SACHS, Edwin O. A Record of the International Fire Exhibition ... London, 1903 ... principal historical exhibits, the leading mechanical and constructional exhibits ... report of some of the exhibition events. London, British Fire Prevention Committee [1903 or 04?]. Octavo publisher's cloth (spine a touch faded and worn at tips); 274 illustrations (one folding), folding plan. Quite good. Au$600

All there was to know about fire fighting at the beginning of the century. The exhibition marked a new epoch in fire prevention for the British Empire. Sachs himself said so in the first sentence and he was someone to be listened to when it came to fire prevention. And moustaches.

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Tashiro Hikaru. Four ink and wash drawings for illustrations. n.p. (196-?) The best picture is 31x20cm, three have tracing paper overlays with editorial notes. Au$450

As I looked for Tashiro Hikaru it emerged that he has a maybe small group of fans, particularly artists. Most of his work was magazine and newspaper illustration, reproduced as grey blobs and scratches in a sea of grey type, so it's a wonder that he has any fans. You have to be lucky or determined to find something shows what a good draughtsman and what canny eye he had. I was lucky.
He was born in 1913, was recognised young, and studied with Tomita Onichiro, Ishii Hakutei, and Foujita Tsuguharu - a pretty impressive list. He went to work for magazines at the age of 18 in 1931 and continued illustrating novels and stories ever after. He died in 1996
The drawing of the lounging woman is captioned Honmaku Yawa (1924), the play or film script by Tanizaki which was a tangled domestic tragedy apparently based on his own misbehavior. The film featured his sister-in-law who was the model for the character. The thoughtful man is captioned (in rough translation), 'murderous intent won't disappear'. This, I'm pretty sure is the villain in The White Tower (1963-65) by Yamazaki Toyoko. Artists spoke of Tashiro being the only illustrator who could produce attractive villains with gentle faces.
The best drawing, the old man and the women is, I think, also for that book but in the few drawings for serial novels I've found he used that same model for a couple of them. Those serial novels became books but the illustrations didn't come with them.

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Papermaking. Tokyo Ojiseishi Kaisha. 王子製紙会社略図 [Ojiseishi Kaisha Ryakuzu]. Tsunashima Kamekichi 1877 (Meiji 10). 38x49cm engraving, folded. Very good with its printed paper envelope. sold

These charming views of the still quite new paper works are by Murai Shizuma, aka Utagawa Fusatane. They have the air of an exhibition; it's hard to tell which of the bowlers and boaters are at work and which are idle audience. The women are easier, they are all at work. It's an impressive display of industrial might so early in the Meiji. Oji Paper still exists as part of a industrial behemoth, among the world's largest.

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Airships. Four illustrations, three of airships and one of a balloon in a tree, on one sheet. n.p. n.d (187-?). Engraving 40x45cm, folded. Au$165

A mysterious print with no indication of who produced it. Each illustration is numbered and captioned in Japanese and three are dated to their original appearance: 1852, 1870 and 1872. They all seem to be from French originals. Number one has "Art de Tuer" in the caption and is supposed to be the wreck of the balloon with Leon Gambetta (escaping from the siege of Paris) on board in 1870; number two is Giffard's 1852 steam powered airship; number three is, I think, a Dupuy de Lome airship of 1870; number four is the Dupuy de Lome airship of 1872.
Was this a supplement to something? Such things are usually identified. Are they proofs? Until someone finds another copy it is all up in ... sorry.

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Dokufu

Ochiai Yoshiki (aka Utagawa Yoshiki). 悪漢茂吉と毒婦つまが縄ぬけ逃亡 [Akkan Mokichi to Dokufu Tsuma Ga Nawa Nuke Tobo]. [This title is taken from Tokyo University's catalogue and it has been used by others. I take it to be a paraphrase of the text]. Tokyo 1874 (Meiji 7). 36x24cm colour woodcut by Yoshiku. A nice copy. Au$450

Issue 220 of the special colour supplement to the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun (Tokyo daily news) which captures the villain Mosuke or Mokichi and his Poisonous Wife escaping their captor after they were captured in August 1872; the original article appeared in October 1872 but it took a while to develop the picture. I'm uncertain about our villain's name: he is Mokichi in the text but Mosuke in the banner beside him. Cataloguers usually follow the text.
A peasant's wife who cripples herself in the field alongside her husband is a model wife. A clerk's wife who festers at home and cripples her children is a model wife. But let the wife of a vicious thug, who is after all a worker, share in her husband's work ... poisonous woman. Thank heaven the world's not like that any more.
 Dokufu, poisonous women, are for all time but the first few decades of the Meiji, with the advent of western style newspapers, made for rich pickings. 

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Yokohama. 横浜実測図 [Yokohama Jissokuzu] Map of Yokohama. Tokyo, Naimusho Chirikyoku 1881 (Meiji 14). 117x181cm engraving on four joined sheets; folded. An excellent copy. Au$650

An impressive survey map, a bit larger than a tatami, so not to be unfolded in your average worker's boarding house room. I don't know why that average worker wanted this map, nor how they got it, but they would have to explore Yokohama fold by fold.
The bureau of geography was established in 1874 and mapping of the Kanagawa prefecture began. It all stopped as departments were abolished, merged and renamed. Mapping was completed and this map published in February 1881. I don't know about other maps. This one is uncommon enough, Worldcat finds only an 1883 printing with none outside Japan.

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堺祥雲寺五葉松之図 [Sakai Syounji Goyomatsu-no-Zu]. Kyoto, Maeda Kazuyoshi 1892 (Meiji 25). 25x33cm lithograph; folded. Au$100

Truth in advertising? We all know there never has been any, but still. A photograph from about 1895 shows the fabulous old pine tree of the Shounji temple in Sakai near Osaka about one storey high at its peak, but the camera does lie. Or maybe I'm wrong and our artist (Kouseki?) is faithful to the awe instilled in the visitor. The tree was destroyed by an air raid during the war and I believe a still infant tree was planted to replace our tree in a few hundred years.
Ancient tree in an ancient temple maybe, but this view is aimed at the modern tourist, what with that western transliteration, and the urbanites outnumber the pilgrims by 50%.

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Kon Wajiro & Yoshida Kenkichi. モデルノロヂオ - 考現学 [Moderunorojio - Kogengaku]. (Modernologio on the cover). Tokyo, Shun'yudo 1930 (Showa 5). 26x20cm, publisher's decorated cloth blocked in white, red and black; 361pp, profusely illustrated throughout, a few photo or colour plates. Endpapers and edges browned as usual; a rather good copy, the cover bright, of a book that invites thumbing. Au$850

First printing. This is an extraordinary book; the gospel of Modernology. Kon and Yoshida have compiled an encyclopaedia, surely unsurpassed, of the apparently ordinary, of the people of Tokyo, fit to provoke unseemly enthusiasm in theoreticians and urban planners ever since. I gather that their thesis - born out of watching the people of Tokyo begin to rebuild after the 1923 earthquake and fire - 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.
The cover, signed Ken, and a lot of the illustrations are by Yoshida who has re-spelled his name on the cover for the sake of the design. The more I find out about Yoshida the more interesting he gets. I'm starting to think he was, to Kon, what Braque was to Picasso.

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The Fijian Hiawatha

CAREY, Jesse. The Kings of the Reefs. A poem, in one hundred and seventeen cantos. Melbourne, Spectator Publishing 1891. Large octavo. Three engraved portraits as plates, wood engraved ills through the text after Percy Spence but I wouldn't like to insist that they were designed for this work.
The blank facing the title is inscribed: Presented by the author, to his beloved wife, Lydia Carey. As a memento of her valuable help in the composition of the work, and of the interest she took in its progress, from the commencement, to its publication J. Carey. Memo: This copy was bound in London in 1892 and presented as the above on the 17th June, 1893.
This special binding is curious in that is a standard publisher's decorative cloth binding - pretty, completely inappropriate and the kind that appeared on hundreds of books. It is blue cloth in a sand grain with different black and ochre geometric bands along top and bottom of spine and front board, an irrelevant spray of flowers on the front and lettering in gilt on spine and front. The edges of the boards are bevelled and all edges of the text block are gilded, the endpapers are a grey floral pattern. There is wear to tips, the hinges have short splits, the front inner hinge has been taped. Au$400

The Rev Carey was a missionary in Fiji from 1859 to 1875. He was there, as he says, at a unique time, when many natives had learnt to read and write but before the first-hand connection to pre-missionary Fiji was severed, and Carey took advantage of this. He collected, offering prizes, written accounts by natives of Fijian history, myths and customs and has used them here to construct what he describes as something of a Fijian Hiawatha - though comparisons with Tennyson's workings of Arthurian legend may also be valid. The poem is a history of some 130 years of Fijian history, from the first appearance of whites, interspersed with myth, "manners and customs of the people, with words of wisdom from their sages." The hero is Fiji's great king Seru or Thakombau (Cacobou).
Loose inside is a broadside (340x220mm) puff for the book which quotes press opinions. The only modern notice of the work that I have seen is Morris Miller's observation that this poem is "one of the longest written by an Australian author."

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BREASTED, James Henry. The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, published in facsimile and hieroglyphic transliteration with translation and commentary ... University of Chicago 1930. Two volumes, quarto text & folio plates (spines a bit mottled); I: xxiv,596pp & eight plates. II: xvipp & 44 plates (a couple folding) being the facsimile with facing hieroglyphic transliteration printed in red and black. Au$375

First edition; there is a nasty facsimile of the text volume. Still the starting point for just about every branch of medicine.

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TAUT, Bruno. アルプス建築 [Arupusu Kenchiku] Alpine Architektur. Hagen, Folkwang 1919 [ie Tokyo, 1944]. 36x26cm publisher's flexible cloth and dustwrapper; title page in Japanese and 37 leaves consisting of 29 monochrome mounted leaves (title and contents leaves, five section titles and 22 plates) and eight colour lithographs. Covers chewed around the edges and along the spine, dustwrapper torn but pretty much all there. Usual browning of the uncoloured leaves. With the booklet containing the Japanese translation. Au$700

This might be the most curious Japanese book on western architecture. It's officially part of the collected works of Taut in Japanese (Tauto Zenshu) but while his other works were translated and collected into four solid sensible octavo volumes, here the original has been followed faithfully, lavishly. A translation was provided as an inserted booklet.
It has been sorted out thanks to the generous diligence of a librarian at the Art Institute of Chicago (the only library I could trace that had both versions) who, twice, compared them side by side and sent me a list of seven plates that vary in image size, that this isn't a re-issue of original sheets - once a common claim. So this is no photographic process reprint; the colour plates are proper colour lithographs that match the originals. While there's no doubt that elaborate and fine printing could be and was done in war time it still doesn't make sense. The flimsy translation booklet is what we expect from wartime printing - why not do a better job with that? The binding is war time, the printing is not.
So when were these plates produced? Were they prepared with Taut when he was in Japan - by 1936? The whole business of a collected edition of Taut in the middle of the war becomes something of a circular puzzle. Japan's ties with Germany are clear enough and the Japanese showed their appreciation of radical German modernists, or expressionists, like Taut and Mendelsohn pretty much even before Germany did, and Taut had spent years in Japan. But he was part of the exodus from Germany in 1933 and had died in Turkey in 1938. Still, a devoted band of fans did manage what seems unimaginable and got the job done.
Visionary, the term mostly used to describe this book, is often just another word for lunatic and Taut's utopian scheme for these monumental crystal structures marching across the mountain ranges of the world is captivatingly nutty. If this were to be judged on its own we would have just another eccentric, if endearing, relic of a dead end dream. But, in place in a cohesive group of theoretical writing and extensive design, both built and unbuilt, possible and impossible, this book wielded influence beyond its limited circulation in advancing the notion that, for the architect, principle, theory and social concern were tools as important as a T-square.

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Printing. 印刷大鑑 [Insatsu Taikan]. Osaka, Nihon Insatsu Kaisha 1915 (Taisho 4). Folio (39x27cm) publisher's patterned silk over bevelled boards with cord ties (silk worn through at the corners); 12 preliminary leaves including two colour plates and a preface in French, 96 specimen leaves by different printers on different papers is a variety of techniques: chromolithography, four colour process, photo engraving, gravure, embossing, etc, with two plates on metal sheets; 11 more leaves at the end including a couple of plates. Minor adhesion with a couple of the chromolithos, causing a tear on the facing leaf of one. Inner hinges have cracked at some time and repaired not so neatly. Au$1300

A luxurious bit of showing off by the Japanese printing industry announcing that they have done their apprenticeship with western printers and now match them in skill. Fine printing, book work, advertising ... some kitsch and some very smart.
I now discover this exists in at least three states: one with silk covers and 101 specimens, this one with silk covers and 96 specimens, and one with mock silk printed boards with fewer preliminaries and 86 specimens. I presume this changed as specimens ran out. I've also realised that the cord ties are decorative: they are fastened under the endpapers in each cover and don't go through the book. Why I didn't notice this before ... I hang my head in shame.
For such a grand book this was not distributed as widely as you might expect. Worldcat finds five copies, all following the same catalogue entry dated 1916. I know that the two Australian copies are bound in silk and are dated 1915 and one US copy is the printed cover version; I don't know what the other two US copies are. CiNii finds five copies in Japanese libraries, and my searches of specialist libraries found no more.

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Fingerprints and destiny

Hasegawa Toho. 指紋と運命 [Shimon to Unmei]. Tokyo, Ars 1933 (Showa 8). 20x14cm publisher's cloth with mounted photo (spine browned), printed card slipcase. Small illustrations throughout. The photo on the front cover is a photographically printed enlargement of a fingerprint. Discrete stamp of the newspaper Hochi Shimbun, now a sporting paper. Au$200

First edition of this study of fingerprints and destiny (the title translated) with extras: the envelope with 19 illustrations of hands and handprints which was included loose in a 1934 book on palmistry; two pairs (left and right on each) of handprints in blue ink; and the business card of Inagaki Tobari. I'll presume the handprints are his. They are the same hands, one pressed lightly, the other pressed hard against the paper.
Hasegawa published a couple of books on fingerprints which were translated into Chinese and reprinted quite recently. Remember these are fingerprints, none of that palmistry nonsense.

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LANDTMAN, Gunnar. Ethnographical Collection from the Kiwai District of British New Guinea in the National Museum of Finland ... a descriptive survey of the material culture of the Kiwai people. Helsinki, Antell Collection 1933. Largish quarto publisher's printed wrapper (a little faded); 146pp, numerous photo illustrations and line drawings. An excellent copy. Au$185

The collection was gathered by Landtman in Papua from 1910 to 1912.

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Nurses. 記念写真帖 : 日本赤十字社 香川県 支部病院 1918. [Kinen Shashin Jo : Nihonsekijujisha Kagawa Shibu Byoin]. Takamatsu, Japanese Red Cross Society 1918 (Taisho 7]. 15x23cm publisher's colour printed wrapper, thread tied (one broken); 23 photo plates on 23 leaves, three pages of text and colophon leaf (ie 26 leaves). A bit used. Au$125

The nurses of Kagawa Prefecture Branch Hospital at work and at play towards the end of the work. It's hard to tell the difference between work and play but sober kimonos neatly arrayed around kotos must be play.

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Flags. 萬国旗鑑 [Bankokukikan] n.p. Shokokan 1853 (Kaei 6). 72x165mm publisher's wrapper (most of the title label gone); [2],44,[2] double leaves, 240 colour maps on 88pp, colour woodcut title, four pages of the text at the start and two at the end. An outstanding copy. Au$1250

A captivating and rare little encyclopedia of world flags. Essential at a time when it seemed that more of them were likely to be seen around Japan. But Japan had a long history of fascination with flags, banners and heraldry; there are no end of such books and manuscripts going back centuries which carry the history of the country, its rulers and wars. So curiosity about the heraldry of the outside world went in tandem with language, history, science ...
The colophon states this was first published in 1846 but I haven't found any actual copy, only this or the 1854 edition from a different publisher. I did find another book with the same title but it turned out to be an eight leaf manuscript. Cinii finds six entries, three each of the 1853 and 1854 editions and I think all those libraries illustrate their copies online. It's easy to see the book online but you won't see a copy like this.

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Japanese Earthquake Architecture. [Report of the Earthquake Disaster Prevention Investigation Committee: Survey of buildings damaged in the earthquake in Yamagata Prefecture]. Tokyo 1895. 25x18cm publisher's printed wrapper; folding map, plans, heaps of plates, some folding. Used, missing the back wrapper, some staining - but nothing fatal - and corners gone from the last two leaves. A worthwhile copy. The 7th report from the committee. Au$450

A splendid report bulging with lithographs from careful drawings - much more useful than photos - made after the Shonai earthquake of 1894.

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Japanese Earthquake Architecture. Report of the Earthquake Disaster Prevention Investigation Committee: Earthquake-resistant house investigations. Tokyo 1897. 25x18cm publisher's printed wrapper (a bit grubby, closed tear in the back cover); 24 quite large measured drawings and plans, photo plates, several folding. Used but nothing serious. The 13th report of the committee. Au$150

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Japanese Earthquake Architecture. [Report of the Earthquake Disaster Prevention Investigation Committee: earthquake resistant structures]. Tokyo 1895. 25x18cm publisher's printed wrapper; 28 folding measured drawings (some quite large), 26 smaller drawings on six plates. The 6th report of the committee. Au$150

Plans and specifications for improved structures for a townhouse, a farmhouse, and a school, after the 1894 Shonai earthquake.

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Rockets

Eugene Sanger and Ota Saburo. ロケット航空工學 [Roketto Koku Kogaku]. Tokyo, Hakuyo Shoin 1944. 22x16cm publishers cloth and dustwrapper; diagrams throughout. Expected browning, a rather good copy. Au$150

First edition. Eugene Sanger's rocket aeronatics (Raketen-Flugtechnik; 1933) translated into Japanese at about the same time a lithoprint version - but no translation - was printed in the US. And just before the V-1 jet and V-2 rocket bombardments began.
This apparently was Sanger's university thesis, rejected as too fanciful. Rockets as weapons in Japan of course were nothing new and rockets going into space were nothing new but I can't find any serious work in Japan earlier than this.
The book opens right to left which misled someone at the bindery who properly inserted the title page the way it should be, making it upside down. I don't know whether all copies are like this, the only other title page I've seen is the third edition and it's the right way up.
Worldcat finds no copy outside Japan.
And note that the translator is not Ota Saburo the artist/illustrator, just as the author of the first Japanese publication on the atom bomb is not Takeo Takei the artist/illustrator.

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Planes

Hirayama Shu. 最新飛行機図説 [Saishin Hikoki Zusetsu]. Toado Shoba 1911 (Meiji 44). 23x16cm publisher's cloth blocked in gilt, silver and blind (a bit used, small blotch on the front), remnants of the dustwrapper; two photo plates, numerous measured drawings. Some browning and smudges, used but acceptable. Au$200

First edition of this technical introduction and survey of the latest aeroplanes which might be the first proper Japanese aviation book. I found a couple of earlier popular books for kids but nothing serious. This was revised or checked by Hino Kumazo, almost the first Japanese aviator. A test flight in December 1910 was regarded more as jumps than flight and in the official attempt a few days later fellow pilot Tokugawa Yoshitoshi got first go. They had both been sent to France to learn to fly. Hino went on to develop his own aircraft and, later, a helicopter and a wingless jet propelled aircraft. None of them took off, so to speak.
I had trouble believing that Hirayama Shu is the same Hirayama Shu so closely associated with Sun Yat-Sen; surely he was too busy fomenting revolution at exactly this time. But Sun was in America for most of the year and Hino's preface speaks of his own long association with Hirayama and mentions their discussions about China.

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Izumi Keiji [ed]. ネオ デカメロン [Neo Dekameron] Neo Decameron on the cover. Tokyo, Bunshodo 1931 (Showa 6). 18x11cm publisher's decorated cloth blocked in white, printed card slipcase; 49 plates (one colour) from various sources. A nice copy. Au$200

First edition. A pleasing example of the ero-guro-nansu (erotic-grotesque-nonsense) craze of the early showa period. This is a stylish gathering of salacious pieces that would normally appear in pulp magazines. What caught my eye is the piece which sort of translates as The Electric Artificial Maiden's Secret Room which sums up the whole notion of ero-garu-nansu. This jostles with sex murder in the Shanghai British Concession and plenty more. The illustrations are pinched from louche sources, mostly European I'd say. The moire or half-tone issue with the illustration here is in their reproduction, not mine.
Neo Decameron it may be but there are 21 stories, not ten. Worldcat finds no copy.

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The prairie style in Hokkaido

Tanoe [or Tanoue or Tanouye] Yoshiya. 田上義也建築画集　 [Tanoe Yoshiya Kenchiku Gashu]. Tokyo, Kensetsusha 1931. 27x19cm publisher's printed wrapper, illustrated card slipcase (this marked and a bit worn but solid); 110pp, photo illustrations, renderings and plans. Rather good.
Inscribed and signed by Tanoe to artist, later folklorist, and dogged communist Hashiura Yasuo who gets a passing mention in the book. Au$1850

Tanoe began his career working for Wright on the Imperial Hotel - from 1919 to 1923. He then headed off to Hokkaido and is now an architectural hero of the island. The prairie style is evident in some of these early houses but no more than Japan is evident in the prairie style. I read somewhere that for one of the buildings in this book he kept his original plan rather than the compacted plan that was actually built. This was so that his sense of space was preserved.
I think the rest of this Artistes Nouveaux series - maybe seven titles in all - are all painters including three Europeans: Matisse, Vlaminck and Chagall.
Worldcat finds no copies outside Japan and it's not common in Japan.

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Kawakami Sumio. 変なリードル [Henna Ridoru] Kawakami's Henna Reader. Tokyo, Hangaso 1934 (Showa 9). 19x13 publisher's illustrated dark green wrapper printed in white and darker green; 16pp woodcut printed. Au$400

Kawakami's work is charming, simple to the point of naive so of course it isn't. Kawakami nursed a nostalgia for a time he did not experience. I'm sure there's word for that which isn't nationalism, xenophobia or popularism. In his case it was the Meiji enlightenment and the confusion of westernisation that fascinated him, particularly primers for children. Here is his. Henna translates as strange or weird; they were all weird but Kawakami is purposeful.

*These pictures of the contents have been stolen from somewhere else; I didn't want to squash this nice fresh copy to photograph the inside. This copy is better. 

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With extra death and lies

Lightning Robber 稲妻強盗 : 坂本慶次郎 [Inazuma Goto : Sakamoto Keijiro]. Tokyo, Sanshindo 1899 (Meiji 32*). 21x14cm, publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; three double page illustrations. The wrapper and last leaf (this was not issued with a back wrapper, an advertisement leaf was joined to a stub of the cover and spine) have been repaired but I'm not sure how much. It is so near invisible. An excellent, fresh copy in a chic case by binder, writer and fastidious collector Atsuo Ikuta. Au$250

Third edition, three months after the first. The Lightning Robber - Inazuma Goto, the title of this book - was Sakamoto Keijiro, arrested in February1899 after escaping jail in 1895, a lot of robberies and three murders. This was the stuff of sensation mongering of course, plays were performed in 1897 and 1899. In 1899 four or more books called Lightning Robber appeared; that is, I found four titles but I don't know how many of them are different books.
This seems to have 24 more pages than what is likely the first edition, published by Kinshindo, and either uses the same sheets or was printed from the same plates.
*But. Those extra pages finish with his death in February 1900, months after the date on the colophon printed on the other side of the same page. Can publishers ever be trusted?
The Lightning Robber was conflated with the previous decade's Pistol Robber and one of our four or so books shows him in bowler and overcoat firing at a policeman. Japan's first feature film, 'Pisutoru Goto Shimizu Sadakichi' (pistol robber Shimizu Sadakichi) but also called 'Inazuma Goto', appeared the same year.
Worldcat does not find this version and none of their four titles are found outside Japan.

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True detective story

Amano Kaoru (preface). 探偵実話 : 岩井貞藏 [Tanteijitsuwa : Iwai Teizo]. Tokyo? Nakamura Sojiro 1898 (Meiji 31). 21x14 publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; three double page illustrations. With expert repairs to the spine and a new back wrapper. An excellent, fresh copy in a case by binder, writer and fastidious collector Atsuo Ikuta. Au$200

First edition. I bought this under the heading of, (roughly translated) Real life heinous murderer. We can discard the real life immediately. The preface is by Amano Kaoru, almost as obscure as anonymous, the author. I can't find a record of this anywhere but a publisher's advertisement in another book.

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Another copy.  Cards browned, one lens cracked. With a company instruction brochure on dyeing at home. Au$75

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