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Fujimoto Katao. 実用お料理献立漫画双六 [Jitsuyo Oryori Kondate Manga Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Fujin Sekai 1926 (Taisho 15). Colour broadside 55x79cm. Mildly used, quite a good copy. Au$500

This delightful manga sugoroku celebrates cooking and was the new year gift from the magazine Woman's World.


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Kobayashi [Eijiro?] 大速力双六 [Daisokuryoku Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Osanago 1926 (Taisho 15) Colour broadside 77x53cm. A bit of misfolding and a couple on tiny holes, pretty good. Au$350

Reckless speed for the smaller kids, this was the new year gift from the magazine Osanago. The girls ride pillion but they do get to go fast.


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Kuriki Kojiro. 教訓漫画双六 [Kyokun Manga Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shogaku 1927 (Showa 2). Colour broadside 54x78cm. Some splodges and a small hole, not a bad copy. Au$325

The new years gift from the boy's first grade magazine of the Shogaku stable. A bright sugoroku in which, as I see it, most of the fun is what we are warned against. The title was used for more than one sugoroku.


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Tanaka Higara. 少女スポーツ双六 [Shojo Supotsu Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shojo Kurabu 1927 (Taisho 16). Colour broadsheet 54x79. A rather good copy. On the back are photographs and details of heroines of Japanese sport printed in blue. Au$425

Stylish indeed but not printed on the best paper, this sugoroku is hard to find still in one piece. This was the new year gift from the girl's magazine Shojo Kurabu - Girl's Club. There are not so many sugoroku in which girls get to be unashamedly athletic and competitive.


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Kabashima Katsuichi. 火星國探検競争双六 [Kasei Kuni Tanken Kyoso Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shonen Kurabu 1927 (Taisho 16). Colour broadsheet; 79x54cm. On the back is another game in monochrome. Some browning a few small holes, pretty decent. Au$650

I proclaim this the masterpiece of Kabashima - a busy illustrator and cartoonist for a few decades. He may be best known as the creator of the comic or manga series starring Shochan - which looked a lot like Herge before Herge did - or perhaps as the artist of ships and planes in turmoil but this meandering voyage to Mars via Saturn tops them all.
This was the new year gift from the kids' magazine Shonen Kurabu (kids' club) and, being printed well in advance, is dated Taisho 16 rather than Showa 2 - the more proper date for 1927. The game on the back is the adventures of Yaji and Kita on the Tokaido. It's neither here nor there.


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Inoue Takeo. 子供活動写真双六 [Kodomo Katsudo Shashin Sugoroku]. Tokyo Shonen/Shoji Tankai 1927 (Taisho 16). Colour broadsheet 53x79cm. Some small holes and repairs to folds, a reasonable copy.
On the back is an unusally exciting monochrome game - the bonus games put on the back rarely amount to much - a shadow game of battling monsters illustrated by Nakano Shoji. Au$500

This cinematic new year gift is from both boys' and girls' magazines, Shonen Tankai and Shoji Tankai. In love of movies at least, boys and girls are equal. Also equal in this game are Hollywood and Japanese cinema - given that Shirley is queen of all. But. Come to making your own movie and the girl gets to operate the camera while the boy directs.


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Hosokibara Seiki. 買物合せ [Kaimono Awase]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1927 (Showa 2). Colour broadside 46x62cm. Mildly used and rumpled, pretty good. Au$300

Not a sugoroku, this fun manga sheet was made to be be cut up and played as a matching game. It was issued as a supplement to the series of books, Shogakusei Zenshu.
Hosokibara, as well as being a busy and successful manga artist, pioneered manga studies with his 1924 history and pioneered the schism among manga artists: those who saw manga as a continuation of traditional Japanese humorous drawings and those who rejected the notion and insisted that manga was a new international graphic language.


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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. Minor flaws and signs of use - a few small chips from spines; wear of the card boxes; a couple of leaves mistrimmed during binding causing a clean tear in one text leaf; a rather good 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.


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世界發明發見双六 [Sekai Hatsumei Hatsuken Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shogaku Shinensei Furoku 1929 (Showa 4). Colour broadsheet 54x78cm. A rather good copy. Au$300

An inspirational, if odd, game celebrating great inventors. This was the new year gift from Shogaku Shinensei - a magazine for 4th graders. I'm not sure whether you get to be a god or hang out with a god, join his procession.


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Nakamura Susumu [&] Hosokibara Seiki 新案スポーツ双六 [&] 運命運勢獨占盤 [Shin'an Supotsu Sugoroku [&] Unmei Unsei Dokusen-ban]. Tokyo, Asahi 1929 (Showa 4). Broadsheet 54x79cm, colour game on one side, game printed in blue on the other. Quite good. Au$400

1929's new year gift from Asahi is a stylish if fun-free game of sports. No smiles here, winning is a serious business. What I learn from this is that if you are a boy wanting to meet girls then table tennis is the game. Nowhere else are they in sight. If you are a girl, you play basketball and you don't expect to meet boys.
The game on the back is outwardly much plainer but it is fun; there are a lot of pretty good drawings and cartoons by Hosokibara Seiki.


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Okamoto Ippei. 主婦之友 漫画双六 [Shufunotomo - Manga Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shufunotomosha 1929 (Showa 4). Broadside 64x94cm; colour printed. Not the best copy, over creased with several repairs to separated folds, but all there. Au$100

A splendid large and lively sugoroku - racing game - by the illustrator/cartoonist whose place in modern manga history is still being argued.
Issued as a New Year gift by the magazine The Housewife's Friend, the game is an intriguing melange, to me, of the modern and traditional; whether in conflict or harmony or all round mocked I don't know.
The winning post - the joyful family of plump plutocrats with both husband and wife looking remarkably like lucky gods - is the dream of the modern young woman being hatched from an egg in the upper right but she is not the starting point of the game. There seems to be several starting points. Did any young western woman ever dream of being rich and fat?
If you look up Okamoto Ippei in non-Japanese places now you will find so many entries telling us how unjustly neglected and forgotten he is in the history of comics and manga that we know his place is assured. Ippei was the king of newspaper cartooning as Rakuten ruled the magazines in Taisho and early Showa Japan. It was Ippei that brought the American comic strip to Japan and heads, with Rakuten, the lists of idols and inspiration of many modern manga artists; hardly forgotten.


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Sugoroku. 子供乗物双六 [Kodomo Norimono Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Seugaku Ninensei 1930 (Showa 5). Colour lithograph broadside, 54x78cm. A rather good copy. Au$500

An exciting and vivid jaunt around the world and all forms of transport is the theme here. This was the New Year treat that came with the magazine Seugaku Sophomore (for the second year of primary school).
I don't know who those two kids are but they never aged and, with updates in fashion and style, seem to have been on a ceaseless whirl of travel and adventure ever after. For decades new but the same sugorokus appeared. The zeppelin vanished of course, square automobiles became sleek cars, trains went diesel and electric, aeroplanes became jets, and on they went.
Perhaps they learnt early what many idle wealthy globe trotters know: that a diet of fine demi-sec and pure cocaine keeps you young forever.


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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 little rumpled; 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 a world that existed somewhere 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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Camel Sewing Machine Co. Ltd. Camel Sewing Machine ... Himeji Japan. n.p. [Japan c1930?]. Glazed colour lithograph 103x73cm with metal strips at top and bottom and hanging loop. A stain in the right edge and a few minor creases, a small nick (without loss despite what the picture says) in the left side; a good survival of an extra large shop poster. sold

It seems so obvious once you see it done - putting sewing machines and camels together - you wonder why early sewing machine manufacturers wasted their time with small birds and flowers.


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Fire Safety Poster. 火防 - 秩父消防組 [Hifuse - Chichibu Shobogume]. Chichibu Fire Prevention Publicity Department [c1930?]. Colour litho poster 39x27cm. Horizontal fold and creased in a top corner. Au$150

The Chichibu Fire Prevention department produced a series of these fire safety poster. I think they were the result of a school competition. So far I've seen three. One makes the fire department more threatening than a fire, one seems a lesson in how to burn down the city and this one takes a more theological approach: fire is neither an accidental nor deliberate act of people, it is a demonic being.


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私達の家庭染料 : すみれ染 [Watashitachi no Katei Senryo : Sumire Zome]. [Tokyo? 193-?]. Colour poster 52x36cm. In excellent shape. sold

Sumire dye was the home dye of choice for modern vamps.


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Takarabune. Two martial new year treasure ship gift prints of the 1930s. Namikoshi Takarabune-kai & n.p. [193-?]. Two woodblock prints 26x38cm & 38x26cm. Rumpled, the first more so. Used but decent enough. Au$220

These treasure ship (takarabune) new year good wishes have been produced by the million for who knows how long. The tradition is heaps of rice, wealth, maybe a lucky god or seven on board. For a few hundred years the custom is to put these under your pillow and hope for a good dream. A bad dream and you throw your print in the river.
Artists of course played with the form but these two are unlike any others I've seen. Especially the ship loaded with weapons and the lone soldier with his back to us.
I was convinced for some while that this must be an anti-war print but I think now it is an unironical wish for guns and tanks to be sent to China. I have seen another takarabune print produced by the Namikoshi Association around the same time and, while unusual, I see no sign of risky politics. The second print here, in which the ship has vanished beneath mass patriotism, is a cheery wish for a great spring campaign.


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