Tokiwa Toyoko. 危険な毒花 [Kiken na Dokubana (sometimes transliterated as Kiken na Adabana]. Tokyo, Mikasa Shobo 1957. 19x13cm publisher's boards and dustwrapper with wrap around (obi) and original cellophane; photo illustrations throughout. An outstanding copy with only a hint of the usual browning. sold

First edition of this photographic study of women at the sharp edge of Americanised Japan: Yokohama. It is captivating - from front cover to back - without being in the slightest bit charming. Tokiwa is unequivocal from the start. The front cover declares what this book is: a Japanese woman photographing Japanese women being degraded.
Tokiwa had good reason to be unimpressed with Americans - her father was killed in the fire bombing of Tokyo - but the soldiers and sailors who appear here are no more despicable than the Japanese men swarming around nude photographic sessions in part three and in that last photo - also the first, on the front cover - the woman is being dragged by a man, any man. Degradation is a system. The title of this can be translated as 'dangerous poisonous flower' - a prostitute - but it's the women here who have been poisoned.

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Fire safety poster. 火災予防デ : 火の用心 [Kasai Yobo De : Hinoyojin]. Kyotofu Shobosho [191-?] Colour lithograph poster 53x38cm mounted on canvas a little larger. A couple of closed tears. Au$750

An almost celebratory poster for Fire Prevention Day in Kyoto with more than a touch of circus poster about it.

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Fire safety poster. 火の用心 [Hinoyojin]. n.p. [193-?]. Colour poster, 66x51cm on original patterned mount, 88x61cm, with metal strips at top and bottom. Some rumpling. The mount and strips are original but the brown paper backing looks much more recent. Au$300

Spendidly dramatic and helpful with a line up of the likely suspects in the bottom corner: the matches, the cigarette and the neglected candle.
The caption below the poster is separately printed, identifying the local fire department:Yamaguchi Prefecture.

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CORNELL, Sophia S. Cornell's Primary Geography for the Use of Schools. First Edition. 地学初歩 [Chigaku Shoho]. Yedo. [Edo (ie Tokyo), Watanabe [1866?]. 18x12cm publisher's wrapper (insect blemished, title label missing); [72]pp on double folded leaves and seven folding colour maps, two colour maps and some illustrations in the text. A stain in the top corner; a thoroughly decent copy. Au$500

I wonder what, if anything, a Japanese student made of Miss Cornell. After her nonsense about Japan, how could anything else she said be taken seriously? Miss Cornell's Primary Geography - one of a string of geographies she prepared for all stages of schooling - first appeared in New York in 1855. Here we are introduced to the concept and working parts of a map, then run through a brief introduction to the regions of the world.
There seems to be two printings of this "First Edition"; one dated "the 2nd year of Kei-ou" (1866) on the title and apparently without a colophon; the other (our copy) not dated, with a colophon. In this undated copy the text is within borders, the other not. Waseda University also has a third, quite different printing but their copy is severely defective and has no title page or colophon. A Japanese translation was made in 1867. Worldcat finds only one copy of this outside Japan.

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Hashizume, Kan'ichi (publisher). 銅版 小学入門 地理初歩 [Doban : Shogaku Nyumon : Chirishoho]. Tokyo, Hashizume 1875 (Meiji 8). 11x8cm publisher's wrapper with title label; 22 double leaves (44pp), illustrations thoughout. An outstanding copy in the original printed outer wrapper (fukuro). Au$300

A charming little version of this introduction to elementary school studies, this time engraved (Doban in the title means engraved) and centred in geography. There are quite a few versions of Shogaku Nyumon under different titles, varying in subject, charm, interest and form. I've traced mention of another Hashizume Shogaku title but not this one.

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Okamoto Keicho. 萬國英名かるた [Bankoku Eimei Karuta]. Tokyo, Sakakibara Yukichi 1886 (Meiji 19). 94 engraved cards, 8x6cm, on stiff card, being 47 portraits and 47 descriptive cards. Together in the original, shabby but mostly complete illustrated box, 9x13cm. One descriptive card nibbled. A complete set. Au$1850

It would be hard to pick the most baffling learning aid from among all the grammars, vocabularies, school primers and cheap sheets about things western produced in Meiji Japan but this set of cards would be a finalist. I'm not sure where to start. I recognise a lot of these men - and two women: Cleopatra and Elizabeth - but quite a few I simply can't identify even allowing for the problems with spelling and transcription. And then there are those I can identify but remain stumped by how the hell they made it into a line of famous westerners outside their own home towns. And having recognised the names I cannot recognise so many portraits. It's like, I know he didn't but, Okamoto googled philosopher ... poet ... politician ... soldier ... and chose the first image that came up. How many Japanese remained convinced that ancient Greeks and Romans wore either ruffles and wigs or buttterfly wing collars and sideburns. I'm tempted to offer a prize to the person who can identify everyone here and whose portrait they have been given.
Education became a boom industry in Meiji Japan but this is no cheap print or flimsy pamphlet for the illiterate poor. A fair amount of effort went into the production of these cards, intended for the fairly well to do educated classes. I guess it's foolish to think, from here, that more care went into products for the elite. I suspect that a promising idea had to be rushed to market before someone else got there.
Iroha cards are still made and used for matching games and supposedly to help learn the 47 kana characters. Iroha can be translated as ABC - from the maybe C11th poem which is used to order kana.
I can't find any record of these anywhere but Yale has an incomplete set of cards from the same stable that have English phrases rather than portraits of eminent men and two women.

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Tobacco Whiffs for the Smoking Carriage. London, Mann Nephews 1874. Slender octavo contemporary half calf (spine quite rubbed), original illustrated front wrapper bound in; 31pp and nine pages of adverts. Au$350

Slender but tightly packed and eminently useful, with clear and concise descriptions of the wares of various tobacco, cigarette and pipe makers and merchants. At the end we learn of the smoking competitions or 'Cloudy Battles' held by tobacconists in London and the provincial cities. The advertisements are placed, of course, by some tobacconists or pipe makers but the ancillary vices are also here: oysters, condensed milk, guns, and Australian wine, with a full page advert for Auldana Wines.

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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. Usual offsetting, rather good in worn but complete publisher's printed card case, fold of one flap repaired. Au$550

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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Wakefield, Edward Gibbon. Facts Relating to the Punishment of Death in the Metropolis. London, Ridgway 1831. Octavo, uncut in original boards (neatly rebacked); xii,198,[2 advert]pp. A crisp copy. Au$900

First edition. Parents of underage heiresses may have wished Wakefield hanged but he wasn't in any great danger in Newgate. So he was able to become a good example of his own precept - that it was certainty rather than severity of punishment that works: he never kidnapped another wealthy teenager.

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[LOCKE, Richard Adams]. Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel ... at the Cape of Good Hope. (First published in the New-York Sun, from the supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science.) [NY, the New York Sun 1835]. Octavo disbound; 28pp, drop title. A little browning, rather good. Au$6,000

I believe this is the first definite report of life on the moon by a scientist with irreproachable credentials. A number of more or less respectable scientists had announced sighting forms that suggested life but Herschel's close observation of both plant and animal life - from strange bovine creatures to near humans with wings - put the matter beyond doubt; at least for many thousand Americans in August 1835.
Herschel himself was indignant when news - and a welter of letters demanding further details - of his great discovery reached him in South Africa but his wife Margaret was delighted, writing to her husband's aunt Caroline about this "very clever piece of imagination" that it was "a great pity that it is not true". Poe was more put out than Herschel. He wrote to friends in September that he believed this had been stolen from his account of Hans Phaall's balloon voyage to the moon published in the Richmond Messenger in early July but all his remarks smack of sour grapes.
More recently Crowe (The Extraterrestrial Life Debate) posited that Locke's aim was satire rather than hoax, targeted at the plurality of worlds debate fanned by popular writers like Thomas Dick. Whatever bubble of credulity existed in New York, it was burst by the time Locke's series of articles reached its week long run but that hardly seemed to matter. Tens of thousands of copies of the New York Sun were sold, who knows how many thousand other papers that began reprinting the series almost immediately and, it was reported, maybe 60,000 copies of this separate edition of the complete work. Lloyd Currey has traced 13 surviving copies including this one.

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A working album of mon designs. n.p. 19th to early c20th? 31x21cm, stitched with heavy wrappers; with some 280 designs in ink or pencil, mostly mounted (some are stencilled directly onto the album leaves and a few are loosely inserted) on 30 double leaves (pasted together at front edges). Very used, old damp stains, solid. Au$500

Very much a working book and clearly returned to often over a long period. The drawings range from rough sketches to perfectly finished designs, are on all sorts of paper - a handful are on cloth - and are often annotated. One small stencil cut from persimmon treated paper (katagami) is inserted and, as said, quite a few designs have been stencilled directly onto the album pages.
Things like this are hard to date but the album itself is undoubtedly 19th century and I suspect may have been used by more than one generation. The remnants of a design are pasted over the cover behind which can be seen, but not read, a brushed inscription. On the last leaf one sketch is on a leaf from a memo pad and the sole note not in Japanese: 5.8.20, which might be the date.

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Moga illustrations. 家出娘のヌウちゃん [Iede Musume no Nu-chan]. n.p. c1930? Four ink and wash drawings on light card from about 10x22cm to 22x18cm. The first titled as above in pencil (Iede Musume no Nu-chan dai 5 kai translates as Runaway Daughter Nu-chan part 5). One to three are numbered in pencil; number three includes some embossing. Au$200

Four engaging and stylish small drawings which I take to be magazine illustrations for chapter five of a jazz age story all too familiar - the corruption and downfall of an innocent young woman. All very much ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) fashion of the late Taisho and early Showa period. The story of Nu-chan and where it might have appeared remains a mystery to me but I really want to see it all. Could it be there was a happy ending?
Moga = modern girl.

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DANBY, Frank. [ie Julia Frankau]. Baccarat. Philadelphia, Lippincott 1904. Octavo publisher's illustrated green cloth bocked in red, black and white (a pair of playing cards); seven colour plates (one an unlisted tailpiece). Au$50

First American edition, the London edition appeared in the same year. Frankau kept her real name for art and biography and presumably earnt her living knocking out novels as Frank Danby - she published about twenty in fourteen years. Though listed by Hubin this is not proper crime fiction but a domestic tragedy. A loving but too vivacious wife left unattended falls victim first to gambling then to the croupier. It grinds on to inevitable death and the suspense comes from whose death it will be.

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Iwahashi Zenbei (or Yoshitaka depending on the transcriber). 平天儀圖解 [Heitengi Zukai]. Osaka, Ikeuchi Yahe &c 1802 (Kyowa 2). 27x19cm (with small variations); [4],38 double folded leaves (the last, the colophon, to be a single leaf pasted down to the back cover); woodcut illustrations throughout, three with moving parts. Light browning; an outstanding copy in unbound sheets, folded but untrimmed and unstitched. Au$1200

A quite remarkable, say I, copy of this guide to Zenbei's Heitengi - a set of astronomical volvelles - issued the year before, and an introduction to astronomy by Japan's leading telescope maker. So, in it's way something of an advertisement - almost a trade catalogue - and it includes a full page illustration of what must be one of his telescopes. Among the celestial and world maps and observations of planets and the moon he made, there is one of Zenbei's three sunspot drawings done in about 1793. Of course we all want a matching set of the volvelles now ... good luck and if you get there before me I curse all your electrical appliances.
This book had no title page, the title is on the binding label, so this set of sheets is absolutely complete.

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Catalogue - signs. Mikado Shoten, Osaka. 特許 小山式 電気昼夜標示燈 [Tokkyo Oyama-shiki Denki Chuya Hyojito]. Osaka 1927 (Showa 2). Folding brochure 19x53cm with several small illustrations. With another leaflet and a price list. sold

A neat little brochure for patent Oyama signs that light up and something that looks like an illuminated screen on a roller.

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Wine Labels - Sample Book. Myncke Freres, Brussels. The printer's sample album of wine labels by Myncke Freres of Brussels. n.p. 1930s. Oblong quarto (230x315mm) flexible linen album with some 220 lithograph labels plus some neck labels and vintage dates (ranging from 1915 to 1937) mounted on both sides of 31 leaves. Nothing removed and all in great shape. Au$400

This is an album to be shown to clients rather than a scrap book. There are numbers of labels for specific wineries and appellations, numbers more are for generic varieties or, in some case, unlettered altogether. All are signed Litho Myncke or initialled LM or MF.
The Mynckes seem to have made something of a specialty of wine - a rummage round the internet finds a couple of large posters for champagne - and this album shows they had a fair reach across western Europe - France, Belgium, into Germany and includes some Port labels in English. The styles also range around, from the classic and restrained (it's hard to beat a modicum of gold on glazed midnight blue) to vibrantly modern to garish kitsch.

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Ikebe Hitoshi & others. お国自慢名物踊面白双六 [Okunijiman Meibutsu Odori Omoshiro Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Omoshiro Kurabu 1925 (Taisho 14). Colour print 54x78cm. Rumpled and sometime laid down on old paper; acceptable enough. Au$100

This uncommon manga game celebrates traditional national dances with all the gusto and pizazz of nightclub chorus lines. It was the new year gift from Omishiro Kurabu (Fun Club) magazine. This seems to have been a team effort: four artists are named.

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[Johannes van den Bosch]. de KEVERBERG, [Charles Joseph], Baron. De la Colonie de Frederiks-Oord, et des Moyns ... traduction d'un manuscript u General-Major van den Bosch ... avec une preface. Gand, Houdin 1821. Octavo, uncut and unopened in the remains of original plain wrappers (stitching loose); lxxii,110pp and two plates. Au$500

It has been argued that van den Bosch's Benevolent Society and this first paupers' agricultural colony at Frederiksoord - begun in 1818 - are less an experiment in utopian idealism than the model for the modern prison farm. Certainly from the two plates (one is a plan and view of a colonist's house, the other a birds-eye view of part of the colony) it looks, from this distance, less than utopian. Bleak is the word I'd use. Still, being a Lowlands pauper just after the Napoleonic wars can't have been much of a picnic.
Federiksoord was, to be fair, less punitive than the younger colonies at Veenhuizen where inmates were walled in to prevent escape but, looking at the dreary wastelands of Drente sretching out in every direction, it is hard to imagine where to escape to other than the bottle.
Van den Bosch's record in introducing forced agriculture to the Dutch East Indies has won him few accolades from post-colonial historians but there is no doubt that his intentions here, while hardly charitable, do share some attributes of social reform with contemporaries like Robert Owen.
Baron de Keverberg (Charles Louis Joseph I believe - his younger brother, also Baron, seems to have been named Charles Frederick Joseph; they were both government administrators and active social reformers at the same time but our Baron has the more distinguished history) has added a lengthy preface and notes to his translation of Bosch's manuscript, roughly doubling the work.

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Barber shops. 理髪店 [Rihatsuten]. Tokyo, Shokukusha 1956 (Showa 31). 19x13cm publisher's wrapper and dustwrapper; 79pp illustrated throughout with photos and a few drawings. sold

If you've also been unhappy about the lack of information on mid-century Japanese barber shops and hairdressers you too will be pleased to find this. This is volume 115 of the epic series of architectural photographic monographs - Kenchiku Shashin Bunko - put out from the early fifties to about 1970. The more obvious subjects - kitchens, living rooms, fences, restaurants and cafes - were returned to several times over the years but barbers only reappeared right at the end as an adjunct to a revisit to beauty salons.
Some titles are easier to find than others but this is not one of them, especially in good shape in dustwrapper.

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TERRY, Lionel. The Shadow. Auckland, printed by Wilson & Berton 1904. Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper (all but detached, used, an old vertical fold); 30,[2]pp. A bit of a mangy copy perhaps but when you're the only tiger still in the jungle you deserve respect. sold

This is pretty rare; it's taken me decades to find a copy since I underestimated the first one I saw in a New Zealand auction. I'm a bit sorry I have. This is a mad and nasty bit of yellow peril invective by a mad and nasty man. The story is well known enough: Terry published this and followed it up by walking pretty much the length of New Zealand's north island to Wellington where soon after, dissatisfied with the progress of his anti-Asian campaign, he shot an old, crippled Chinese man in the back of the head. Terry surrendered to police, handing them copies of this. Sales jumped and Terry resisted attempts to have him declared insane.
Like all canny fear mongers Terry identifies the Asian peril as merely the result of a darker plot: the Shadow controlling it all is of course the Jew. The main part, the poem The Shadow, is written looking back from the year 2000. Terry had plenty of friends and sympathisers at the time but perhaps the most dispiriting part of this is coming across a recent long essay on a white suprematist website defending Terry and extolling his message.

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Yamashita Ken'ichi (illustrator). 小学科学絵本 : 石油 [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Sekiyu] . Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this used: browned and a bit chipped); colour and b/w illustrations by Yamashita throughout. Some browning here and there. Au$150

This is volume 10 of the 12 volumes series Shogaku Kagaku Ehon - elementary science - devoted to oil. This is a quite exciting and vivid series hidden under dreary dustwrappers so it is natural to discard the dustwrappers immediately. They seemed inexplicable to me until I realised that many of these artists were in disgrace with officials and neither high modernism nor the fanciful were suitable for anyone let alone an impressionable child. The dustwrappers are the book equivalent of thick rimmed glasses and a false moustache. Proof that communists and such troublemaking artistic riff-raff can't be trusted.

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Yamashita Ken'ichi (illustrator). 小学科学絵本 : 石炭 [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Sekitan] . Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this used: browned and a bit frayed); colour and b/w illustrations by Yamashita throughout. Some browning here and there. Au$125

This is volume 9 - devoted to coal.

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Kurita Jiro. (illustrator). 小学科学絵本 : 食物 [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Shokumotsu] . Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this a bit browned and smudged); colour and b/w illustrations throughout by Kurita. Some browning. Au$80

This is volume 7 - devoted to food.

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Kurita Jiro (illustrator). 小学科学絵本 : 砂糖 [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Sato]. Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this worn and browned but all there); colour and b/w illustrations throughout by Kurita. Some browning of offsetting. Au$80

This is volume 12 - devoted to sugar.

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Yamashita Ken'ichi (illustrator). 小学科学絵本 : 家 [Shogaku Kagaku Ehon : Ie] . Tokyo, Mitsukoshi 1937 (Showa 12). 215x195mm, publisher's boards with mounted illustration, dustwrapper (this used: smudged and a bit frayed); colour and b/w illustrations by Yamashita throughout. Some browning here and there. Au$100

This is volume 8 - devoted to housing.

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Advertising fan sample books. 優美団扇見本帖 + 優美団扇新画帳 [Yubi Uchiwa Mihon Jo] + [Yubi Uchiwa Shin Gacho] + six actual advertising uchiwa - fans. n.p. c1930.
The first: 23x25cm publisher's colour illustrated wrappers, ribbon tied; title leaf, 81 leaves (four of these form two designs with one of each being a layer with cutouts over the other). Covers ragged, a few leaves with closed tears near the beginning; the album has been damp at some time and colours drifted to nearby leaves in places but all acceptable enough.
The second: 25x25cm colour printed wrapper; ribbon tied; 42 leaves. Used and well thumbed but solid and decent enough.
The fans each about 40cm top to tail. Au$2100

Two (but not a pair) of these rare sample books of elegant (yubi translates as elegant) uchiwa - non folding fans - used for advertising; messages were on the back. Now, pattern books of properly elegant fan designs have a long history and are a dime, well, a few thousand dollars, a dozen. It would be hard to get together a dozen of these crass commercial sample books, for much the same reasons as their sister hikifuda books: any that did survive are usually dismembered and sold page by page.
The accompanying fans do not actually appear in either book but that is a matter of variation on a theme. The family likeness is unmistakable. As is the likeness to hikifuda (large handbills or small posters) of the period: the artwork, printing and colours come from the same people. The designs range from revolting to most smart. Luckily few are truly revolting.

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Poster - dye. 私達の家庭染料 - すみれ染 [Watashitachi no Katei Senryo : Sumire Zome]. [Tokyo? 193-?]. Colour poster 52x36cm. In excellent shape. Au$150

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

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Lindley Murray. 英語階梯 [Eigo Kaitei] An English Spelling-Book, with reading lessons, for beginners at the school Kaiseidzio in Yedo. First edition. Yedo. The 2. year of Kei-ou. (Tokyo, 1866). 18x12cm publisher's wrapper, without title label. Thoroughly annotated by a bored student on the covers, inside and out, the first blank and half title, at the very end and the back blank; clean from the title page on. What a canny colleague called evocative and still rather good. Au$500

The first English spelling book published in Japan according to Ishihara Chisato who announced in 1980 (『英 語 階 梯 』と Lindley Murray のス ペ リ ン グ ブ ッ ク に つ い て [Eigo Kaitei and Lindley Murray's Spelling Book] ) that it is a slightly modified version of Part I of Murray's 'An English Spelling Book' from a copy of the 45th edition (Baudry, Paris 1839) then owned by the Tokugawa government school.
With all of these handy lessons for beginners in a new language I wonder how any Japanese learnt enough English to hold a sensible conversation about anything.
Worldcat only found, for me, Kyoto U's 1867 reprint without the name of the school.
Note that the book opens right to left.

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MURRAY, Lindley. 英吉利小文典 [Igirisu Shobunten] Abridgment of Murray's English Grammar. n.p. n.d [186-?]. 18x12cm publisher's wrapper with title label (rubbed). Quite good. Au$300

This is the first part and I know a second part exists because Waseda has a copy - but not this first part. Worldcat finds neither and a hunt through Japanese libraries doesn't help much. No-one seems clear on when this appeared but it is likely to be with the beginning of government schools and is a good partner for the version of Murray's spelling book published by the Kaiseidzio school in 1866.

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STEPHENS, John. Sanitary Reform: its general aspect and local importance, considered in a lecture ... Adelaide, printed & published by Stephens 1849. Octavo modern quarter crushed morocco by Bayntun-Riviere; viii,64pp and a number of blanks for bulk. Small repairs to the corners of the title page. sold

It seems that subscribers to the South Australian Register and the Adelaide Observer got copies of Stephen's three hour lecture whether they wanted or not: Stephens was the editor and owner of both. Still, it's quicker to read than hear.
And still, this is solid pioneering sanitary reform with plenty of evidence that the poor die faster, younger and more often than the well to do by magnitudes, and that legislation is urgently needed. Adelaide was, after all, "litterally living on a dunghill of thirteen years' standing." Stephens was a dedicated trouble maker whose presses had been seized the year before, gathered eight libels suits in this year - though he was mostly off sick - and died the next year.
A glance at Worldcat and Trove would convince you that there are plenty of copies of this, until you start weeding out the facsimile printing.

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Paper toy - teeth. A cut out and assemble anatomy model. Kyoto 1935. 39x27cm colour print on light card. Au$100

I think I'm happy to report this creepy child is not a fukuwarai - a blindfold game with a face to put together - but apparently someone's idea of educational fun in the dental world. The main heading in the left column declares that is not to be reproduced.

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Exhibition - Tokyo 1890. 第三回内国勧業博覧会真景 [Dai Sankai Naikoku Kangyo Hakurankai Shinkei]. Okada Chubei 1890 (Meiji 23). 38x53cm engraving. Folded, rumpled with some smudges and a short tear in one margin. Au$125

The Third National Industrial Exhibition was, as often, a scaled back event: it was planned as an Asian exhibition. I can't find the first electric street car in Japan, unless what looks like an old locomotive with no smoke stack is a lazy artist's stand in. Still, there's no laziness anywhere else here.

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Manchuria colonisation. 満洲移住百問百答 [Manshu Iju Hyakumon Hyakuto]. Manchuria Nichinichi Shimbun 1937. 19x13cm publisher's illustrated wrapper (a bit used); 138pp, some photo illustations and diagrams. Au$275

Everything a poor Japanese farmer needed to know about resettling in Manchuria in 100 questions and 100 answers, published by the Manchuria daily news. This was the Manchuria Million Houses Plan, created in 1936 and put into action in 1937, which was to see a million households of poor farmers resettled in northern Manchuria over the next twenty years. It seems that of the almost quarter of a million settlers abandoned there when the Soviets invaded at the end of the war about half made it back to Japan.
Worldcat finds no copies, neither does NDL, and CiNii finds a scant handful in University libraries.

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ANDERSEN, Hans Christian. A Poet's Bazaar. From the Danish ... by Charles Beckwith, Esq. London, Bentley 1846. Three volumes publisher's red cloth decorated in blind (the first volume rebacked with the original pine preserved); frontispiece portrait. Some minor flaws and signs of use (a corner torn from one leaf well away from the text is the worst I can see); a pretty good set from the Andersen collection of biographer and buff Eiler Hoeg with appropriate bookplates. Au$850

First English edition. Travels south and east through Europe to Greece and Constantinople. 1846 was Andersen's breakthrough year in England; three translations of his tales and this appeared. He was deeply unhappy with Mary Howitt, the first into print, but apparently tolerant enough of the rest. Howitt translated from German which is probably why this specifies that Beckwith (Beckwith Lohmeyer in full, an English resident of Copengagen who taught Andersen English) worked from the original.

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Funpon. Watanabe no Tsuna and Ibaraki doji. A gigantic lifesize funpon or preparatory drawing of Watanabe no Tsuna and the demon, Ibaraki doji, probably for a painting or plaque in a temple or shrine. n.p. mid c19th? 230x340cm, drawing in ink and colours on multiple joined sheets of paper. on hold

A dynamic snapshot of the moment that Ibaraki has transformed from a beautiful woman and is attacking the indomitable Watanabe and just before she (or maybe he) makes the mistake of grabbing his scant hair. Seconds after this she will lose an arm. The lesson for us all is that if you want to eat a balding man don't mess with the hair.
Our drawing might owe a lot to a print by Katsukawa Shunzan (a) which in turn owes a lot to one by Katsukawa Shunsho (b) and leads to another by Katsukawa Shuntei (c), not of Watanabe and Ibaraki but of Tomoe Gozen subduing a warrior, with an intriguing family resemblance.
Cleveland Art Museum has a large funpon - what we used to call a cartoon - of a very different Ibaraki-doji, by Shibata Zeshin c1840, they say is a preparatory drawing for a wooden plaque to be offered to a shrine and that may well also be the explanation for this. It was a singular part of a bundle of what seemed to be full size drawings for carved decorations for shrines or temples. The bundle was separated before I saw it.
In case any of this makes me seem erudite I must confess that it's owing to Ms Counsell of Hozuki Books in Tokyo. She confirmed my wild guess about the subject and pointed me toward the Katsukawa prints. As for this drawing; probable debt to the Katsukawa school aside, this is a good drawing, sure and alive. Who drew it? Mbrno.

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CLAPPERTON, Robert Henderson & William HENDERSON. Modern Paper-Making. London, Benn 1929. Large octavo publisher's cloth; 365pp & illustrated adverts, numerous photo illustrations, diagrams, measured drawings &c (one folding). A signed presentation from Henderson to G.D. Clapperton. Au$100

First edition, a couple more followed. A solid technical account of materials, treatment and machinery written to encompass the 'amazing advances in the technique of paper-making during the last decade'. It remained the standard work for the next three decades.
The paper making Clapperton and Henderson dynasties remain unplumbed by me. A Clapperton and a Henderson, both sons of neighbouring papermakers, worked for Cowans in Edinburgh and died in the first world war. Is G.D. the earlier generation's George whose 'Practical Paper-Making' was published in its last edition revised by R.H. this same year? And I doubt that it is any coincidence that Clapperton's second name is Henderson.

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Mill, John Stuart and Nakamura Masanao. 自由之理 [Jiyu no Ri or Jiyuno Kotowari depending on the transcriber]. On Liberty. Shizuoka, Kihira Ken'ichiro [1872]. Five volumes in six books 23x16cm, publisher's yellow wrappers with title labels. Preface in English signed EWC, this was Edward Warren Clark who taught science in Shizuoka and, later, Tokyo. Cover of the first volume dusty; a very good set. Au$2000

The first Japanese edition of Mill's On Liberty - a book that Douglas Howland (in Personal Liberty and Public Good) tells us was "reportedly read by the entire generation of educated Japanese who came of age during the restoration".
I hoped to be able to nail down any issue points and clear up any confusion between the two forms this book takes: the five volumes bound as six books, as here, with volume two divided into two; or bound as five books. The confusion is heightened because many libraries and cataloguers use the 1871 date on the title, ignoring the preface dated January 1872.
I thought that a sort of colophon for Dojinsha - Nakamura's school - pasted inside the last back cover might help, but that leaf appears in both versions. Only the cover labels seem to be different. I've found nothing in any language that examines the printing history and while the rule of thumb - everywhere in the world - is that the more costly version - in materials and time - usually came first, I've had to conclude that there isn't any discernible priority and the difference may well be where, rather than when, the books were bound.
Nakamura's translation of Smile's 'Self Help' was also published by Kihira in Shizuoka and it seems that Kihira Ken'ichiro existed as a publisher only for Nakamura's translations of these two books which he made in Shizuoka - home of the deposed Tokugawa shogun - where he taught after his return from England in 1868 until 1872. In other words, Nakamura was really the publisher of both books.
Worldcat finds five, maybe six, locations outside of Japan - one in Britain, the rest in the US - all but one are catalogued as 1871.

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CROMIE, Robert. The Next Crusade. London, Hutchinson 1896. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in red, yellow, blue, black, silver and gilt. Edges spotted but a rather good bright copy. Au$250

First edition. A scarce sci-fi thriller describing the "coming struggle" between England and Russia by the writer who didn't live long enough to twice accuse H.G. Wells of plagiarism. He accused Wells of snaffling his space ship for 'First Men on the Moon' but died before Wells' use of an atom bomb in 1914.

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JEROME, Jerome K, Three Men on Wheels. NY, Dodd Mead 1900. Octavo publisher's illustrated green cloth blocked in black and ochre; plates and illustrations through the text by Harrison Fisher. A nice copy. Au$50

First American edition of 'Three Men on the Bummel' and published the same year. Despite the American habit of dumbing down anything that might possibly be misconstrued or considered too mysterious to investigate further, this edition is a prettier book than the English. And bummel is still explained at the end.

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