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Ginza. 銀座通り之真景 [Ginza-dori no Ma Kei]. Tokyo, Urashima-do 1919 (Taisho 8). Colour lithograph 40x54cm. Some rumpling and short marginal tears. sold
This is a self titled true picture of the Ginza but I suspect it was seen a few years earlier. Maybe it's not photo-realism but how else to capture the excitement of strolling the Ginza on a Taisho afternoon? The style, the wealth, all the achievements of modernity around you and overhead. And not without drama. There are no signs of poverty, no beggars or thieves, so why has that well fed dog with a collar run off with the boy's parcel?
Cars & Planes. 汽車と飛行機 [Kisha to Hikoki]. Osaka, Enomotoshoten 1919 (Taisho 8). 21x15cm publisher's illustrated wrapper; 10pp including cover, colour lithograph illustrations throughout. Natural browning of the cheap paper, an excellent copy. sold
Yes, this is called Cars and Planes, or Automobiles and Aeroplanes if you want to be formal, but that train on the cover is too exciting to sulk over. Maybe not the finest printing but these akahons (red books) - cheap and gaudy - do manage to catch the thrill of being alive in a time when everything is new and speedy. This may be a reprint; published a couple of years after the first.
ニコニコポンチ [Nikonikoponchi]. Osaka, Enomotoshoten 1919 (Taisho 8). 21x14cm publisher's colour litho wrapper; 10pp including wrapper; colour lithograph illustrations throughout. Natural browning of the cheap paper, an excellent copy. Au$80
Short comic strip gags printed in the akahon style that makes you reach for your 3D glasses. This may be a reprint; published a couple of years after the first.
Noshigami - のし紙. A sample book of Noshigami - special paper for gifts - from the Kadoya Dyeing Workshop, Tokyo. Tokyo [c1920?]. Large octavo by size (235x180mm), printed stiff wrappers; 105 leaves of colour printed samples. Au$500
Noshi-gami is specially printed paper to be folded and attached to gifts as I understand it. The ineluctable beauty of the patterns is enhanced in this book by being in a quite smart cover decorated with electric locomotives.
Fire Safety Poster. 火防 - 秩父消防組 [Hifuse - Chichibu Shobogume]. Chichibu Fire Prevention Publicity Department [192-?]. Colour litho poster 39x27cm. Au$275
A good straightforward illustration of what a carefully applied match can do.
Japanese 1920s graphic thriller. Preliminary sketches for a graphic story, probably for a magazine or pulp book. n.p. [192-?]. 23 sheets 22x15cm numbered to 21 with the last two (a bit smaller) unnumbered and two small paintings on red ribbon which don't seem to belong to the story but are of a piece with it. Two drawings to a page, all but a couple - pencil - in ink and wash. sold
Being illiterate doesn't stop me from recognising a timeless jazz age tale of crime, degradation, betrayal, forbidden lust and madness. This is clearly a good girl gone wrong story with a twist. Maybe more than one twist. The overt lesbian stuff was not that common in parallel western stories - book or film. This is pretty steamy stuff; in a tortured, fully dressed way.
The drawings are signed but my translator can't decipher them. The accompanying text is mostly dialogue.
Tokyo Peace Memorial Exhibition 1922. 平和記念東京博覧会第二会場之美観 [Heiwa Kinen Tokyo Hakurankai Ni Kaijo Kore Bikan?]. Tokyo 1922 (Taisho 11). Colour lithograph, 39x54cm. Rumpled with some short tears repaired. Not indecent. sold
Any average afternoon in Taisho Tokyo before the earthquake, to judge by the lurid lithographs that came into fashion at the end of the Meiji. Life was brisk, vivid to the point of hallucination, crammed with progress and novelty; the skies buzzed with planes and airships.
The 1922 Peace Memorial Exhibition, celebrating the League of Nations and a bright future, was the most lavish national Expo ever held. The seaplane was one of the hits of the exhibition.
Wada Ayata. シヨーウヰンド装飾 [Shiyouindo Soshoku]. Kyoto, Unsodo 1924. Folio (370x255mm), loose as issued in publisher's cloth portfolio with printed label; four leaves of text, 33 plates (10 are colour lithographs) of designs with a few photo illustrations of finished work; the last three plates are alphabets (ie Japanese characters) in new modern styles. Au$3000
Rare. In fact I have expert advice that this is 'ubu' - which when applied to books I'm told means very rare and special. This is one of the more luxuriously produced portfolios of modern Japanese designs of the period; the colour plates are glowing lithographs.
Part of the fascination of Japanese modernism is that not only did 'commercial art' encompass such a breadth of, to us, disparate disciplines but that they were given equal weight. Show windows are not less important than advertising graphics, or lighting, or even architecture itself. They all demand an equal application of inventiveness and artists and designers turned their hand to buildings, posters, books, stage and costumes, and show windows with equal relish.
Wada was just such a designer of the Taisho and early Showa periods; he also produced albums of alphabets and interior designs. In later years he turned to politics and economics, which is just sad. OCLC finds only the National Diet copy.
Tokyo replanned
Hayashi Tadaichi. 少年帝都復興双六 [Shonen Teito Fukko Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Nihon Shonen January 1924 (Taisho 13). Colour printed broadside 55x79cm. Folded, some small holes and tears repaired; a pretty good copy. sold
Have you seen a better piece of visionary urban planning? This sugoroku - racing game - accompanied the New Year issue of Nihon Shonen (Japanese Boy) and what better way to mark the new year than rebuilding the freshly devastated Tokyo along utopian lines? The title more or less translates as Boy's Reconstruction of the Imperial Capital and I'd move there in a flash.
This has been thought out. Public transport is a marvel with canals, aerial cable cars and trains tearing round the city and on and off ferries; the airport is sensibly at flight level, which must save enormous amounts of fuel; I think the floating palace is an overnight shuttle to America.
Public health and safety is well considered: the fire brigade operates from a tower with a water cannon that can reach across the city to extinguish fires and the hospital will come to you, no matter the terrain. Culture and sport are catered for and the traditional at heart will be comforted to see industry over on the wrong side of the tracks - well away from the houses on the hill - where it belongs.
Two essential Tokyo survivors are the start and finish: Tokyo railway station and the imperial palace. I don't approve of the alarm on the clock tower but no-one can be unimpressed by the solar heating plant. Boy or not, this is the town for me.
Aso Yutaka. ノンキナトウサン出世双六 [Nonki na Tosan shusse sugoroku]. Tokyo, Hochi Shinbunsha 1925 (Taisho 14). Colour illustrated broadside game (54x79cm); folded, mild signs of use. With the circular portraits of the characters down the side which could be cut out and used as game pieces. sold
The new year extra from the newspaper Hochi Shinbun starring Japan's first serial comic strip hero Nonki Na Tosan - usually translated as Easy-going or Lazy Daddy - who first appeared in regular comic strips in the paper the year before. He owed some debt to Jiggs of Bringing Up Father but uncle Nonto was a thoroughly Japanese scapegrace and loafer who quickly made his way into games, toys and, in 1925, a short animated film.
Now our game is presented as a film while the information I've found about the film, and all the toys, suggests that they were piracies; comic characters were not protected by copyright. Perhaps an all round notion that popular comic strips and film are natural partners explains what may or may not be a coincidence.
This may be Nonto's first sugoroku but it certainly wasn't his last. Come the early thirties as the manga craze blossomed our hero was often teamed with Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop - something of a holy trinity. As said, uncle Nonto is a loafer and this game follows him through a series of disastrous attempts at holding down a job.
Ise. 伊勢参宮名所案内之図 [Isesangu Meisho An'nai no Zu]. Yamashita Sobei 1925 [Taisho 14]. Colour printed broadside 34x50cm; woodcut and half-tone printing? Folded, natural browning of the cheap paper but rather good. Au$90
An odd anachronism, this combines the production of the cheapest printing of a generation earlier. Yamashita Sobei produced these pilgrim tourist guides without changing their style from 1898 at least, updating details like trains, trams and new buildings. Maybe the lurid roughness became part of the tradition of the regular pilrimages to the two shrines of Ise.
Okamoto Ippei. 山と海 [Yama to Umi - Mountain & Sea]. Osaka, Asahi Shimbun 1926 [Taisho 15]. Quarto publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; 40pp, b/w illustrations throughout. Mild signs of use, natural browning of the paper; a pretty good copy. sold
A comic commentary on the Japanese out and about on holiday and I suspect many other things beyond me. There is a cast of recurring characters and it's evident from the cover that class wars are at play - there is a drawing inside of a plutocrat mugging a beggar - but there's a lot going on in these busy pages that are fun to look at but incomprehensible to me.
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.
Fujiwara Taichi. 絵を配した図案文字 [E o Haishita Zuan Moji]. Tokyo, Daitokaku 1926 (Taisho15); quarto publisher's cloth stamped in gilt & blue, scraped but solid publisher's printed card slipcase; 4,6,112pp; illustrated throughout with lettering and alphabets with example layouts of advertising. The first twelve pages in colour, the rest in b/w or varied monochromes. Minor browning and signs of use; a rather good copy. sold
An exciting pattern book of new alphabets for modern commercial use. At the end are some European logos. Designer Fujiwara produced a handful of alphabet books through the twenties and thirties and none are easy to find. He has been accused of letting style trump legibility but who hasn't?
Sugoroku. 家庭教育世界一周すごろく [Katei Kyoiku Sekai Isshu Sugoroku]. Osaka Mainichi Shinbun, 1926 (Taisho 15). Colour printed broadside 109x80cm. Folded as issued; minor signs of use, a short tear repaired; not bad for a particularly large and vulnerable sugoroku. sold
You must have a smarter brain than me. I'm sure you do. It took me a few moments of slackjawed wonder before I realised this is a world map turned sideways and sat on. From where in space did the artist choose their viewpoint, unpeel the globe and spread it out flat? This a self titled educational game for the family. What does it teach us about our place on the planet and relationship to each other? Maybe that all maps are fiction.
The Japanese flag flying in the Canadian Rockies marks the first ascent of Mount Alberta by the Japanese Alpine Club in 1925.
Frank Lloyd Wright. Sugawara Eizo. 新橋演舞場 [Shinbashi Enbujo - Shinbashi Theatre]. Tokyo, Koyosha 1926 (Taisho 15). Small quarto publisher's decorated white boards blocked in gilt and red, printed card slipcase (this with some not so serious wear); [2],10pp and 71 plates (plans and photo plates, two colour plates with mosaic designs). Covers a bit smudged, a few pages with some browning or spotting; a very good copy of a smart book in a hardly sensible binding. sold
This could be called 'Frank Lloyd Wright's Tokyo Theatre' for it is, top to toe, Wright at his most Japanese. Even the red and gold design on the cover is pure Wright. Wright did design a never-built theatre while in Tokyo so, despite his aversion to sharing credit, or fees, perhaps he had some satisfaction in seeing the theatre of his colleague and acolyte Sugawara Eizo realised so exactly in his own image. Following the colour plates of mosaic designs are measured drawings and plans and photo views of the exterior and interior, where Wright is particularly rampant, with satisfying detail.
The theatre lasted longer than Wright's Imperial Hotel by a few years - it was rebuilt in 1982 - but this monograph seems to be the only real record that survives. As no drawings or plans for Wright's Ginza theatre are known to survive, this is as close as we get to his ambitions for a Japanese theatre.
OCLC finds two locations outside Japan, neither are architecture or design libraries, and a search of umpteen likely catalogues found no more.
Exposition - Beppu 1928. Hatsusaburo Yoshida. 中外産業博覧会 [Chugai Sangyo Hakurankai]. Kyoto? 1928 (Showa 3). Colour illustrated card cover 19x12cm with a 75cm long folding colour birds-eye view by Hatsusubaro on one side and text and photo illustrations on the other. Cover also by Hatsusubaro. sold
Panorama of and brief guide to the Chugai Industrial Expo held in Beppu in 1928. Beppu, on Kyushu, seems a brand new city built on the old spa town.
Hatsusaburo Yoshida was phenomenon. No Japanese city, town, district, tourist site or attraction in the twenties and thirties could be without a Hatsusubaro birds-eye view and for twenty odd years he travelled up down the land creating some 3,000 of them. He did take on help later in his career. There were other birds-eye artists but they don't seem to have spent the time surveying the view nor have his talent for twisting the landscape into the shape needed to be evocative, decorative and useful.
He returned sometimes and his views of cities ten years apart are probably the best guide to change we have. He did views of Hiroshima in the twenties and thirties and a final, numbing, series of the city as the bomb exploded and as a smoking ruin.
Ishikawa Savings Bank. 新築御披露 [Shinchiku o Hiro]. The bank [1927]. Broadside colour print 19x27cm. Folded and a bit rumpled. With a date stamp that suggests July 11, 1927. Au$30
Some sort of flyer apparently for a new housing exhibition and sale taking place on October 10 and 11. Not a bad triumph-of-the-worker image, in a humble untroublesome way.
Suguroku. 飛行機戦争双六 [Hikoki Senso Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Tanoshiki Danshi 1928 (Showa 3). Colour illustrated broadside game, 40x55cm. Folded, a nice copy. sold
A near breath-taking tour de force display of the Japanese talent for blending infantile cuteness, mayhem and sinister threat. Most bellicose nations produced books, pictures and games of and for toddler soldiers but they were usually dressed up kids playing at soldiers. Here we race, using dice, with our child pilot from his farewell ceremony to his triumphant return, destroying any number of enemy ships and planes along the way. Telling is the implication in the last triumphant scene that most important nations of the world supported Japan's war aims; not the US perhaps but Texas was in their corner.
Miyazaki is too young to have owned this when new but I can't help believing that images just like this lodged in the child and captivate the adult.
