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Hamada Masuji 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 wrappers & printed card slipcases. Thousands of illustrations, most colour. Some flaws and signs of use - nothing serious - chipping of spines; wear and tear to the card boxes; a very acceptable set. With the prospectus or advertisement for the series which unfolds to 39x54cm with details on one side and a colour collage on the other and publisher's announcements loosely inserted in several volumes. sold
A complete set of the Shogyo Bijutsu, one of the great monuments of Japanese modernism. Largely the work of Masuji Hamada - 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.
I must confess I was too lazy to photograph all the contents so the pictures here - apart from the exterior views and the extra poster - are recycled from the last set I had.
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Film poster. 籠の鳥 Original art for a poster for the silent movie Kago no Tori. n.p. [1928?] Ink and wash drawing 108x45cm. Short marginal near the bottom. sold
Godawful kitsch maybe but somehow intriguing as piece of nostalgia keeping pace with modernity, this large drawing advertises the movie Kago no Tori - Caged Bird - a hit song of 1922 made into a film in 1924. The 1928 date suggests a revival. The text panel, bottom left, may tell us the artist and other useful stuff but I can't read it.
The movie seems to be remembered mainly for returning something like a 10,000% profit for a low budget production shot in five days.
Flappers. 蒼白き薔薇の唄 [Aojiroki Bara no Uta]. Tokyo, Columbia 1929 (Showa 4). 26x19cm, four pages on light card, illustrated cover. Au$40
The music for Song of the Pale Rose, from the 1929 movie Pale Rose, and a good bit of jazz age moga (ie modan garu ie modern girl) design. This is also, by the way, part of another modern craze: this is the score for harmonica.
Architecture. 朝日住宅圖案集 - 懸賞中小住宅八十五案 [Asahi Jutaku Zuanshu : Kensho chusho jutaku 85an]. Tokyo, Asahi Shimbunsha 1929 (Showa 4). Quarto publisher's two tone cloth & printed card slipcase; [12],381pp, profusley illustrated with plans elevations and renderings, five colour plates. Some browning and signs of use; a rather good copy of a book that didn't wear well. sold
First edition of the results of a competition for small and medium house designs run by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. 85 plans are illustrated and described, the first five get colour illustrations. Some are as modern as modern can be, others would not be out of place in a competition held a decade or more earlier. The winners are mostly marked by being a series of composite quotes but the more pure design by Tsiuchura did rank high.
The American bungalow may be accorded more importance as an influence than it deserves: it seems to me the American house styles seen here are the styles most influenced by Japanese architecture in the first place. As usual the Japanese had a taste for the things western most affected by Japan, whether German asymmetry, Boston Japonism or Wright's wholesale plunder.
This was no academic exercise, Asahi quickly built sixteen exhibition homes from this competition and today Asahi Jutaku (Asahi Housing) seems to be a vast network of real estate and building.
Yoshimoto Sanpei. イソップ双六 [Isoppu Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shogaku 1929 (Showa 4). Colour broadside 54x80cm, folded as issued. Rumpled and a bit used with a few short marginal tears; not bad. Au$275
This cartoon game of Aesop's fables was the new year gift from the fourth grade magazine in the Shogaku stable. I'd guess the small magazine covers down the left margin are the playing pieces.
Yoshimoto was the cartoonist and illustrator for children maybe best known for the ubiquitous bear Korosuke.
Kakumoto Jazz Song. Album of labels all advertising Kakumoto. n.p. 1929-30. 18x26cm album with grained paper wrapper; 147 labels - many metallic ink on glazed paper - on both sides of eight leaves and another five blank leaves. Au$975
I bought this as the most unusual and chic album of match labels I've seen but I'm not sure now what these are. There are a squillion albums of Japanese match labels and many of them are interesting in some way or another but this one stands alone.
These were all produced for what I first took to be a nightclub, bar, or cafe where jazz ruled. Now I wonder whether it was predominantly a cinema. Most labels centre on Kobe where jazz took root in Japan in the twenties but some mention Tokyo and the eight part labels with the line of dancing girls is dated September 1929 and presumably advertises a particular show related to the movie and or song Pale Rose - a hit of 1929.
Jazz, booze, cinema, girls ... what could be more up to date? The big puzzle for me is that I can't find anything about Kakumoto Jazz Song, or vice versa. How can anything so smart, so thoroughly modern, be so forgotten? There is a growing heap of stuff about modernism, modernity and licentious behavior in pre-war Japan so where is Kakumoto amongst all this?
The first label in the album is a menu - called Jazz Song Program ("Jiazu Song Purogramu ... Kobe") - of sixteen labels - those that are sketches and come in variations of colour and paper. These seem to be all names of films.
I guess it's possible some avid fan set out to own every Kakumoto label in every colour but it's more likely this is the house compilation.
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Sugoroku. 最新兵器双六 [Saishin Heiki Sugoroku]. Nagoya, Moribundo? 1929 (Showa 4). Colour broadside 83x59cm. Somewhat rumpled and creased, some short marginal tears. Not bad for such a cheap and fragile product. Au$150
A cheap and in many ways nasty game luridly celebrating the latest in weapons on land, sea and in the air.
The Outline of the Reconstruction Work in Tokyo & Yokahama. Bureau of Reconstruction, Tokyo 1929. Octavo, rather good in publisher's cloth; [14], vi, xii, 220pp and 6 large folding maps, photo illustrations through the text. The Imperial Edict (four pages) printed on a coloured ground with gold border. Au$475
The official report, or boast, to the outside world on the rebuilding after the great 1923 earthquake (and on the earthquake itself). The aim was "not only to restore Tokyo ... but also to build a new capital with an aspect entirely new and quite different", a "gigantic work unparalleled in the history of city planning of the world" - by 1929 "nearly accomplished" (preface & foreword respectively).
Kuriki Kojiro. お正月遊び双六 [Oshogatsu Asobi Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shogaku 1930 (Showa 5). Colour broadside 54x78cm. A bit of browning and short tears in the folds; pretty good. Au$550
The new years gift from the girl's kindergarten magazine of the Shogaku stable. A cheerful sugoroku in which a girl gets to have fun - remarkable enough in itself. And yes, there is a zeppelin down in that corner. The small adverts for the various magazines down the left margin might be used as the playing pieces.
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Sugoroku. Nomura Toy Company 弥次喜多滑稽旅行双六 [Yaji Kita Rokkei Ryoko Sugoroku]. n.p. [c1930?]. Colour broadside 55x79cm; with the large original paper wrapper - 40x28cm - with mounted colour illustration. An excellent copy. Au$500
The comic adventures of those buffoons Yaji and Kita of Hizakurige - or Shank's Mare - fame, not so much updated as flung though wormholes in time. All is still Edo in period but for the airplane, those motorcars, cable car, parachutes.
This is not a sugoroku produced as a new year gift by a newspaper or magazine - the usual form of these games, first half of the 20th century. It was made by Nomura Toys, presumably for sale. Hence the extra large, lurid paper wrapper. Nomura Toys started in the early twenties and went into tin toys in a big way after the war.
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八代商店営業案内 [Yashiro Shoten Eigyo Annei]. Catalogue of Bath. Tokyo, Yashiro [c1930?]. Brochure 21x12cm folding out to eight panels, photos, illustrations and text on both sides. Au$50
Modern bathrooms for a moderne family. Up to a point. It starts smart but gets a bit utilitarian down the other end.
Ono Saseo. いや是は - 本まいった [Iya Ze Wa - Hon Maitta]. Tokyo? Mazda [c1930]. 19x11cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; 12pp including the wrapper, colour illustrations by Saseo on seven.
With a traditional 24 page catalogue of Mazda light bulbs dated 1930 with illustrations of light bulbs throughout - some in colour. Both excellent copies. sold
This is subtitled a light bulb nonsense manga. A genre you don't see a lot. Saseo is being madly re-evaluated by academics as representing something or another, misunderstood for his work in Indonesia during the Japanese occupation but here, thankfully, he is doing nothing more enigmatic than selling light bulbs. Or so you might think.
Shibuya Shigeo & Suzuki Omizu. ツエッペリン世界一周双六 [Tsuepperin Sekai Isshu Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Nihon Shonen 1930 (Showa 5). Colour broadsheet 54x79cm. Minor signs of use; a rather good copy with playing pieces - propellors - in the bottom margin. On the back is a duller game about athletics in red, white and blue. Au$500
The new year gift from the boys' magazine Nihon Shonen, this is an heroic, an epic, zeppelin journey around the world that existed in the minds of writers and illustrators for boys. Every step, every part of nature, every being, is a peril, a hazard to be fought and beaten. Girls win by accepting, boys win by taken a cudgel, or even better a machine gun, to everything in their path.
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Advertising. 女神丸 [Megamimaru?]. [193-?]. Three colour poster 47x28cm, horizontal fold in the middle. Au$150
This elegant modern woman graciously advertises a complete treatment for women's uterine problems.
雄辯 [Yuben]. Five small posters issued by the magazine Yuben. Kodansha [c1930?]. Five colour posters each 38x13cm. Hint of a fold, excellent copies. sold
Yuben, usually translated as 'eloquence' was no proleterian rag. The foundation stone of the Kodansha publishing empire it was started in 1910 as a journal devoted to the study of rhetoric - apparently something lacking in Japanese social and political life.
One poster I roughly translate as 'Eloquence [ie Yuben] is the greatest weapon on the battlefield of life'. I guess whether a troublemaking red or staunch tory this was the magazine for you.
Sunday Chewing Gum. サンデーチウィンガム [Sande Chiuingamu]. Yamazaki Seika Kenkyujo [193-?]. Colour lithograph poster 56x19cm. Some minor creasing and natural browning of the paper, rather good with the original metal strips and loop. Au$100
A shop poster for Sunday Chewing Gam (sic) against an unexpected wintery background. I guess chewing gum really has no season.
