5
The Shogakusei Zenshu, or Complete Works for Elementary Schools, runs to some 88 volumes of educational texts and literature - much of this in translation. Few of them seem elementary. I've seen maybe half the series and here are the best of those.
AMUNDSEN, Roald. 極地探検記 [Kyokuchi Tankenki]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1927 [Showa 2]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; illustrated title, one colour plate, b/w photo plates and illustrations through the text. Some browning and mild signs of use; a rather good copy.
Shogakusei Zenshu no.32. The cover is by Kawabata Ryushi; the colour plate and drawings inside are by Kabashima Katsuichi. Au$90
This one is a translation of Amundsen's polar adventures published only days after his Japan visit. The illustrations are headed by photos of him with local dignitaries and his open letter to the children of Japan.
DEFOE, Daniel. ロビンソン漂流記 [Robinson Hyoryuki]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1927 [Showa 2]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; illustrated title, two colour plates, b/w illustrations through the text. Some browning and mild signs of use; a rather good copy.
Shogakusei Zenshu no.72. Illustrated by Watanabe Shinya. sold
This one is a translation of Robinson Crusoe of course.
兒童スポーツ [Jido Supotsu]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1927 [Showa 2]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; illustrated title, five photo plates, b/w illustrations through the text. Some browning and mild signs of use; a rather good copy.
Shogakusei Zenshu no.70. Cover by Kosugi Misei. Au$85
This one is is sports. Kosugi is another of the generation who studied western painting at the beginning of the century, a founder of the Taiheiyogakai, and who, like so many of his contemporaries, returned to Japanese painting.
Murayama Tomoyoshi. 音楽の話と唱歌集 [Ongaku no Hanashi to Syokashu]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1927 [Showa 2]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; one colour plate, b/w illustrations throughout. Some browning and mild signs of use; a rather good copy.
Shogakusei Zenshu no.67. Covers - front and back - by Murayama Tomoyoshi. Au$125
This one covers music. Murayama maybe leads the list of avant-garde heros of interwar Japan. Founder of MAVO and communist troublemaker he had books and plays banned, ended up in prison and produced lively, humourous illustrations for children.
Okano Sakae [cover design]. 算術の話 [Sanjutsu no Hanashi]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1928 [Showa 3]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; illustrated title in red, one colour plate and numerous b/w illustrations and diagrams through the text. Some browning and mild signs of use; a remarkably good copy.
Shogakusei Zenshu no.73. sold
This one is arithmetic. I believe that if my maths texts looked like this my education would have been much more rewarding. This masterpiece of a cover is by Okano Sakae, one of the generation of artists who came through the western painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts at the beginning of the century, later a pupil of Kuroda Seiki, and collaborator with fellow Hakubakai students on the five volume Nihon Meisho Shasei Kiko.
Conan Doyle, Maurice Leblanc etc. 少年探偵譚 [Shonen Tanteitan]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1928 [Showa 3]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; illustrated title, two colour plates, b/w illustrations through the text. Some browning and mild signs of use; a rather good copy.
Shogakusei Zenshu no.45. Cover and title by Hatsuyama Shigeru, illustrations by Michioka Toshi, Imamura Nobuo and Emori Seihachiro. sold
This one contains translations of Sherlock Holmes, Lupin and a Subway Sam story by Johnston McCulley. Hatsuyama, best known as an illustrator, gave up illustration in the mid thirties, reluctant to feed military propaganda to children, and concentrated on printmaking, coming back to illustration after the war.
児童物理化学物語 [Jido Butsuru Kagaku Monogatari]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1928 [Showa 3]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; illustrated title, two colour plates, photo and b/w illustrations through the text. Some browning and mild signs of use; a rather good copy.
Shogakusei Zenshu no.61. Cover by Michioka Toshi. Au$90
This one is physics and chemistry.
Maekawa Senpan. 飛行機の話 - 潜水艦の話 [Hikoku no Hanashi - Sensuikan no Hanashi]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1928 [Showa 3]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; illustrated title, one colour plate, photo and b/w illustrations. Some browning and mild signs of use; a rather good copy.
Shogakusei Zenshu no.80. Cover by Maekawa Senpan. sold
This one covers the aeroplane and the submarine. Maekawa started as a cartoonist and became a founding member of the Sosaku Hanga movement. Like many of his generation, he continued to make his living as a commercial illustrator. Here he outshines many of his most celebrated prints.
子供生理衛生物語 [Kodomo Seiri Eisei Monogatari]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1928 [Showa 3]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; one colour plate, photo and b/w illustrations. Some browning and mild signs of use; a rather good copy.
Shogakusei Zenshu no.69. Colour frontispiece of germs by Unno Seiko, other illustrations by Hosokibara Seiki. Au$85
This one covers health. Seiki's illustrations aren't so well printed but they are lively and amusing.
Murayama Tomoyoshi. アラビヤ夜話集 [Arabiya Yawashu]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1928 [Showa 3]. Octavo, cloth backed publisher's illustrated card wrapper; one colour plate, full page b/w illustrations. Some browning and mild signs of use; a rather good copy.
Shogakusei Zenshu no.13. Cover, colour plate and illustrations by Murayama Tomoyoshi. sold
Here we have some Arabian Nights. Murayama maybe leads the list of avant-garde heros of interwar Japan. Founder of MAVO and communist troublemaker he had books and plays banned, ended up in prison, and produced lively, humourous illustrations for children.
Okamoto Ippei. 漫画双六 [Manga Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shufunotomosha 1929 (Showa 4). Broadside 64x94cm; colour printed. Folded, fairly minor signs of use. sold
A splendid large - on better paper than average at this time - and lively sugoroku - racing game - by the illustrator/cartoonist whose place in modern manga history is still being argued.
Issued as a New Year supplement to 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?
Okamoto Ippei began as a newspaper cartoonist for the Asahi Shimbun in 1912, travelled to the US in the twenties and brought back an enthusiasm for American comic strips which quickly spread through Japan. A prolific artist naturally, he has a long bibliography and much of it is found in scatterings in western libraries but I know of only one with a copy of this.
Sugoroku. Nakamura Susumu(?) & Hosokibara Seiki 新案スポーツ双六 [&] 運命運勢独占盤. [Shin'an Supotsu Sugoroku & Unmei Unsei Dokusen-ban]. Tokyo, Asahi Jan 1, 1929 (Showa 4). Broadsheet 54x79cm, colour game on one side, game printed in blue on the other. Folded as issued; some browning and a few small tears. sold
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 did learn from this is that if you want to meet girls then table tennis is the game. Nowhere else are they in sight.
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.
This seems quite rare, the Edo-Tokyo Museum has a ragged copy in their fabulous collection and I can't find another anywhere.
Shochiku-za Theater. Revue des Revues. モンパリ [Mon Paris]. [Osaka], Shochiku-za Theater [1929]. Quarto (27x20cm), 4pp, outer pages in red and black, photo illustrations. A vertical fold. sold
A svelte bit of typography and design, no? My first impulse is to want more legs but I decided that, as no doubt the designer did, that would be obvious, cute, camp, maybe even tawdry.
The Shochiku-za, built in Osaka in 1923, was Japan's first cinema devoted to foreign films and inspired and aspiring young designers did their publicity and newsletters. Presumably they worked on the usual terms: little money and no credit. There is quite a bit of remarkable anonymous graphic art of the twenties and early thirties with the Shochiku-za banner.
This publicity sheet or programme is for the March 1929 debut of the French film, Revue of Revues - renamed Mon Paris in Japan, a panoply of Paris cabaret acts and show girls strung together with a disposable plot by Joe Francis. Long thought lost it has recently been reconstructed from rediscovered fragments and it is occasionally remarkable, not least for its partial colouring. There are three magical moments and two of them are Josephine Baker.
Paired with the Revue is the opening of what I think is Scarlet Seas (眞紅の海), a 1928 thriller starring Richard Barthelmess and Betty Compton.
Kon Wajiro. 新版大東京案内 [Shinpan Dai Tokyo Annai]. Tokyo, Chuo Koronsha 1929 (Showa 4). Octavo publisher's illustrated boards and slipcase (wear and a couple of chips from the slipcase, rubbing and surface loss to some of the spine of the book - probably a label removed); 380pp and four double page maps, illustrations throughout, several full page. Text block pretty much detached from the covers. Not the best but certainly not the worst copy of this graphically smart but badly made book. sold
A new guide to a new Tokyo by the founder of Modernology. This is not a guide to carry round, the flimsy construction puts paid to that if you try. Tokyo is divided into culture, purpose and theme more than districts. It comes out of the years spent documenting Tokyo and its people after the 1923 earthquake - what is now called urban ethnology - and work done with other designers and architects shaping the new Tokyo. It is sort of an adjunct and a preface to the Modernologio books to come in the next few years.
ITAGAKI, Takao. 機械と芸術との交流 [Kikai to geijutsu to no koryu]. Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten 1929. Octavo publisher's coarse linen blocked in black, with two mounted photo ills; [4],186pp, numerous photo ills on 35 plates. sold
First edition of this study of art and the machine. Itagaki was one of the most industrious promulgaters of modernism in Japan in the twenties and thirties and this book is a fairly exciting and influential bit of Japanese modernism. Little was missed: architecture by Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mendelsohn, Vesnin, van der Rohe, Behrens, Garnier, Tatlin, Lissitzky, and Tchernikov, sky-scrapers and industrial structures like powerhouses; furniture by Gropius and Breuer; expressionist theatre design; photos and film stills by Man Ray, Biermann, Leger and Richter; motor cars, ships and planes; paintings and sculptures by Archipenko, Gleizes, Belling, Severini, Tatlin, Schlemmer - and such things as the machine in painting - from Menzel to Monet to Beckmann to Delaunay.
Sugoroku. 子乗物双六 [Ko Norimono Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Seugaku Sophomore, 1st January, 1930 (Showa 5). Colour lithograph broadside, 54x78cm; Folded, a nice copy with the playing pieces intact in the left margin. sold
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 and 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.
乗物大会 [Norimono Taikai]. Osaka, 1930 (Showa 5). 19x27cm colour illustrated wrapper; 8pp including wrapper, with three double page colour spreads and on the back a cartoon with a character that looks a lot like Uncle Nonto. A used copy, a crease across one page that looks like a production flaw, and still most acceptable. sold
Not the finest copy maybe but once I saw the first spread I wasn't going to take a chance on finding one better. The last spread is a cheerful enough procession of royals with cars and horses, the middle is a vivid and pleasing fire engine race and the first is a splendid vision of flying machines over the city.
There is a later book with much the same title in the NDL but it's not this and I can't find another copy of this anywhere.
電車ト乗物. Densha to Norimono. Osaka, Fujiya 1930 (Sowa 5). 19x26cm colour illustrated wrapper; 12pp including wrapper; full page colour illustrations on each. The last page has cartoon gags. Minor signs of use, an almost splendid copy. sold
Once inside the hero of this book is the tram - or streetcar if you prefer. There is a page of ships, a train, lots of cars, barges in the river, but trams throng the streets.
Kon Wajiro & Yoshida Kenkichi. モデルノロヂオ - 考現学 [Moderunorojio - Kogengaku]. Tokyo, Shun'yudo 1930 (Showa 5). Large octavo publisher's decorated cloth blocked in white, red and black with a somewhat frayed and used dustwrapper with some old repairs; 361pp, illustrations throughout, a few photo or colour plates. Mild browning, a rather good copy. sold
Second printing apparently, printed five days after the first according to the colophon. Who would have thought? Still, this is an extraordinary book; the gospel of Modernology and hard enough to find in decent condition, let alone with dustwrapper.
Kon and Yoshida have compiled an encyclopaedia, surely unsurpassed, of the people of Tokyo, fit to provoke unseemly enthusiasm in theoreticians and urban planners ever since. I gather that Kon's thesis is 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.
Wakamoto. Sugoroku. わかもと - 漫画健康すご六 [Wakamoto - Manga Kenko Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Wakamoto [c1930]. Colour poster 63x46cm. Folded, a pretty good copy. sold
An early bit of advertising from the health supplement makers and I don't think they've ever done better. The company started in 1929 in Shiba and opened a new plant in 1932; here the address is Shiba.
This is a sugoroku, a racing game, and it's a succinct lesson in economics and industrialisation. The body as a machine had been explored by more than one graphic artist but here is not so much an intermediate step as a rational alternative. A production line may be useful but when labour is cheap why would you spend money on machinery? A decent length of sewage pipe, some vats and a manned treatment pond will do the job.
Smoca Toothpowder Poster. タバコのみの歯磨スモカ [Tabako Nomi no Hamigaki Sumoka]. n.p. [c1930]. Colour poster 42x31cm. A hint of browning, a nice copy. Au$950
Not quite inexplicable but it would take a while to work out an explanation of this poster for Smoca Toothpowder. Samurai mask - sure, but why? Links to racist posters by manufacturers of whiteners of all kinds round the world? Indeed. But put it all together and ... you make sense of it.
Smoca's success - they are still going - was through clever advertising. From the start, in 1925, the company's founder, advertising man Kataoka Toshiro, hired the best artists and cartoonists. Book compilations of Smoca's newspaper advertising have made regular appearances since the fifties.
Sato Giryo. 現代猟奇尖端図鑑 [Gendai Ryoki Sentan Zukan]. Tokyo, Shinchosa 1931. Large octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in silver & gilt (edges a bit rubbed) in colour illustrated slipcase (edges a bit worn); [8],246,47pp; colour plates and hundreds of photo illustrations, many full page. Some browning at the end. Au$450
Fairly wonderful and very Japanese. The world has been ransacked for images but there is a philosophy and method behind this which makes it more than just sensational or a freak show. Exactly what it is I'm not sure.
The book is organised into sections: the erotic; the grotesque; nonsense; revue; strange perspective; sport; the avant-garde; the pose; novelty. While it's clear why many of these pictures are so organised it is sometimes puzzling - particularly for those of us who can't read the accompanying text.
The human predominates - women in scanties or less never need much excuse to be featured - but I suspect that it is not so much the naked body that is found grotesque here but the extremes to which the natural can be distorted for art and entertainment.
If the book stopped there it could be seen as just another example of the ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) culture of bourgeois Japan at the time - indeed current scholars have plundered this book for images when discussing ero-guro-nansensu - but the wider, more critical, stance here might be conveyed by one colour picture. Seemingly a typical painting in kitschy tourist brochure style it depicts a classical samurai and sword scene in a small village - nothing unusual until we notice the film crew in the right corner.
Noshigami - のし紙. A sample book of Noshigami - special paper for gifts - from the Kakuya Dyeing Workshop, Tokyo. Tokyo, 1931 (Showa 6). Octavo by size (230x165mm) stiff wrapper lettered by hand; 73 leaves of colour printed samples. Au$500
Noshi-gami is specially printed paper to be folded and attached to gifts as I understand it. That traditional forms are maintained is clear but by now - 1931 - the influence of modernism, compared to the couple of earlier examples I've seen, is obvious in the bright, flat forms with simpler, bolder shapes and sharper contrasts.
Tsutsumi Kanzo. 漫画双六 世界早のぞき [Manga sugoroku sekai haya nozoki]. Nagoya(?), Shin Aichi 1931. Colour lithograph broadside, 55x70cm; Folded, a touch of nibbling on one edge. a nice copy with the playing pieces intact in the right margin. sold
Sugoroku, these paper racing games, like most genres of Japanese graphics range from the fabulous, through insipid to kitsch to awful to downright disturbing. This one is fabulous.
Tsutsumi - one of the great pioneers of modern manga - takes two young aviators on quick world tour and shows them all the most important things. Curious, for me, is that each stop is not headed with the country name but some quality, some spectacle, some activity. Thus meeting Mussolini in Italy is titled 'Hero'; for baseball we see see Babe Ruth knocking over a New York skyscraper; tennis is Henri Cochet in France; film is of course Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood; science is a zeppelin in Germany; war is Chiang Kai-shek in China; manners are learnt in England from Ramsay MacDonald; I'm not sure what the gymnastic penguins in the Antarctic represent. And so on round the globe with celebrity and national stereotypes galore.
Hiroshi Hara [?]. 港々の猟奇街 [Minatominato no Ryokigai]. Tokyo, Fuzoko Shiryo 1931 [Showa 6]. Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper (a bit used); photo illustrations on ten pages, 167pp and three page publisher's list. Part of the series Dekameron Sosho. Au$200
A modest but characteristic contribution to the ero-guro-nansensu (erotic - grotesque - nonsense) fashion of late Taisho and early Showa Japan: jaunts among the strange denizens of ports. The small grainy photos are a gathering of the expected seamy misfits, outcasts and dock lowlife in the ports of the world mixed with a couple of baffling innocuous views and bar scenes from films. It will probably make sense to those who can read the book: the chapter headings - there are ten chapters of course - do seem to connect to the photos.
観察絵本 - キンダーブック [卜ケイ] [Kansatsu ehon - Kinda bukku - boku kei]. Tokyo, Fureberukan 1932 (Showa 7). Oblong folio, 26x38cm; 16pp including covers, all colour lithographs on light card. Covers dusty with some smallish flaws to the back cover; used but a very acceptable copy. The publisher's colophon, in a corner of the back cover, is framed in a small clock face and an owner has neatly numbered the clock and put hands in at 3 o'clock. Au$350
Telling the time for kids, one in a series of "observation" books begun in 1927 by the now named Froebel-kan - based on the principles of educator Friedrich Froebel. I've found images of a few of these early books and this is the most stylish by miles.
The Fureberukan has published magazines and squillions of worthy books since then, still does, and they look pretty revolting. This one steps into nauseating cuteness here and there but the good plates more than make up for it. I can't find a record of this anywhere.
Matsuyama Shisui. 船と造船所の話 [Fune to zosensho no hanashi]. Tokyo, Kinto-sha 1932 (Showa 7) Octavo publisher's colour illustrated boards and slightly rubbed slipcase (a hint of rubbing, a small surface chip from the top of the spine); 12,244pp, illustrated title, three photo plates, two folding plans, illustrations and photos through the text. An outstanding copy. sold
While the cover designer almost nods to the subject of the book and the title page lets you know there's technical stuff to follow, the outside and the inside, are only connected by the spirit of modernity and progress. Inside we find a worthy, serious book on shipbuilding for the younger reader, specifically boys - and damn serious boys at that. It looks as thorough and as technical as most adult monographs for English readers.
The Sanko Library has a copy and that's all I can find anywhere. I want to know who designed the cover, I can't find a credit in the book.
Wada Sanzo. 配色総鑑 [Haishoku Sokan]. Tokyo, Hakubisha 1933-34 (Showa 8-9). Six volumes (198x130mm) of plates in publisher's cloth with title labels; a 40 page booklet in wrappers and four colour sample plates on two folded card leaves all together in publisher's folding case with clasp and title label. The plate volumes constitute a total of 348 accordian folding card leaves with mounted colour samples arranged in pairs in the first two volumes, trios in the next two and quartets in the last two. The colour samples are all mounted and captioned in Japanese and English. The outer case a bit faded with a couple of small flaws; the separate cards browned; a rather good set with loosely inserted publisher's slips and errata slip. sold
First edition of this fabulous dictionary or grammar of colour - there is a recent reprint - a sophisticated synthesis of western and Japanese theory and usage. Wada's place in Japanese art has been assured since his 1907 prize winning painting Nanpu - which in western terms sits somewhere between Winslow Homer and beefcake pinup, much as Winslow Homer did - but Wada got more interesting as he got older and a return to Japanese painting in the twenties along with his design work and colour research pushed along an increasingly assured generation of artists with a grasp of west and east and an intent of their own.
Wada's name was unfamilar in the west until recent years but you don't have look far to see his ideas at work, spread by second and third hand borrowings.
Unknown to the amazingly bad Osborne 'Books on Colour Since 1500' (as a book a waste of ink and paper, as an ebook a waste of electrons); Yale has a copy in the Faber Birren colour collection and and there is now a set in the Met in New York; OCLC finds no other copy outside the National Diet Library. Neither can I in all the places where I can think to look.
Another set with the six volumes in separate publisher's printed card slipcases. With the two extra double page sample cards but without the summary, which is a 40 page pamphlet in Japanese, and there is no place here for it - it would not fit in any of the slipcases and I don't believe it would have its own case.
I have only seen this work before issued in a chitsu case and I wonder whether these separately cased volumes were sold individually or whether these were copies that were stored ready for orders never received. In excellent condition. sold
Advertising. [Katsumi Tsuji]. 傑作廣告圖案大集成奧付 Kessaku kokoku zuan daishusei okusuke. [more or less The Best Advertising ...]. Tokyo, Kobunsha 1934. Large octavo publisher's illustrated cloth, illustrated slipcase (rubbed and chipped but perfectly decent); 320pp with hundreds of illustrations (eight pages in colour, the rest in varying monochromes). Minor signs of use, a pretty good copy. sold
A splendid compendium of new advertising layout and typography; there is a quantity of examples from Europe and America but fortunately the bulk is Japanese. Both the book cover and the slipcase are pretty smart, the slipcase in particular, modern and dramatic. The 'AD' design on the cover of the book is a direct link to the Art Directors Club, presumably this is a forerunner of the current Tokyo Art Directors Club.
Burley Griffin in Manchuria
City Planning. Xinjing or Shinkyo (Changchun) - Manchukuo. 國都建設の全貌 [Kokuto Kensetsu no Zenbo]. Shinkyo, Manshukoku Kokumuin Kokuto Kensetsukyoku 1935. Colour printed sheet 54x78cm with colour bird's eye view on one side; colour plan, smaller b/w photo illustrations and text on the other. Folded as issued, minor signs of use. Official looking stamp dated 4.6.18 (June 18 1935). sold
In many ways the new capital of Manchukuo was - is - a planner's dream. Here was an empire building militaristic government wanting to both experiment with all that had been learned about city planning and show the west that not only could they do it, but do it better.
Changchun, a hybrid Chinese-Russian-Japanese railway town, was appointed the new capital, it was renamed, a five year plan for a new city was drawn up under the guidance of Professor Riki (or Toshikata) Sano in 1932, a quick compromise with a competing plan was made, and building was underway in early 1933. Local interests (ie the Chinese and Manchu population) and business were allowed notional input but the brief was clear: social theory, technology and architecture that made for an efficient colonial capital could be put into place, local self-interest could not.
Of course it was not so simple. This was to be a pan-Asian showcase, superior to western, especially colonial western, models, not equal. Confucianism, traditional ritual and Asian racial harmony were to be a central part of the city. What more could any urbanist ask for?
Students of the plan might like to start with Yishi Liu's 2011 doctoral thesis, Competing Visions of the Modern; where Griffin's Canberra plan and Griffin's diagrams for road classification are illustrated beside Xinjing's. By 1935 - when this view of the future city was produced - a lot was still dust and open space but, by the gods, whatever else they learnt from Burley Griffin's Canberra - and it was a lot - about planning a city, they certainly learnt how not to build a city.
City Planning. Xinjing or Shinkyo (Changchun) - Manchukuo. 國都新京建設の全貌 [Kokuto Shinkyo Kensetsu no Zenbo]. Shinkyo, Manshukoku Kokumuin Kokuto Kensetsukyoku 1936. Colour printed sheet 54x78cm with colour bird's eye view and panorama on one side; colour plan, smaller b/w photo illustrations and text on the other. Folded as issued, minor signs of use. sold
By 1936 - when this view of the future city was produced - we can see that our planners knew is what all architects know - by instinct? - to redraw plans to fit what has been built and what is likely to be built.
This is, I think, the third or fourth and last of such views of the new city. There were similar prints in 1933, maybe in 34, and 35. The city was declared open in 1937. I'm yet to see the first two but the changes between 1935 and 1936 are noteworthy.
The plan is much the same, mildy shrunk, and some buildings in our imaginary bird's eye view may reflect actual building but what becomes clear is that ambition has been scaled back to come closer to what they thought could exist next year. City blocks of large scale housing are now more sparse clumps of bungalows; elaborate Sino-Japanese modernism is plain modernism.
Sugoroku. 輝く日本双六 [Kagayaku Nihon Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Seugaku Sophomore, Ist January, 1938 (Showa 13). Colour printed broadside 53x79cm, folded as issued. Minor signs of use, one short marginal tear; with the playing pieces intact in the margin. sold
The New Year treat from the magazine Seugaku Sophomore (for the second year of primary school) and come 1938 all fun is gone. Our globe trotting young couple from earlier sugoroku look horribly serene and the world, and war, and life, is no longer a riotous cartoon.
When 'Shining Japan' - Kagayaku Nihon, the name of this game - became a motto for war in Asia I'm not sure. The Shining Japan Exposition - a military display no matter how many white doves fluttered over the battleships - was in 1936 and Japan was long a crusader fighting for Pan-Asian peace, liberated from colonialism. The name surfaces still, used by ultra nationalists in Japan.
Kamishibai. Kijima Takeo. 債券往来 [Saiken Orai]. Kobe, Yokusan Bunka 1943 [Showa 18]. 20 sheets (27x39cm) of card with colour illustrations on one side and text on the other. A small piece from a corner of the last card; signs of use but decent enough. Without a card envelope these usually came in but complete. sold
This is a head scratcher. At first glimpse a wartime kamishibai in cartoon form telling the story of the bonds business seems so bizarre that it is irresistable. On second thought it makes sense; selling war bonds was a big deal in every country.
On third thought it gets bizarre again. I may be merely uneducated but of all the forms of Japanese graphic art, kamishibai are the most peculiar in that the vast bulk of all that I've seen are godawful. Even given the preponderance of sickening morality and national good in kamishibai stories it is astonishing how few good artists - a particularly versatile bunch in Japan - set their hand to them.
This one is a happy exception. Which is where it gets head scratching again. Produced by the cultural arm of the Yokusan - the press ganged ruling party of wartime Japan - who weren't known for taste, humour or delicacy and who usually produced numbingly awful war propaganda kamishibai ... how did this get through?
Kamishibai are public stories usually told by kamishibai men who set up a folding stand on the back of their bicycles and enacted the dramas illustrated on the cards. Held up with the plates in order, the text for the first picture is on the back of the last. The sheets are transferred to the back as the story continues; the text for the second picture is on the back of the first, and so on.
Wada Sanzo. Wood Block Hand Prints - Japanese Life and Customs - A set of six pictures by Sanzo Wada. [aka 昭和職業絵盡, Showa Occupations or Japanese Vocations in Pictures]. Kyoto Hanga-In [195-?]. Publisher's patterned board folder (24x30cm) with illustrated label; six colour woodcut prints, loose as issued. A scratch to the label, an excellent copy, the prints bright and fine. This contains the flower sellers, the fortune teller, the weavers, the soba vendor, the komuso, and the farming family. Au$450
In the late thirties Wada gathered an in-house team of woodblock cutters and printers and began work on a projected series of 100 prints recording occupations in his changing Japan. Some were traditional and vanishing and some were the product of modern industrialised Japan. From here we can see that some of those modern jobs barely lasted out the century.
The prints began appearing in 1939 and struggled on until 1943 when two series totalling 48 prints had appeared. After the war the project was resurrected by the Kyoto Hanga-In and a third series of 24 prints appeared from 1954 to 56. They also re-did earlier prints from new blocks; the originals had been destroyed. According to Ross Walker (Ohmi Gallery), the owners of Kyoto Hanga-In told him that they could not afford too many cherry woodblocks so their blocks for the prints of the fifties were planed and re-used and nothing before 1960 survives.
This album is obviously for foreign consumption and contains six prints from the first and second series. The paper size is smaller than the separately issued prints but the quality of printing is no less, often better than copies of the separate prints I've seen. The colours are strong and vibrant and the extra embossing that is such an important part of the print - and can't be seen in reproduction - is deep and crisp where used.
These copies aren't lettered or signed, one has the artist's seal. I've traced two other sets and both hold the same six prints but small variations in the prints and signatures occur in all.
Wada's drawings have a modest charm and get better the more you look at them. The best may not hold your gaze at first but after a while you realise that they are the work of a great master of observation and deceptively simple expression. The fortune teller is not the focus of his picture, his customers are. Look at the impossible bull neck of the soba seller and the shadow pedestrians and there is the way this young human bulldozer sees the world. He refuses to become one of the slumped, defeated customers of a fortune teller.
