Kobayashi Ikuhide. 上野公園風船の図 [Uenokoen Fūsen no Zu]. Tokyo, Sakai Kinzaburo, January1891 (Meiji 24). Colour woodcut 36x24cm. At sometime mounted on tissue with what was probably a hinge on the right edge. A nice bright copy. Au$1150

The brightest, busiest and most impossible of the Ueno Park balloon prints. Aeronaut Percival Spencer, of the Spencer aeronautic dynasty, came to Japan in 1890 with his balloons and parachutes, performing his balloon ascent and parachute descent stunts in Yokohama and in Ueno Park in Tokyo in November 1890. He is said to have injured himself slightly having to avoid the royal tent during a command performance. Tokyo went balloon mad - again, they had a craze years earlier - and Spencer's performance was made into a Kabuki dance play - Fusen Nori Uwasa Takadono (Riding the Famous Hot-Air Balloon, see Brandon; Kabuki Plays on Stage) by premier dramatist Kawatake Mokuami - which ran for a month in early 1891. The Kabuki star Kikugoro V (who played the demon princess in the 1899 film Momijigari) played Spencer with waxed moustache, hat and learnt a short speech in English for the finale.
I think all the other balloon prints of Spencer in action are actually Kikugoro in action and this fantasia is also a theatre print: those are actors' names on the balloons. We might think of this as an advertisement for the play that had begun, or was about to begin, its run. But front and centre is the name of Ichikawa Danjuro, who shared the top rung of the star ladder - but not this play - with Kikugoro and I can't see Kikugoro's name anywhere.

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墓標と記念碑 [Bohyo to Kinenhi]. Tokyo, Koyosha 1923 (Taisho 12). 19x13cm, loose as issued in publisher's printed boards; 50 leaves, mostly plates printed on one side. An excellent copy. Au$100

One of the apparently endless series of small architecture monographs, Kenchiku Shashin Riuju. I wonder if anyone knows how many there were. Some are intriguing and some are pretty drab. Many require a dogged love of gateways and tea rooms. This one is pretty good.
Gravestones and memorials, a good mix of old school kitsch and moderne, a few to the edge of extreme. They can be examples of pure design, being free and limitless, as the foreword says, and here are offered as a lesson to Japanese to reform their gloomy and sad approach to marking their dead in the landscape.

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Housing. 文化住宅 [Bunka Jutaku]. Tokyo, Koyosha 1924 (Taisho 13). Two volumes 19x13cm, loose as issued in publisher's printed boards; 100 plates printed on one side: photos and plans. An excellent pair. Au$250

Cultural housing. Recent examples of houses drawn from the bunkamura (cultural village) movement - the purposeful introduction of idealistic westernised homes, rather than mansions and commercial buildings. 1922 saw a model bunkamura built for the Peace Exposition and the start of the Meiji Bunkamura, a Tokyo estate development for the well heeled bourgeoisie. I think the preface says that these were all built in the last year or two, in which case what is noticeable is the wealthier the client, the more established the garden; the better the house fits into the landscape.
Some of the houses here crowd the definition of mansion, a contrast to rows of semi-detached cottages in Osaka which, I'm sorry to say, look almost like a 20th century suburb anywhere in the world. The publisher, Koyosha, had a significant role in the housing reform underway: modern houses were no longer mansions. Admittedly, they were not for the working poor but I guess it was a start. Anyway, the poor can only afford architecture when the government is paying.

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Wada Sanzo. 色名総鑑 [Shikimei Sokan]. Tokyo, Shunjusha 1931 (Showa 6). 20x12cm publisher's cloth case (back a little faded) with title label with 160 mounted colour samples on 56 accordian folding card leaves; and wrappered book; 178pp and some tables (two folding). Usual browning and offsetting of the card mounts. 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$450

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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尚古鎧色一覽 [Shoko Gaishoku Ichiran]. Tokyo, Yoshikawa Hanshichi 1901. Two volumes small quarto publisher's decorated wrappers with printed labels (the first volume a bit dusty, mildly used); 21 and 18 double folded leaves with dozens of colour woodblock designs. Au$375

A catalogue of the colours of old armour. Part of the remarkable Kojitsu Sosho series [Library of Ancient Customs] published in who knows how many volumes over many years. These, to us, perhaps puzzling forms come in a panoply of patterns and colours that provide - even if the catalogue of clans and families they represent is now unfathomable - an enviable grammar of colour and pattern.

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CORNELL, Sophia S. 地学初歩 Cornell's Primary Geography for the Use of Schools. First Edition. [Chigaku Shoho]. Yedo. [Edo (ie Tokyo), Watanabe [1866?]. 18x12cm publisher's wrapper with printed label; [72]pp on double folded leaves and seven folding colour maps, two colour maps and some illustrations in the text. Au$500

I wonder what, if anything, a Japanese student made of Miss Cornell. After her nonsense about Japan, how could anything else she said be taken seriously? Miss Cornell's Primary Geography - one of a string of geographies she prepared for all stages of schooling - first appeared in New York in 1855. Here we are introduced to the concept and working parts of a map, then run through a brief introduction to the regions of the world.
There seems to be two printings of this "First Edition"; one dated "the 2nd year of Kei-ou" (1866) on the title and apparently without a colophon; the other (our copy) not dated, with a colophon. In this undated copy the text is within borders, the other not. Waseda University also has a third, quite different printing but their copy is severely defective and has no title page or colophon. A Japanese translation was made in 1867. Worldcat finds only one copy of this outside Japan.

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Fire sugoroku. 火防宣伝壽語録 [Hifuse Senden Kotobuki Goroku]. Nagano Prefecture, Hofukujimachi Shobo-gumi 1926 (Taisho 15). Colour broadside 80x55cm. A rather good copy with its original illustrated envelope. Au$650

A thrilling, vivid and rare game, bristling with peril and disaster, issued by the Hofukujimachi fire fighting department. I have seen a ragged copy of this for sale once but I haven't found a record of another copy anywhere.

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医学カード : 性のデザイン篇 Medical Card for Sexual Design [Igaku Kado : Sei no Dezain hen]. Tokyo, Sansheisha Shobo 1965. 19x13cm, glossy card wallet case with 64 glossy cards. Fifty two cards printed both sides with photo illustrations of a young woman in black bodysuit on the front, one with sketches of hairstyles and the rest with diagrams and tables of reproductive organs and menstruation cycles; text and/or illustrations on the back of all. The last card is a diy rhythm calculator. All in excellent shape. Au$150

Even after deciphering the rules I'm still be baffled by this triumph of sixties sexual revolution kitsch. The first sixteen cards are blue, the rest pink; the 52 playing cards have a king's or queen's crown and one or two suit symbols - clubs, hearts &c - most have two but one has an A. The rules tell us there is only one ace but not what it's good for. Is the odd card out, the hairstyles, the joker? So the loser at Old Maid would, instead of having sex, get a new hairstyle? The gender symbols are graphic hints and must have been fun for the designer; the text on both sides is poetry; and hygiene is important. The point of the game and the rhythm calculator seems to be to give women some control in the new era of liberation; not something often evident, east or west.

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DELANNOY, Burford. (ie Adolphus Eugene Judge). "£19,000". NY, Fenno 1900. Octavo publisher's cloth (rubbed, the white lettering on the spine mostly). Read more than once I'd guess, some blotches and smudges; a decent enough second hand copy. Au$150

Likely the first edition, dated the year before the London edition. You decide on how much the choice of that amount £19,000 was designed for the bookshops of 1900.
I didn't blink when the crooked lawyer cut the crooked surgeon's throat, mistaking him in the dark for the heir to that £19,000, not knowing that the heir was packed in parts in the two suitcases in the transatlantic steamer cabin. Nor when it's revealed that of course the heir was a fraud, the true heir's crooked assistant. I did blink once or twice when the unknowing, happy go lucky hero of this story debarked from the same ship carrying those two gruesome corpses and headed straight to the true heir's farm. But I was stopped dead when we're told that heir, an illiterate western farmer, lives fifty miles from New York City. I went back to make sure I hadn't misread that.
From here it gets complicated and the coincidences get a bit unlikely. Still, I found it hard to believe that the second time the hero is caught in a murderous trap he seems to have forgotten his first experience a week or two earlier. Odd what we readers will and won't swallow. After our hero has been saved, in unalike ways, twice by rats, I wish Delannoy had continued the exercise and worked on how many ways a helpless captive can be saved by rats.
But the most unlikely thing about this book is a website I found with a thoughtful precis/review that describes a "poignant memoir." Followed by a notable Sydney bookshop that describes this as a "compelling study for the ones fascinated by the intersections of finance, ambition, and the human situation" (sic) written by "a celebrated writer famend for his masterpiece ""The History of Landholding in England,"" is a luminary within the world of historic evaluation and literature." (also sic).

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IRVINE R.F. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Question of the Housing of Workmen in Europe and America. Sydney, Govt printer 1913. Octavo later cloth with cropped original front wrapper mounted; [8],283pp; numerous photo illustrations, other illustrations and plans, some folding, two folding colour plans. Signs of use but nothing terminal, a decent copy.
1915 owner's inscription of Fred W. Robinson, Duntroon. Professor Robinson published a small history of Canberra in 1924. Au$350

I knew that this existed with two different covers: the usual government report type boards echoing the title page, and a plainer more trade style wrapper. But I didn't know that it existed in two different forms: the report I've seen is a typical foolscap size; this is completely reset and reorganised, presumably for trade sales. Mounted inside the back cover is the remains of what seems to be a back wrapper advertising Dymock's Book Arcade.
One of the essential planning documents from the first period - the golden age - of modern town planning. And rare. A quick glance at Worldcat suggests that this is well represented in libraries around the world, until you weed out the electronic version.
The slums of Sydney: descriptions, observations and alternatives: municipal and association housing, tenements, the garden city, and the necessity for town planning. The details and examples are extensive, his recommendations clear and concise. And Professor Irvine's report on Dacey Garden Suburb mentions that the scheme actually originated with Dacey's predecessor Carmichael.

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現代住宅 1933-40. [Gendai Jutaku 1933-40]. Tokyo, Kokusai Kenchiku Kyōkai 1941. Four volumes quarto publisher's cloth, dustwrappers and card slipcases (dustwrappers with some chips and tears. The back of the fourth volume has a large piece gone, the spine is repaired and the cloth underneath has been stained); profusely illustrated throughout with photos, plans and elevations. Some signs of use; a pretty good set. The title page to volume one was bound in upside down. Au$1650

First editions. Second editions appeared soon after, a testament to something that international modernism could still be celebrated so lavishly as war started in earnest. An encyclopedic survey of modernist housing over eight years that can stand proud enough alongside anything coming out of Switzerland, Germany or Italy. I'd say it's no accident the jackets and boxes are lettered to resemble film.
Housing has been generously defined to include apartments and hotels. These buildings are well documented inside and out, garden to furnishings. Captions in English identify the house and architect. Architects include Taniguchi Yoshiro, Tsuchiura Kameki, Sugawara Eizo, Sato Takeo, Horiguchi Sutemi, Maekawa Kunio, and emigres and visitors like Bruno Taut and Antonin Raymond. A large section of each volume is also give over to exploring the rest of the world, from Shanghai to Los Angeles via Czechoslovakia.

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SHERARD, R.H. [Robert Harborough]. Agatha's Quest. London, Trischler 1890. Octavo publisher's colour illustrated wrapper (frayed, spine chipped). Fairly used, with some dog ears and browning at the beginning but all solid and respectable enough for a cheap thriller. Au$300

Doubtless the first edition despite being called the "fifteenth thousand". This was the usual way Trischler puffed new books without downright lying. The number was their print run based on pre-orders. Trischler was a short-lived firm. They began as the Hansom Cab Publishing Company with Hume's masterpiece, morphed into Trischler and were dead by 1892.
A sensational mystery thriller starring a woman jornalist; something that impressed Jules Verne so much that he contributed a prefatory letter about this new subject for fiction, assuring Sherard of success. This in turn impressed George Locke so much that he was eager to add this unknown B item to Verne's bibliography (Spectrum v3).
Agatha's Quest annoyed the Saturday Review critic, the only review I've found: "It is highly improbable that so transcendent a genius as Agatha would have married the comsumptive cur who turned out to be a murderer; nor would she as a newspaper-woman have given up her "assignment" in America for the weak reasons allotted. The author has decidedly primitive ideas about people who let lodgings; ... also it may be usual for aggressive strangers who wear disguises, and who shriek horribly upon awaking, to address their landladies by their Christian names ..."

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Perry and the black ships kawaraban. 蒸気車之図 [Jokisha no zu]. n.p. [1854?]. 31x23cm woodcut. A few small holes, two small tape marks at edges. Au$750

These illicit illustrated news sheets - kawaraban - for the streets were produced by the million for a couple of hundred years so of course few survive. They were produced for anything more interesting than the drop of a hat and the arrival of the Black Ships, the American squadron commanded by Perry, in 1853 and 54 eclipsed any and all tiresome earthquakes, fires, plagues, famines, murders and scandals. For most Japanese this was the same as a squadron of alien space ships arriving on earth now. These prints are the kurofune kawaraban.
This illustrates the miniature train Perry presented to the emperor in March 1854. Like most (or all?) kawaraban it's obvious the artist was nowhere near their subjects and ran up drawings from reports, copies of copies and imagination. This is why these things are so much better than official renderings and photographs.

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Perry and the black ships. 新はん 大津絵節 [Shinhan Otsue-bushi]. Tokyo? [185-?]. 18x12cm publisher's colour woodcut cover and contents list inside, woodcut illustrations throughout; 14 leaves including cover and final blank. A well used copy carefully repaired with recent stitching and the last bank leaf laid down; not bad for a flimsy popular song book. Au$175

Otsue-bushi are popular songs that were everywhere from the 17th until the late 19th century. Once past that simple explanation I was as lost in definitions of order, genera, species, as I am faced with a page of Wittgenstein. I leave the rest to you.
The point to this copy is, for me, the first song: a gentleman being entertained or exasperated by the antics of an American dressed in a uniform provided by the imagination of, and fuzzy descriptions given to, the first artists of kawaraban (news sheets) illustrating the American crew of Perry's blackships. This anchors us to 1854 when the Americans came ashore and mixed with the locals.
By law all these song books are rare; I found no mention of this one anywhere.

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Kyoto Porcelain Company. A chomolithograph advertisement for the Chicago Columbian Exposition 1893. n.p. [1893]. 33x40cm chomolithograph. Short tear in a blank margin, a few small marks; quite good. Au$125

A handsome production, as it should be from Manufacturers and Decoraters to the Imperial Court of Japan.

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BINET, Rene. Esquisses Decoratives. Paris, Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts [c1905]. Folio, loose as issued in four fascicules in illustrated wrappers, all in publisher's portfolio of cloth backed illustrated boards; [2],14pp and 60 plates, 13 pochoir and a few others with a second colour added, b/w illustrations through the text. A rather good copy. Au$1600

Binet, like many architects and designers, followed Haeckel into the microscopic world for grotesque and fantastic inspiration but married such modernity with historicism in a singular way. Durant (in 'Ornament') calls Binet 'in many respects the typical French Art Nouveau designer' which, apart from being too dismissive, is just not right.
Many of his designs, particularly the coloured graphics, are ultra modern high art nouveau but much of his work has an oddly arcane, recherche effect - in which something as modern as an electric light switch modelled on the forms of diatomes or radiolaria and treated with Beaux Arts tradition becomes a mysterious if not menacing almost gothic artifact. Without claiming anything of the same stature, or even similar results, for Binet he could probably be more usefully likened to Gaudi.
This is an exposition of ideas for every school of design that Binet could encompass - from architectural detail to pochoir graphics; shop fronts to tapestry; stained glass to gardens; jewellery to mosaics.

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Kumadori. 市川家秘伝隈取図巻 [Ichikawake Hiden Kumadori zukan - ie Drawings of Kumadori Secrets of the Ichikawa Family]. Tokyo, Ishikawa Shoten 1918 (Taisho 7). Oblong quarto (190x260mm) pattern cloth with ribbon ties (the covers a little marked and used) in a later chitsu case; four leaves of text and 39 colour plates (woodcut and possibly stencil coloured, two with gold) with calligraphic captions. Au$650

Kumadori is the painted face of Kabuki and this is a series of exquisitely coloured and dramatically stylised faces of characters, full face and in profile. Ichikawa Danjuro I was said to be the originator of Kumadori in the 17th century and an unbroken succession to Ichikawa Danjuro IX (who died in 1903) kept alive and added to the characters.

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Sada Kaiseki. 冨国歩ミ初メ [Fukoku Ayumi Hajime]. Tokyo, Sada 1880 (Meiji 13). Woodcut broadside 36x52cm, stencil coloured? Some small holes and separation along folds; pretty good, the colour bright. Au$950

This captivating woodcut which looks like an advertisement for imported treasures is instead a strident protest and attack on these gewgaws. Sada was a troublesome priest but no reactionary flat-earther, not quite. He wasn't simple. He developed complex theories of science, culture and economics and saw the opening of Japan to this slew of imports as the cause of inflation and hardship for the lower classes. This woodcut was produced to promote the boycott of foreign goods and lists specific targets. Sada spent the last years of his life organising boycott societies and died - in 1882 - on a lecture tour.
This was issued with an outer wrapper which suggests to me this was not given away, it was sold. Waseda University illustrates two copies, one in better shape but carelessly coloured compared to this. The other is fairly worm eaten. They do have a wrapper, which, according to the provenance, belongs to their better copy but it is separately catalogued without any mention of Sada. Worldcat finds the NLA copy.

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TERESHKOVA, Valentina. Speech ... at the World Congress of Women. n.p. n.d. [Moscow, June 25 1963?] Octavo printed wrapper; 8pp [last blank]. Au$250

This must be rare. The speech given by the first woman in space soon after her return - she landed on the 19th and attended the Congress in Moscow on the 25th of June. The pamphlet is a very plain production - reproduced from typescript - and was doubtless quickly produced and handed out at the Congress. The translation is no more sophisticated than the speech itself - probably most remarkable for the number of exclamation marks.

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A universal truth in all times and all cultures

小學入門 : 教授繪解 [Shogaku Nyumon : kyoju etoki]. Tokyo, Kodama Yashichi 1877 (Meiji 10). 18x12cm publisher's colour woodcut front wrapper, illustrated throughout. A revolting copy. Au$300

Give someone young - or young at heart - a picture of a face, an implement, a spare moment, and they will draw a moustache on that face.
There are quite a few versions of Shogaku Nyumon - elementary school texts - under different titles, varying in subject, charm, interest and form. This one, called the professor's illustrated guide, is rare and would be charming ... if. I've taken the publication details from the single opac entry I could find, not from the rag of colophon at the end of the book.
Note that our artist has also added the other touch essential once they were invented: spectacles on the swinging boy in the background.

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掌中 : 新貨定規略 [Shochu : Shinka Jogi Ryaku]. Kagoshima Prefecture, Dajokan 1871 (Meiji 4). 36x49cm folding into 12x6cm publisher's wrapper with title label (a bit grubby); woodcut illustrations of coins in colours. Rather good. Au$200

A palm size guide - until it's unfolded - to the new currency issued by the Ministry of Finance. Added to the mass of new things for Japanese to learn and new ways of thinking, with the Meiji restoration, was the new yen based currency. 1871 must have been a tough year for the slower thinking Japanese - I'm still hazy about metrification - and 1871 bought a new calendar, new system of time keeping, new currency, a new education system, new haircuts ...
I can only find mention of this in two provincial museums in Japan, nowhere else.

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WOOD, H.F. [Harry Freeman]. The Englishman of the Rue Cain. London, Chatto & Windus 1889. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in black and grey (spine faded and a bit rubbed). Publisher's catalogue for October 1888 at the end. Canted but rather good and fresh inside. Au$135

First edition of this murder mystery set in Paris involving a missing heir, cross dressing villains, a cavalcade of detectives and all manner of complications. Wood's second mystery after The Passenger From Scotland Yard the year before. The Spectator surprises by beginning their review most favourably but are more characteristic by the end: " a really clever novel; its detective elements are good; but the story ... has a certain air of incoherency."

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Exhibition - Tokyo 1881. Utagawa Kunitoshi. 第二回内国勧業博覧会 [Dai Nikai Naikoku Kangyo Hakurankai]. Tokyo, Shimizu Kahei 1881 (Meiji 14). 38x26cm colour woodcut (a bit rumpled). Au$300

A useful birds-eye view of the second national industrial exhibition, held in Ueno Park in 1881. It, despite hard times, quadrupled in size and almost doubled the attendance of the first, 1877, exhibition. Centre stage is the clock tower by Kaneda Ichibei.

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Papua the Marvellous. The country of chances. [Melbourne, Govt Printer [1910?]. Octavo publisher's flush cut cloth; 52pp and 10 photo plates. A read but decent enough copy. Au$175

A superbly concise lesson in how to pillage a country and exploit a people, with little capital and a healthy profit. No more exterminating the natives "as a simple matter of ordinary routine," nor even are tribes now "spared, but enslaved". The modern ruler civilizes, reforms and uses them for "honestly developing the country." It won't be long before the "cannibals of the west will be almost worth their weight in gold."
Australia was still the new owner of its very own colony. A few more years brought German New Guinea as a war prize and proper large scale corruption but in the meantime, with a few hundred quid and a bit of nous, a bloke could do pretty well.

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Hamada Masuji, Sugiura Hisui and others. 現代商業美術全集 [Gendai Shogyo Bijutsu Zenshu - The Complete Commercial Artist]. Tokyo, Ars 1928-30 (Showa 3 - 5). 24 volumes quarto, publisher's cloth or wrappers, printed card slipcases for a few wrappered volumes; thousands of illustrations, most colour. A used but solid mixed set, most of the wrappered volumes have chipped spines; the cloth volumes dulled and rubbed - but they are never pretty anyway. Inside all quite good. Au$2500

A complete set of the Shogyo Bijutsu, one of the great monuments of Japanese modernism. Largely the work of Hamada Masuji - credited with the invention of design as a profession in Japan - it is an encyclopaedic gathering of all that is new and exciting in Russia, Europe, Britain and America from art nouveau to bauhaus and constructivism, with futurism, expressionism, dada and everything else along the way lavishly mixed with Japanese responses to, and digestion of, these western ideas. Any number of exciting artists and designers contributed.
Each volume is devoted to a topic or related topics and commercial design here means more than it does to us. So as well as volumes on posters, advertisements, billboards, typography, and similar graphic arts (like bookbindings, magazine, brochure and catalogue covers, packaging, labels, trademarks and placards), there are volumes devoted to the architecture of the shop from the mightiest department store to the most chic Parisian shop window and the display within. Exterior and interior design, showcases and fittings - shops, restaurants, cinemas, even a barber shop or beauty parlour is laid out. One volume is devoted to lighting: neon lights, the lighting of commercial spaces and illuminated signs. Another volume is devoted to kiosks, pavilions and floats, festive decoration, facades, gateways and entrances, while the following volume continues into international exhibitions. Volume 22 is devoted to traditional Japanese shop signs and banners, a treat in itself, while volume 14 explores photography and humour in graphic art - so German photo-montage and French caricature share a volume.
*Rather than do any work I've re-used old photos of the contents of these. The outside picture is new, the inside not so much.

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Kawabata Ryushi. 少年未来旅行双六 [Shonen Mirai Ryoko Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Nihon Shonen 1918 (Taisho 7). Colour broadside 78x54cm. Some browning and minor signs of use; not bad. Au$500

The New Year gift from the boy's magazine Nihon Shonen. A view of travel in the future, this is among my favourites of the travel adventure sugoroku and hard to find in anything like one piece. Doubtless it was a favourite with many others too.
Kawabata did several of the best, most captivating, sugoroku of the period. His 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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DINSDALE, Alfred. Television .. foreword by Dr. J.A. Fleming. London, Television Press 1928. Octavo publisher's boards and dustwrapper; xx,180,[2 adverts]pp, photo ills, diagrams. Some browning of wrapper and edges; rather good. Au$750

Second edition and harder to find than the first, particularly with dustwrapper. Much enlarged and updated since the first of 1926, which was pretty well devoted to describing Baird's experiments and accomplishment: his successful demonstration in January 1926. Here Dinsdale has filled in two busy years and become more technical. Baird published little - his work is mostly recorded in this book and the later books of Moseley.

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Hikifuda. 土屋陸次郎 [Tsuchiya Rikujiro]. Osaka 1907 (Meiji 40). 26x38cm colour lithograph. A nice copy. Au$100

You'd think this smug gang of dandies - the seven lucky gods - would be advertising fashion but they are peddling some sort of pharmaceuticals made by Tsuchiya Rikujiro out of Tsukobo in the Okayama area. The drug trade is treating them well.
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.

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LOUGHEED, Victor. Vehicles of the Air. A popular exposition with working drawings. Chicago, Reilly and Britton 1909. Solid octavo publisher's cloth; 479pp and some 269 photo illustrations and diagrams etc through the text. Quite a good copy. Au$150

First edition and right up to date; published in November 1909 it covers the Paris Aeronautical Salon which closed in mid October. I hope whoever organised the illustrations for this book was never allowed near the blueprint of a machine. I trust it wasn't Lougheed, who designed motors. Nor his brothers who became Lockheed Aircraft Company.
Lougheed anticipates a future with small machines for one or two persons, cheaper than a motorcycle; more or less an evolutionary step from the motor car in terms of individual freedom. So, who was the first personal flyer tease? Leonardo? Or am I missing someone much earlier?

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Minamimura Takashi. ロボット怪獣 - サイボーグ怪獣 [Robotto Kaiju - Saibogu Kaiju]. Original illustration for the magazine Shonen. n.p. [c1960?]. Illustration in ink and watercolour on card 27x20cm, tapemarks in the margins. Lettering and inset illustration pasted on. Au$950

Minamimura was the master of apocalyptic aliens, monsters and outer space. No-one does devastation, cars and trains flying like debris, and crumbling skyscrapers with more relish. A useful annotated diagram of our robot-cyborg monster is inset - the text can be read on a photocopy of the finished magazine page that comes with this. The pasted inset robot is a revision: held up to the light we can see a much bulkier monster underneath. Minamimura calls this a cyborg monster which might date it to after May 1960 when 'cyborg' was supposedly first used by Clynes & Kline in a paper for the Space Flight Symposium and reported in the New York Times.

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Oil. Petroleum. (Correspondence, &c., Respecting Existence of, in New South Wales.) Sydney, Govt Printer 1867. Foolscap folio sewn as issued (a bit used); 22pp, litho map & 2 plates, illustrations through the text. Au$750

The first publication of any note on petroleum in Australia, or at least the possibility of it, and necessary investigations, results of examinations, and so on. The search seems to have been kicked off in 1866 by William Fane de Salis sending out a copy of Lesley's 1865 paper on the Kentucky petroleum basin, "the only paper as yet published giving any reliable scientific account of the strata," in the hopes that comparative work could be done. That paper is reprinted here, from the copy kindly given by Murchison.
What is not in this paper but is in the columns of The Empire is that the Minister for Lands ignored the offer of de Salis and that a Lands Department clerk responded, "the Minister for Lands does not consider it advisable to republish Mr Lesley's pamphlet as proposed by you". Neither would the Lands Department, 'this incubus,' release Lesley's paper for The Empire to print, prompting the outraged columnist of The Empire to mutter darkly about the ''little games played some time ago in the matter of certain mineral lands at Illawarra.'' ''Is there a disinterested and intelligent man in the colony who does not believe in his heart that the blowing of the Lands Office into perdition, with all its accumulated stores of red tape, useless maps, and sickening arrears of correspondence, would be one of the best things that could happen for the welfare of the community?"
All this is not quite true, the correspondence in this paper tells a slightly different story but still, in all this is an education in the power of print, most obvious in the ability of the press to push along a recalcitrant bureaucracy. But more interesting is the potency held by what was considered the sole copy of an otherwise unobtainable pamphlet. Lesley's paper itself is rare, certainly it was missed by Swanson's bibliography of oil and gas. It's almost unnecessary to add that this Australian paper also doesn't appear.

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