MORRIS, Gouverneur. Yellow Men and Gold. NY, Dodd Mead 1911. Octavo publisher's cloth blocked in white and blind; illustrated dustwrapper with a large piece gone from the front, professionally repaired by the look of it around the edges; six duotone plates, smaller illustrations by Charles Falls. A rather good copy. Au$300

First edition of this rip-roaring thriller in which the Yellow Men are not the malevolent peril but brave, stalwart and devoted to their elected captain Bessie who, it is suggested, has a touch of Africa in her veins. Still, despite the shocking reversal of roles in a thriller of the period, there's more than enough racism to go round. Or as any character might say, "Plentee dam lacist."
The wimp in glasses on the dustwrapper looks quite like Morris.

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Perry and the black ships kawaraban. 亞墨利加蒸氣車 : 力士力競 [Amerika Jokisha : Rikishiryoku Kei]. n.p. [1854]. Two woodcut kawaraban on a single sheet 48x36cm, the lower print a colour woodcut. Horizontal crease, a few small holes and nicks in the edges; a pleasing copy.  sold

A handsome portrait of the small steam train that Perry brought to Japan as a gift paired with a fabulous scene of the wrestlers who loaded the Emperor's gift of rice to the Americans. The rikishi - wrestlers - fling them about, each handle two with ease, and an American perched on top, while four Americans struggle to carry one. Since the train has magically grown to near full size perhaps this is also due some healthy skepticism of the news media. This was issued as a coloured woodcut, not something that is completely unknown but it's pretty special.
What was unknown to me until now is that both prints are on a single sheet of paper, not two sheets pasted together. This is something I've never seen before. Single prints this large have always, until now, been on two attached sheets of paper. Large sheets of paper clearly cost a lot more than two ordinary sheets. Even cheap illicit news sheets have a hierarchy. This strengthens my suspicion that there was already a market of collectors as well as the slack-jawed peasantry.
The Sanadahoumotsukan - Sanada Treasures Museum - has a copy of the coloured wrestler print paired with, on top, a Perry squadron steam ship rather than the train. And I wish to boast that this - the wrestler half - is a much better copy than that exhibited by the Sumo Museum at the Kokugikan.
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.

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Shochikuza News. Osaka, Shochiku 1930-31. Eleven issues, 22x15cm publisher's colour illustrated wrappers; mostly four pages and covers.  sold

A small, well chosen group. Shochiku, now part of the megafauna of the entertainment industry, spread into film from Kabuki in 1920, built Japan's first western theatre in Osaka in 1923, and soon had a chain of cinemas showing foreign movies. This was their weekly news letter. I think the cover was shared but the contents were printed for each theatre. Inspired and aspiring young designers presumably worked on the usual terms: no credit and less money. There is quite a bit of remarkable anonymous graphic art of the twenties and early thirties with the Shochiku-za banner. Not all of it is good but what is can be fabulous. As the thirties progressed the adventurousness evaporated and by the mid-late thirties they looked like film magazines from anywhere.

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Shirase Nobu &c. 南極記 [Nankyokuki or Nankyoku-ki]. Tokyo, Nankyoku Tanken Koenkai 1913 (Taisho 2). 22x15cm publisher's blue cloth blocked in silver and blind (spine fairly rubbed); photo illustrations and four colour plates on 38 leaves, mounted facsimile of a card from General Maresuke; folding map at the end. Inner hinges repaired by an amateur but neatly enough, browning of the text paper. A used but acceptable copy. sold

First edition. The official account of the Japanese Antarctic expedition of 1910-12 taken from the diaries of Shirase and other records. This is distinct from Shirase's personal account published in 1913. One of Japan's heroes for some time, by the 1940's Shirase was forgotten, broke and hadn't long paid off his debts for the expedition. He died in 1946. Now of course he is celebrated in statue, stamps, ships, books and memorials.

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The pariah, French troublemaker A 

TRISTAN, Flora. Memoires et Peregrinations d'une Paria 1833-1834. Deuxieme edition. Paris, Ladvocat 1838. Two volumes quarter straight grain calf and mottled boards. With half titles and final leaf with contents and errata (this with a smudge). An excellent set. It took me a while to decide that this is a modern binding; one of those masterpieces of period that are faultless in style, material, and execution. French binders could still turn out a proper 1840 binding a generation or two ago; can they still? The give away is the blank endpapers - the marbled endpapers are right. sold

This is not the second edition, no matter what the title page says. This is the first edition with a new title page which adds 'Memoires'. Perhaps publisher Arthus Bertrand - who pretty much made their fortune publishing official explorations and travels - became aware of what they had on their hands: a revolutionary tasteless enough to be shot by an abandoned husband. Whatever happened, it must have happened fast: copies with the Arthus Bertrand imprint are near extinct while copies with this Ladvocat imprint are merely high on the endangered list.
Two sternly truncated English translations appeared in 1986 and at least one of those translators - Jean Hawkes - thought that this supposed second edition in the same year was a sign of the book's success. I have seen that conclusion in just about every other work on Flora Tristan. These two volumes are the first half of a promised four volumes and obviously publisher, pariah, and public were not enthused enough to keep it going. Has no-one investigated? There was never a second edition. The next printing I've found is the Chilean 1941 Spanish translation. And there still isn't a complete English translation. The French didn't take much notice of Flora until she was shot but Peru did: the book was banned and burnt, or vice versa, and her Peruvian uncle cut off her allowance.
There's a lot of people working hard to raise Flora Tristan to secular sainthood, not without justification. From start to early finish her story is astonishing but she must have been, unless you were one of the many men in love with her, hard to be around for long. Aristocratic arrogance, ferocious feminism, savage socialism and mystical martyrdom all seem to have run at 127% at the same time, all the time.
Her disdain for George Sand's pusillanimous approach to men was righteous, she was never so tame. Still, I find it hard to swallow her accounts of the calm reasoned responses of South American grandees as she reviled everything that made for their existence: slavery, grinding down of women, natives, the poor ... these reports may let us read her arguments but I suspect these are the conversations she had in her head after they had bundled her off their property.
Her travels of a pariah were, by the way, to Peru in search of her father's wealthy family. She had been scurrying, penniless, around France with her daughter until then, in hiding from her husband, and she returned to continue her life of hiding until her husband tracked her down and shot her. That didn't kill her and she could come out of hiding once he was in prison. Typhoid, exhaustion, and who knows what killed her while campaigning for a universal workers' union - men and women.

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B

CONSTANT, l'abbe [Alphonse; later to be Eliphas Levi]. Doctrines religieuses et sociales. Paris, Le Gallois 1841. 12mo later marbled boards (a bit rubbed). Some minor signs of use, light pencilling, a bit of browning. Very acceptable. Au$300

First (only?) edition. Don't be fooled, this may be dressed in a Christian cassock - Constant never reached the rank of abbe in the church - but it is dangerous radical, socialist, heretical stuff. I think this is his third book, coming between his Bible de Liberte (for which he was arrested) and Assomption de la Femme and the emancipation of women is a chapter here. I'm not sure any modern feminist would be happy with his view of women but he was trying hard. As he had to, being one of the inner circle of devotees of Flora Tristan. He published her l'Emancipation de la Femme, ou le Testament de la Paria in 1846, two years after her death.
He drifted into magic in the 1850s after an action packed but disappointing decade for revolutionaries. And like many mystics and magicians, Constant/Levi seems to have published more after his death than he did alive.

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C

BRIANCOURT, Math. [Mathieu]. L'Organisation du Travail et l'Association. Paris, Librairie Phalansterienne 1848. 13x9cm contemporary roan backed mottled boards (rubbed); 8pp catalogue of the Librairie Societaire at the end. Au$80

I'm pretty sure these are the sheets, with a new title page, of the second printing published by the Librairie Societaire in 1846; the first edition appeared in 1845. They might have used standing type or stereos but I doubt it. There were fairly speedy German and American translations.
This is dangerous rabble-rousing socialist stuff in the wake of Fourier. There is a photo of an old Briancourt online but it could be any flint-hearted stubborn old Frenchman. He was a dedicated and dogged Fourieriste until the end.

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D

FAURE, Philippe. Journal d'un combattant de Fevrier ... notes historiques et de temoignages de la main de Lamennais, de Madame Adele Victor Hugo, de Victor Hugo, de Louis Blanc, de Kossuth, de Ledru-Rollin, de Saffi, de Herzen, de Berjeau, de Greppo, de Bru, de J.Harney, d'Alphonse Bianchi, d'Alfred Talandier, et d'autres amis de Philippe Faure. Publie a Jersey par Auguste Desmoulins. Jersey printed by C. Le Feuvre 1859. 18x12cm contemporary half calf (a bit rubbed) and mottled boards. Red Japanese seal on the title page; some browning but nothing serious. Au$165

Yet another troublesome Frenchman of the 1840s. This is Faure's journal of fighting on the barricades in 1848. He turned journalist after this and caused even more trouble, winding up in exile in London and Jersey after a failed insurrection against Louis Napoleon's 1851 coup. His friend Desmoulins published this, augmented with contributions by a squadron of his illustrious fellow exiles after his death at 33 in 1856.

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E  Not quite and more than complete

[TOURREIL, Louis-Jean-Baptiste de]. Doctrine fusionienne : lettres apostoliques. Paris, Chez Madame Tourreil 1860. [Various printers 1845 to c1861]. Octavo half morocco (rubbed, cloth marked). A compilation of separately printed items that range between four and 78 pages. Each letter numbered by hand so as to correlate with the table of contents and solve the problem of making sense of it all. Without letters 16 and 17 - see below. Signs of use but nothing serious: corners bumped, scattered browning; pretty good. Neat inscription of Jules Remy who may or may not be the naturalist traveller. The errata have been transcribed into the text in an equally neat hand. Au$500

From what I can figure out from skimming a few digested paragraphs, Tourreil's fusionism is a casserole of Fourier, Leroux, Saint-Simon, revelation and insect hives. A rich dish for academics in gender studies. He did have some disciples and they did more to propagate his utopian notions after his death than he managed.
This contains the collected title page and preface leaf for his Lettres 1 to 22 dating from 1845 on (but for 16 and 17), a table of contents, a 30 page analytic table, and an errata leaf for those 22 letters. Then come four more items: 1. Lettre ... a notre frere D....., de Bordeaux ... February 1861; 30pp; 2. Oraison Pleniere [... &c], undated; 28pp and a plate; 3. Credo de la religion fusionienne L'Amour Divin-Esprit de Verite; undated 12mo, 12pp, title partly in manuscript; 4. Loi des Lois; undated folding broadside with an engraving.
I found a description of a copy that apparently belonged to Gustave Mouravit which had all 22 letters and the four extra items, described by Mouravit as everything Tourreil published, without doubt unique. Claims by owners like this should be treated as dubious. The BN doesn't come up anything like all the letters but they do have something titled Religion fusionienne apparently written with Leon Galibert and printed in 1845
Our copy has 32 blank leaves where letters 16 and 17 should be. It seems clear that when the first owner bought his letters Madame Tourreil had run out of copies of those two but she did have what had been printed since. This often happens with compilations of separate items put together by the author.

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F

Louis Menard. Hermes Trismegiste : traduction complete ... etude sur l'origine des livres hermetiques. Paris, Didier 1866. Octavo quarter morocco and mottled boards. Occasional patches of browning depending on paper stock. Rather good.  Au$200

First edition; there were a few more over the next hundred years. Menard was another of those damn French socialists of the 1840s, fleeing to London after 1848 to escape a prison term. He settled down eventually into a life of respectable mystic paganism and pedagogy.

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G to Z

CLARETIE, Jules. Les Murailles Politiques de la France Pendant la Revolution de 1870-71. Chute de l'Empire - La guerre - Le siege de Paris. Complement indispensable de l'Histoire de la Revolution de 1870-71. Paris, Publication de la Librairie Illustree [187-?]. Hefty quarto quarter calf and mottled boards (some wear to edges); tri-colour title page; ii,1010 pages of examples and 12pp table of posters. Many posters or notices printed on colour backgrounds, a number printed on coloured papers. Some browning and spotting; pretty good. Au$275

The revolution, the war, the siege, the commune, as seen on the walls of Paris: the posters, proclamations, notices ... It is, as the title says, an indispensable complement to Claretie's five volume history of the revolution; I suggest the history is the dispensable part.

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Wada Sanzo. 色名総鑑 (増訂版) [Shikimei Sokan (Zoteiban)]. Tokyo, Hakubisha 1935 (Showa 10). 19x11mm publisher's cloth case with 171 mounted colour samples on 57 accordian folding leaves; and card bound book; 182,8pp. Colour samples named in Japanese, English and occasionally French or German; table of multi language lists of colour names. Less than usual offsetting and browning despite what my photographs say, rather good in original printed card case with two folds repaired. Au$800

Second edition, enlarged and revised, of Wada's first serious attempt at colour nomenclature published in 1931. I can tell you there are a few more pages and eleven more colour chips in this edition. There seem to be significant changes in the text volume but I can't read them. Several colours have changed - that is the hue, tint or shade, not the name - and seem to this untrained eye to accord better with their names, though I would still pick an argument with his 'fawn'.
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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Nakajima Shunko. 古今秘伝築山庭造法 [Kokon Hiden Tsukiyama Teizoho]. Osaka, Aoki Suzando 1896 (Meiji 29). Three volumes, 18x12cm, publisher's wrappers with title labels. Profusely illustrated throughout. The third volume, which is all double page and folding plates, has a pasted paper spine rather than stitching and is coming loose. An outstanding set in colour illustrated outer wrapper (fukuro). sold

The secrets (hiden means secret techniques) of Tsukiyama garden design, which I have now learned is something I always wanted: gardens with artificial hills, streams and ponds.

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Exposition - Hokkaido 1931. 国産振興北海道拓殖博覧会記念写真帖 [Kokusan Shinko Hokkaido Takushoku Hakurankai Kinen Shashin Jo]. Hokkaido Takushoku Hakurankai, 1931 (Showa 6). 27x37cm publisher's patterned silk, cord ties (browning around the edges); title page, photo illustrations on 35 leaves of heavy gloss paper, 12 pages of text and a plan. Au$600

A luxurous celebration, with exemplary printing, of the 1931 Hokkaido Colonization Exposition. Had you heard of it before now? Me neither. Thankfully the important old men who always head such books don't take up too much space and it gets more interesting the further we go in. What's wonderful is the number of pavilions that might have come straight out of the pages of the exposition volume of the Gendai Shogyo Bijutsu Zenshu - the Complete Commercial Artist - of 1928-30. Either the same designers were at work or the organisers handed out copies of the book and said, "go for your life."
At the very end we find what seem to have been the big draws for the 600,000 plus visitors: the human cannonball, the world's fattest woman, and dancing girls.

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Hearse. Photograph of a gentleman and a fine Japanese shinto hearse - miyagata. mid c20th. 24x30cm photographic print. Au$80

Stop fretting over whether that man is on the wrong side of the coffin. Look at the hearse. I'd be proud to be carried to the furnace in that mobile shrine. After the advent of the car, as the 20th century drove on the hearse devolved from the display case on wheels it had been to being little more than a stretch limo for the terminally lazy. Modern versions of these miyagata shinto hearses persist but they look like over-pimped slide on campers on the back of a ute.
I wonder about the location; it doesn't look a neighbourhood where many people would be able to afford this stylish a send off. But weddings and funerals are occasions for crippling expenses; it's only births that we skimp on.

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Catalogue - fire engines. Nihon shobo-ki seizo kabushikigaisha. 日本式消防ポンプ [Nihonshiki Shobo Ponpu]. The company 1932 (Showa 7). 26x19cm publisher's illustrated wrapper; 9 leaves printed on one side, photo illustrations. A chomp from the top edge. Au$150

A catalogue of proper fire engines. This is when the last fireman down the pole, struggling into his boots, tenaciously grips the last rung of the ladder as he flaps like a flag behind the speeding engine. There is as well as the standard engines, a nifty little run-about, a motor trike and some handy accessories.
Seems not much survives of the Japan Firefighting Machinery Co now but a few small pumps and a much prized three wheeler in fire museums. I found none of their catalogues in any library.

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Tobacco hikifuda. Iwaya & Co. Hikifuda by Iwaya & Co for their Shotengu cigarettes and other brands from American manufacturers Wm. S. Kimball and S.F. Hess Tokyo? Iwaya c1890? 27x38cm illustrated lithograph. Folded and frayed around the edges; pretty decent. Au$100

Iwaya Matsuhei was a promoter's promoter. After a few false starts - the odd incendiary rebellion, lawsuit and bankruptcy - he got into tobacco in the 1880s. Importing and learning from American companies like Kimball and manufacturing his own Tengu cigarettes from about 1884. He was soon a flamboyant plutocrat about town, bannering how much tax he paid and how many charity workers he supported (a lot). Soon came the great Tobacco Advertising War between Iwaya and his rival Murai Kichibei.
This restrained hikifuda, which features more of Iwaya's imports than his own brands must come early in the history. Shotengu - small Tengu - was only one of a panoply of Tengu cigarettes - large Tengu, medium, gold Tengu, silver Tengu ... through to happy nation Tengu.

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Miki Kosai (and/or Utagawa Yoshimori?) Wayou 字混部類 (和洋字混部類 on cover label). [Wayo Jikon Birui]. Tokyo, Hozando and others 1872 (Meiji 5). 18x12cm publisher's wrapper with title label (marked and a bit used); 30 leaves (60 pages) with small illustrations throughout. Inscription on the back cover; a voracious but neat bug has chewed a hole through the top margin of the first nine leaves and stayed outside the page borders; the first few illustrations with some neatish colouring. In all pretty good. Au$500

An endearing and uncommon little guide to placing stuff in the modern world: lots of common enough items and some that would soon become common, like clocks, binoculars, uncomfortable chairs, and cameras. Each is illustrated, named and described in Japanese and named in western capitals. But in phonetic Japanese, not English or any other European language, what would become romaji.
Miki Kosai signed the preface but Waseda attribute the book to Utagawa Yoshimori who presumably did the pictures. I'm inclined to believe Waseda. This is called part one but it seems no part two has ever been seen. Worldcat finds the NDL entry and a copy at the Huntington.

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Sarah S. Cornell & Toriyama Hiraku. 天然地理学 [Tennen Chirigaku] Tokyo &c, Shoyusha 2533 (ie 1873 or Meiji 6). Three volumes, 22x15cm publisher' wrappers with title labels (marked). Coloured illustrations, maps and diagrams. Smudges and minor signs of use; rather good, specially for a school book. Au$500

Cornell's Primary Geography was printed in English for Japanese schools in 1866 - one of the first western school books in the country. I'm not sure which of her books has been translated here and I doubt it matters much. I guess they did their job: to mislead children, bore them, and induce a dislike of geography. The Japanese versions are nicer to look at than the blobby grey American originals.

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Fusuma design album. 君が代印御襖集 [Kimigayo Shirushi Ofusumashu]. n.p. [193-?]. 29x23cm publisher's cloth with paper label; 34 card leaves with colour patterns, mostly double page. At the end are two cloth samples with designs from the album in different colours. One small mounted stripe sample might be missing. Au$600

This is volume six of a series of catalogues cum pattern books of fusuma - paper for sliding screens. Since I can't find a mention of any other copies I have no clue how many there were, nor whether they appeared over a number of years. Kimigayo is the national anthem - the range or the maker's name I don't know.
Fusuma catalogues are usually pretty blah; postwar catalogues should be avoided by all but sturdy cultural archaeologists. Seems makers didn't have a high opinion of the tastes of someone who would buy their screens ready made. This one is the only exception I've seen so far. Some is bland but a lot is high class and chic in the neo-neo-rimpa style, ie the reworking of tasteful luxurious antiquity inspired by the turn of the century work of neo-rimpa designers like Korin, Sekka, Nosaburo et al.
The printing is outstanding and as usual with such stuff, hard to photograph: the aged gold and silver, heavy raised textures, overprinting, embosssing ... need to be seen in the right light. Very Kyoto and far from the brazen tizz of Tokyo and Osaka. Until we find, at the very end, the stamp of the Yamaguchi Hyoguten of Shibuya, Tokyo. Hyoguten usually translates as mounting store - a business that makes scrolls, screens and sliding screens. There are now Yamaguchi Hyoguten everywhere except Shibuya it seems. I don't know whether any of them are related. Still, I insist the design and printing belong to Kyoto.

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Albumen photograph of a young Japanese woman dressed as a man. n.p. c1880? Albumen print mounted on card, 10x6cm, with red border, printed on the back. Edges of the print a touch nibbled. Au$650

Not so long ago I found an ambrotype of two young Japanese women dressed as men; a wondrous and inexplicable thing. This is not in the same league but it is intriguing.
Inscribed on the back is, I'm told, 吉原江戸町 大文字楼 半太夫 - Yoshiwara Edomachi Daimonjiro Handayu. The Daimonji was one of the grandest of pleasure palaces in the Yoshiwara.
I'm not convinced by this inscription. Another photograph from the same source had a similar inscription on the back in a different, possibly earlier, hand: 大文字 ？?太夫 - Diaimonji _ _Tayu. Tayu can mean a high ranking courtesan and certainly that photo is of a completely frocked out woman in a frocked out setting. But our photo is in a different setting on a different mount.
This could be a portrait of a woman dressed to suit the taste of some clients. But that coat, waistcoat and maybe shirt collar seem too large for the properly tailored suit that a high class tayu should have and it is a gentleman's outfit, from hat to watch chain. Or the inscription could be a decision made by an owner of both photos that this was a courtesan of that brothel. It seems to be a common decision that any woman dressed as a man was a prostitute.
They both look like they were taken in photographers' studios. The undoubted courtesan has some props: an overwhelming robe is on the wall behind her, she has a charcoal brazier and kettle, a dish of snacks and a long pipe. They are both on western looking carpets, not the same one.
*In Chinese 半太夫 can be an unmarried woman or it could be a woman who is not afraid of the enemy.

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Muneaki Mihara. 自在教育法図解 [Jizai Kyoikuho Kuzai]. The Teaching by Pictures the Way of Impraving Freely am Easely the Natural Constitution of Man [sic]. Ritsuma Akiko, 1888 (Meiji 21). Broadside 70x53cm, woodblock printed, folding into publisher's limp cloth covers 17x13cm with printed label. Covers browned with a splodge on the back; a nice copy Au$450

An enchanting and self evident exposition on the value of pictures in learning. Seemingly as simple as a phrenology chart but judging by the amount of text worked into all those different parts of the brain perhaps a lot more complex. From the little, as an illiterate, I can glean on brain function as outlined here this might sit somewhere between phrenology and neurophysics. The open area at the very centre of the brain is labelled 未詳 - unknown.

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De Luxe Building Co., Los Angeles. De Luxe Flats. A book of flats and duplex homes ... Los Angeles 1920. 17x25cm publisher's printed wrapper; 64pp, numerous photo illustrations and plans. Used, the last three or four pages with a crease, pretty good. sold

The very soul of old Los Angeles: Moorish palaces alongside quaint olde Englishe cottages alongside southern mansions alongside Spanish mission alongside Swiss alpine alongside colonial alongside English Georgian alongside Italian alongside New England alongside French provincial alongside ...
Images from the De Luxe Building Co's catalogues of Plan-kraft and suchlike home catalogues and this are easy to find thanks to the wizardry of digital reproduction but the actual catalogues are not so easy to find. Worldcat found four locations for this flats catalogue, quite a few more for the various house catalogues that start from about 1912.
From flats Ada Bell Maescher, the ambitious president of the company, soon moved into serious city apartment buildings and even film production. In 1922 the company produced the comedy "Night Life in Hollywood" which, to the disappointment of many of us, showed Los Angeles as the handsome, domestic model city it truly was. You can watch four of the six reels online.

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日本の兵隊さん [Nihon no Heitai-san]. Tokyo, Yonen Kurabu 1933 (Showa 8). 19x26cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; 32pp, illustrated throughout in red and blue or black. Some browning blotches, rather good. Au$125

A fun filled manga view, for boys, of life in the military. It's all a romp but sailors have way more excitement and an easier life than soldiers.

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Euthanasia Or Turf, Tent and Tomb. London, Routledge 1893. Octavo publisher's illustrated glazed boards (rubbed with wear to edges and hinges). Certainly read but a very decent, even proper, copy. Au$250

First edition, yellowback issue. It was also issued in cloth at a higher price. A title for every reader; the cover of this romantic thriller might convince us that is a book for the horsey set but what is that monk doing on the field? Newcastle University attributes this to E.W. Hornung. What did their librarian know that no-one else does?
What shines through here is that the aristocracy must be judged by different standards to the rest of us. The hero, the poor younger brother Lord George, is seen as the "soul of honour and loyalty and truth" by all around him while he behaves appallingly by lower class standards. The Euthanasia of the title is indirect, by way of expiation, but I guess it is there. The rest of the title takes place in England, Hungary and Naples. Despite its inclusion in Hubin there is no murder here except of ethics.

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FORBES, David W. Hawaiian National Bibliography 1780 - 1900. Sydney, Hordern & University of Hawaii 1999-2003. Four volumes quarto publisher's cloth. As new in original packing boxes. Au$200

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DUNN, Bob. Angling In Australia : its history and writings. Sydney, Ell 1991. Quarto publisher's cloth and dustwrapper; profusely illustrated. As new in its original packing box. Signed by the author on the half title. Au$75

The essential bibliography.

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HEARN, Lafcadio. 17 titles in 18 volumes published by Hearn in his lifetime: Exotics and Retrospectives; Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan; Shadowings; Kotto; A Japanese Miscellany; Kokoro; Gleanings in Buddha Fields; Kwaidan; In Ghostly Japan; Youma; Two Years in the French West Indies; Some Chinese Ghosts; Out of the East; Japan, an Interpretation; Gombo Zhebes; Stray Leaves; Chita. Tokyo 1981-82 - see note. Varied octavos, publishers decorated cloth. Pretty much as new. A reprint of the Perkins' bibliography of these titles accompanies the set. Au$1000

When I bought this group of gleaming first editions on the strength of some photos I feared that the photographer had been too kind and the flaws would only be seen after I opened the box. But no. The books are better than the photos. That's because this is a set of facsimiles published by Yushodo in an edition of 300 copies in 1981 and 82. Never heard of it until now.
It is a publishing triumph, I guess. And no doubt it was ferociously expensive. Still, here it is at a lot less than it cost me.

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Uryu Masakazu & Hashimoto Sadahide 西洋新書 [Seiyo Shinsho]. Tokyo, Yamatoyo Kihei (Eto Kihei for volumes six & seven) 1872 - 75 (Meiji 5 to 8). 23x15cm, 7 volumes in 14 parts publisher's wrappers with printed labels (recently restitched); seven double page colour maps, a folding plan, a folding plate, two double page and some 174 other illustrations (most half page) by Sadahide. Some surface nibbling of part covers toward the outside of the bundle; a rather good set. Au$3500

A complete set, which is rare, of this expansive gathering of news from the west. The title is well represented in libraries but I could not find a complete set anywhere outside Japan. Few libraries get close. Even the electronic version held by many seems to be incomplete.
I can't work out the organisation of this but, roughly, the first half of the work is devoted to the United States and Mexico before moving on to Europe. A lot is military with much on the civil war, pretty up to date and natural enough for a country just emerged from their own civil war and having to face and deal with the threat of the west. The plan of Paris is dated 1867 which together with the folding plate of Paris vignettes is from material presumably collected at the Exposition.
Sadahide is not so well served by his block cutters as he was with his masterpiece books like the views of Yokohama life and Meriken Shinshi but there is plenty of charm and characteristic sharp-eyed fluid precision. He was, after all, getting on and was dead before the sixth and seventh volumes appeared so he may not have had much to say about it.

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London - Melbourne Air Race. Nederlands Succes. Melbourne Race. n.p. [1934?]. Colour lithograph on card 47x31cm, with a mounted colour illustration. Edges a bit knocked with a short tear in one corner; hanging strip or card stand on the back pretty much gone. Au$450

A shop placard for a new brand of cigars that celebrates the Dutch success in the Melbourne Centenary or MacRobertson Air Race. The Dutch KLM plane Uiver arrived second and won on handicap. The onlaid colour illustration is, I suppose, the cigar box label. I found a couple of adverts in newspapers dating into 1936 for Melbourne Race cigars but nothing else.

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