last blank panel with several small red stamps reading Naga (長) and one Nagata (長田). An outstanding copy of something pretty well guaranteed not to survive second or third uses. Au$600

A captivating pocket or sleeve guide to horizontal writing with some numbers thrown in - Roman numerals for reading clocks - the latest of what must have seemed an endless array of challenges to life in Meiji Japan. Iroha might be translated into English as ABC.
Sanoya Tomigiri was a print publisher who moved from Tokyo (Edo) to Yokohama when it opened to the west and where he also became a singer. He is known as the publisher of prints by Yoshitoshi and at least four of the Utagawas, maps, guides and handy educational things like this.
I found a reference to something with almost this title printed by him at the beginning of the Meiji but it isn't the same thing, not even close. There may be another copy of this somewhere but I haven't found it.

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Tobari Kogan. 創作版画と版画の作り方 [Sosaku Hanga to Hanga no Tsukurikata] How to Make Prints by Kogan Tohari : Drawn, blok-cut & printed by author [sic]. Tokyo, Hangasha 1922 (Taisho 11). 21x14cm publisher's printed card wrapper with mounted illustration (wear to spine with an old tape mark, stain on the back, other signs of use); 10 mounted b/w photo illustrations, one b/w illustration and six mounted woodcuts, being three blocks with five colours, the key block in black, the complete print all in black, and the finished colour print. A somewhat dishevelled cover but not bad; mild browning, all rather good and fresh inside. The wrappers look like they have been cut back from the page edges but they are folded and that's how the book was issued. Au$2500

An idiosyncratic book printed on tan stiff card which, while browned, is not as browned as it might appear in photos. The prints themselves are crisp and bright. The half-tone illustrations do Tobari's work no favours but I guess they gave some vague indication of his work. He produced so few prints that more than half of them are here.
Tobari has made for this lesson a smaller version of his mysterious print of acrobats: is it political commentary? religious? all just show biz? He was a founding member of the sosaku hanga - creative prints - movement which cut all and any middle men between the artist and final print. I'm embarrassed to admit that I knew nothing of him until recently when I watched three of his prints that I admired and coveted - one of them the acrobats - sell for a few tens of thousands of dollars. So I have learnt that he is hardly a well kept secret but I haven't learnt much about him except that he studied and caught TB in America and was established as a Rodinesque sculptor before turning to print making and that he died youngish, in 1927. He didn't have time to become a grand old man of art like his colleagues Koshiro Onchi, Maekawa Senpan and Kawakami Sumio. Onchi was dismissive of, almost venomous about, Tobari in his 1953 book on modern prints. Tobari was too technically skilled and too emotional and Onchi, for all his achievement, could not produce the exquisite and moving portrait represented by the grey blur on the cover of this book.
This is pretty rare; Worldcat finds only the V&A and BL entries outside Japan.

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Louis de Rougemont. Grien on Rougemont; or, the story of a modern Robinson Crusoe. As told in ... the Daily Chronicle. Illustrated by ... Phil May, and other pictures. London, Edward Lloyd 1898. Slender folio later half crushed morocco by Morrell, with publisher's colour illustrated wrapper bound in; 34,[2 advert]pp, illustrated throughout.
This had seen some life before being bound and there is an old fold and minor signs of use. An unexpectedly luxurious copy that must have cost more to bind than one would have thought a replacement could be found. Obviously never a common book. With the bookplate of Henry L. White. Au$500

Louis de Rougemont (ie Henri Grien) exposed and ridiculed while his Adventures were still appearing in the Wide World and before his book appeared. This compilation of condemnatory evidence gives something of his true history and seemingly sad life in Australia. Appended is a short pantomime sketch by that so called Barry Pain.
Inserted are two clippings about his miserable state in 1920 and his death in 1921.

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Mother Shipton in Japan

End of the world. 世界転覆奇談 [Sekai Tenpuku Kidan]. Fukutaro, October 2nd 1881 (Meiji 14) Colour woodcut on two sheets 36x49cm. Some splodges, professional repairs to wormholes, not bad. Au$1200

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 print is no.8 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. He locates a copy of this print at Tokyo University and Tokyo Museum has a copy. That's all I could find. Waseda has a similar print but in a different format published by Hirano Denkichi a few days earlier.
I gather the balloon is carrying a couple of English balloonists fleeing the country but I'm not clear which country.

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Wakefield, Edward Gibbon Facts Relating to the Punishment of Death in the Metropolis. London, Ridgway 1831. Octavo, uncut in original boards (neatly rebacked); xii,198,[2 advert]pp. A crisp copy. Au$900

First edition. Parents of underage heiresses may have wished Wakefield hanged but he wasn't in any great danger in Newgate. So he was able to become a good example of his own precept - that it was certainty rather than severity of punishment that works: he never kidnapped another wealthy teenager.

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STEPHENS, John. Sanitary Reform: its general aspect and local importance, considered in a lecture ... Adelaide, printed & published by Stephens 1849. Octavo modern quarter crushed morocco by Bayntun-Riviere; viii,64pp and a number of blanks for bulk. Small repairs to the corners of the title page. Au$500

It seems that subscribers to the South Australian Register and the Adelaide Observer got copies of Stephen's three hour lecture whether they wanted or not: Stephens was the editor and owner of both. Still, it's quicker to read than hear.
And still, this is solid pioneering sanitary reform with plenty of evidence that the poor die faster, younger and more often than the well to do by magnitudes, and that legislation is urgently needed. Adelaide was, after all, "litterally living on a dunghill of thirteen years' standing." Stephens was a dedicated trouble maker whose presses had been seized the year before, gathered eight libels suits in this year - though he was mostly off sick - and died the next year.
A glance at Worldcat and Trove would convince you that there are plenty of copies of this, until you start weeding out the facsimile printing.

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GAWLER, Colonel George. The Present State of Moral Principle in the Supreme Government of the British Colonial Empire, described in a petition to the queen. Not published [London, printed by Barclay 1850]. Octavo, very good in modern half calf; viii,46pp. sold

A sustained and not unjustified whinge about Gawler's treatment by Secretaries of State and the calumnies of his successor, George Grey. Does complaining to the boss about your superiors ever work? Not this time either.
Ferguson found only the SLSA copy and Trove adds just two more; Worldcat adds none.

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[EAGLES, John]. The Bristol Riots, their causes, progress, and consequences. By a citizen. Bristol, printed by Gutch & Martin 1832. Octavo 19th century half morocco by Birdsall (a bit rubbed); lithograph frontispiece. Blank endpapers foxed, a bit of light scattered browning inside; 1860 armorial bookplate of one of however many Kerrs whose comfort is god. sold

A cool and dispassionate account according to Citizen Eagles, as long as you understand that King and constitution are sacred, that the kindness of the aristocracy and the generosity of merchants are what have made England what it it is. That's my reading - or quick scan - but I have to admit I got increasingly grumpy and saw red when I got to what seemed a defence of West Indian slavery - in 1832 mind you - so I may have misunderstood everything. A bit more than half the 400 pages are appendices - documents, letters, evidence &c - so perhaps a dispassionate reading of them is called for.
Eagles by 1832 had been a decade out of Bristol at his curacy in Halberton, dozens of miles away, devoting his time to painting and art criticism but, of course, while you can take the citizen out of Bristol ...

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Isaac Newton. Kawanabe Kyosai & Nakagane Masahira. 世界風俗往来 - 外篇 [Sekai Fuzoku Orai - gai hen]. Tokyo, 1873 (Meiji 6). 230x155mm publisher's wrapper (a bit used); two full page colour woodblock prints by Kyosai. Minor signs of use, quite a good copy. sold

Could there be a better portrait of Isaac Newton? I doubt it. Where else have you seen the fierce intellect and the majestic dignity of the warrior king of science so well embodied? In one piercing moment he has seen into the secret heart of all things, made his ruling and brought order to an unruly universe. Having decreed how that apple had moved through space and where it now rests he defies it to move again.
The other picture is of the young James Watt making his first steam powered discoveries. The myth of child Watt and the kettle seems to date from 1839 with Arago's Eloge of James Watt and in picture a few years later; the earliest I found is an 1844 wood engraving in Jerrold's Illuminated Magazine illustrating a fanciful retelling by Angus Reach. Kyosai's picture is closer in form to Buss's 1845 painting than Marcus Stone's 1863 reworking of the story but it is clear that he has worked - as with Newton and the apple - from the story rather than any pictorial model.
There is a complementary 1872 book with much the same title as this introducing the west but each is a complete and separate thing.

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Hikifuda. 綿ネール雑貨商 [Wata Neru Zakka-Sho]. 1906 (Meiji 39). Colour lithograph 38x26cm. Au$135

I'm sure this insufferable couple are appalled to find they are advertising cotton, nails and general merchandise. I suspect that picture behind them is the view through their stateroom window. They must have thought they would showcase luxury travel and travel goods.
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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Advertising. 廣告界 - 第七巻第十二號 [Kokokukai : Publicity World - vol 7 no12]. Seibundo, December 1930. 26x19cm publisher's decorated wrapper; pp3-94; illustrated throughout, several pages in colour. Don't be alarmed by the pagination: the contents leaf is a slip printed on red paper inserted at the front and the first entry is the colour plate on page three. Au$275

The special Christmas number of Publicity World for 1930, with extra colour and movement. A panoply of up to the minute Japanese and European advertising from typography to window dressing; photo montage to the ever reliable skirt blowing in the wind.

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New Guinea design

Zuan Shiryo Kenkyukai. ニューギニア図案集 [Nyuginia Zuanshu]. Tokyo, Uraru 1927 (Showa 2). 31x23 publisher's ribbon tied illustrated wrapper in a shabby but pretty much complete printed card folding case; introductory leaf mounted inside front cover, title, 2pp of text and 34 (lithograph?) plates on one side in various colours. Minor flaws, a rather good copy. hold

Here's something I didn't know exists and I doubt many other people did either. I've found no reference to this album of New Guinea design anywhere; Worldcat finds no copies and CiNii finds one copy: the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. Likewise the Zuan Shiryo Kenkyukai - Design Materials Study Group - remains a mystery to me.
This is a design pattern book rather than ethnographic study. No effort has been put into identification or source but a good deal of effort has gone into preserving, if not enhancing, the effect of material and tools. Most of these look like ink has been applied and a print taken directly from the carved wood. That sort of authentic unsophistication takes a fair bit of sophistication.

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Tawaraya Sotatsu & Yamada Naosaburo. 波濤 [Hato]. Kyoto, Unsodo 1910 (Meiji 43). 38x27cm publisher's patterned paper over boards; title and 22 colour woodcut plates; accordian folded. Minor signs of use, a few wrinkles which are part of the production; a nice copy. sold

A sort of apotheosis of neo-rimpa design but different. These muted wave designs based on the paintings of a founder of the original rimpa group - early 17th century painter Sotatsu - at first glance couldn't be more different from the blocks of colour and empty spaces of everyone's favourite neo-rimpa artist, Kamisaka Sekka, in his Momoyogusa, produced at about the same time. But it only takes another glance to see the family resemblance.
Yamada has focused a lens for a close up of the life in Sotatsu's waves - that's what the title of this book means - and with a similar approach but completely different method to Sekka he has both refined and modernised their inspiration. In this case all the plates are sort of silver on silver but not so simple. These are the colours of tarnished and dulled gold, silver and lacquer as Sotatsu's then 300 years old screens looked and the whole has become an exercise in both capturing convincing vitality in what is almost a monotone and mastery of printing to produce a thoroughly modern pattern book of design. Much in the way Hochu recreated Ogata Korin in his 1802 triumph of printing, Korin Gafu.
This is a scarce book. And it's impossible for an amateur to photograph. The best I can do is to take photos from different angles to give some scant indication of the riches of shade, light and reflection.

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Kon Wajiro & Yoshida Kenkichi. 考現学採集 (モデルノロヂオ). [Kogengaku Saishu (Moderunorojio)]. Tokyo, Shun'yudo 1931 (Showa 6). Quarto publisher's cloth blocked in red and white (spine a little rubbed), rather browned but solid illustrated slipcase; [2],323pp, photo illustrations, hundreds of line drawings and diagrams (one with colours added), endpaper map. A few blotches and small flaws, quite good. Au$750

First edition of the companion to the 'Modernologio' of the previous year - together they are the gospel of Modernology. Kon and Yoshida here collect data to extend their extraordinary encyclopaedia of the people of modern Tokyo. Their thesis was that those who do the planning, designing and building know nothing of what people actually do, what they own and how they use those things - how they live and who they are. I can't imagine anything you might ever think about and a lot you would never think about that isn't collected here. How you walk, where you walk, what you carry, how you carry it, where you dance, how you dance, how you sit, where your shelves are and what's on them, in your cupboards ...

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BRADSHAW, Lewis. Modern Mansions. A solution of the housing, the servant, and the drink problems, by a rational, an evolutionary, and a scientific method of housing reform. Kettering, Northamptonshire Printing [1908]. Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper (spine ends neatly repaired); 80pp, six plates (five folding). sold

Bradshaw has, with good judgment, seeded sensible British calm through his title - rational, evolutionary, scientific - but this is, for England, a radical little book. Bradshaw proposes housing along lines not just co-operative but communal - he goes so far as to use the term 'collective'. He diverges from the high density urban solutions and the Garden City ideals then predominant among pioneering town planners. Proposed here are short rows of villas or terrace houses - possibly built using Edison's prefabricated concrete system - radiating out from a central amenities hall, these in turn radiating out from a circular town centre of markets and shops.
There are some intriguing parallels here with Garnier's schemes, worked out at about the same time but not published for another decade - given we leave out the epic grandeur of Garnier.

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Specimen hikifuda. Large hikifuda of a boy flying his mother in a monoplane. n.p.n.d. (1914). Colour lithograph 53x38cm. Stab holes in the top margin, catalogue number on the back, showing it was once in a specimen book. Folded rather than creased. Au$200

That woman and child are modelled on the crown princess and her first son - Hirohito - as they were a few years before. She is adventurous enough to go skylarking but still the boy must drive. Around and below are most of the things that make Japan Japan - cherry blossoms, industry and Fuji.
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. This one is double the standard size; the timetable or calendar is for 1915.

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Kitazawa Rakuten. 楽天全集 [Rakuten Zenshu]. 1-3, 5-7, 9 [all published]. Tokyo, Atoriesha (Atelier) 1930-31 (Showa 5 - 6). Seven volumes 27x20cm publisher's colour illustrated cloth, illustrated card cases; each 144p, hundreds of colour, tri- and duo-tone illustrations. An excellent set. Au$1100

The complete works, such as it is, of the king of magazine cartoons and/or manga - Rakuten. It took me a while to figure out why I could never find a complete set of all nine volumes - such a thing doesn't exist - and even longer to find a good set of what does exist. I put a fair bit of that down to decades of Japanese booksellers, also unaware, deciding they have incomplete sets and selling them piecemeal. Add to that these are books that are usually thumbed into grimy exhaustion and you can see why I'm smug about this set.
I'm yet to find an explanation for the two gaps but these weren't published in order; some later volumes appeared before than the first. The Mayan(?) on the covers is reading a manga. On the back he is laughing so hard he has dropped his book. Unlike me his Japanese is excellent.

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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 copy in the original printed card outer folding case. 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.

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Kawakita Renshichiro & Takei Katso. 構成教育大系 [Kosei Kyoiku Taikei]. Tokyo, Gakko Bijutsu Kyokai Shuppan-bu 1934 (Showa 9). 22x16cm publisher's colour printed boards (a bit spotted with small surface scrapes at the tips); [2], 12 plates (four colour), 520pp, profusely illustrated throughout. Some spotting around the edge; a rather good copy of a vulnerable book. Au$1650

First edition. A textbook in a way but a remarkable and thoroughly modernist one. Much influenced but, I'm told, not slavishly, by the Bauhaus method of teaching, this education in design or composition contains both the philosophy and practice of Kawakita's Shinkenchiku Kogei Gakuin (School of New Architecture and Design) successor to his Seikatsu Kosei Kenkyusho (Research Institute for Life Configurations).
The book apparently caused some unhappiness among cutting edge architects who complained that it was too abstract but was hugely popular among art teachers. This might explain why the book seems so hard to find: a bunch of black thumbed, paint spattered art students soon puts paid to any book. Worldcat finds only the NDL entry.

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Tricycle advertisement. Advertising leaflet for a new American children's bicycle. Osaka? c1900? 19x33cm, printed in blue on brown paper. Rumpled, chipped and sometime laid down. Au$60

As always, if someone complains about the condition my reply is, "Go find a better copy." And it is called a bicycle (jitensha) rather than tricycle (sanrinsha). Agents in other cities are named but headquarters are in Osaka with the phone number 1837. An expert in Japanese phone numbers might be able to tell us when the number 1837 was reached, giving us the earliest possible date for this.

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Goto Seikichiro. 和紙と漆 [Washi to Urushi]. Tokyo, Gohachi 1962 (Showa 37). 18x15cm publisher's illustrated wrapper in lacquered textured chitzu and box. 25 double folded leaves including endpapers; handprinted throughout with colour woodcuts - text and illustrations - and eleven mounted samples of lacquer patterned papers. Edition of 100 copies, signed by the author on the front endpaper. Au$900

A captivating book whether or not you care about paper making or modern Japanese woodcuts; this is so beautifully printed that you can't help but admire it. Goto produced a few impressive books on handmade Japanese papers; this is the most recondite, hardest to find and the most charming.

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Hashizume Kan'ichi. 六大洲國盡 [Rokudaishu Kuni Zukushi] Name of the Land on the Globe. VI. Daishiu Kuni Dzkushi [sic]. Tokyo, Wan'ya Kehei 1871 (Meiji 4). 18x13cm publisher's wrapper with title label (covers mottled); [32]pp, doubled page colour world map in two hemispheres and two folding colour maps (Asia and Europe). A touch of worming, pretty insignificant; quite a good copy. Au$350

Just when I thought I must have seen all of Hashizume's handy little guides to English, up pops another. This guide to place names in the three forms: upper, lower case and long hand, is titled as complete but, as this covers Asia and Europe, now I have to look for a companion volume for the rest of the world.
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 work in English.
Worldcat finds only the NDL entry.

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Fukuwarai hikifuda. 養児粉 [Yojiko]. Osaka, Noda Tadahiro? 190-? 15x13cm colour woodcut with letterpress on the back. Small piece from the top edge. Au$150

This hikifuda - an advertising handbill - for powdered food for babies is also a fukuwarai - a pin-the-tail game except that the blindfolded player has a face to put together rather than land a tail nearest the backside of an animal.
From the baby bottle, not so much the baby, I would date this to about 1890 but I suspect that's too early for powdered baby formula. The text on the back is headed with advice to tell a person without milk about this.

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JANE, Fred T. All the World's Fighting Ships. London, Sampson Low 1898. 20x32cm publisher's cloth (spine rubbed, tips worn); line drawings throughout. Inner front hinge with an old cloth tape repair; a used but acceptable copy. Au$750

The first of what became Jane's Fighting Ships and hard to find.

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JANE, Fred T. All the World's Fighting Ships. London, Sampson Low 1899. 20x32cm publisher's cloth (rubbed, marked, small hole in the front hinge); line drawings throughout. A used but acceptable copy. An old bookseller's pencil note priced it at £400, noted the faults and called it a good copy. Au$450

The second of what became Jane's Fighting Ships and just as hard to find as the first.

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Kyokaen Shujin (?) 女海賊龍神於虎 [On'na Kaizoku Ryujin Otora] Takahashi Yutaro 1894 (Meiji 27). Two parts 24x17cm; each 8pp plus a colour woodcut cover; a full page illustration in the first part. Au$300

This short bloodstained thriller about this glorious woman pirate forms two issues of the obscure magazine, Nisshin Kan Mikunishi. Forget finding a record of this tale, first find a record of the magazine; I found mention of a single issue in the Tokyo Keizai University library.
I hope the woman on the second cover is not our pirate but I fear it is. I need someone to read it to me before I can tell you.

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Sugoroku. Kawabata Ryushi. 少年運動双六 [Shonen Undo Sugoroku]. Tokyo, 1916 (Taisho 5). Colour printed broadside 54x79cm. Some separations along folds with some proper repairs. An ok copy. Au$125

The New Year gift from the magazine Nihon Shonen - Japanese Boy. A splendid vision of the life of the active, enthusiastic Japanese boy: success and fame. Compare this with contemporary sugoroku for girls.
Kawabata's career took a curious turn during a 1913 stay in America to study western painting. Apparently he was so impressed with the Japanese art he saw in Boston he switched to being a Nihonga painter. Still, he remained being an illustrator for magazines for quite some time. As did most of the early to mid 20th century artists now revered.

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