Catalogue: ice skating. Mizuno & Co. Mizunos Skates Goods 1935. Osaka &c, Mizuno 1935. 10x13cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; 16pp including wrapper, illustrated throughout. sold
A nifty little catalogue of what seems to me to be quite expensive blades, boots, hockey sticks and apparel. But I've never bought skates so maybe they aren't overpriced. Mizuno are still in the sport business but seem to have dropped skating.
HADDON, A.C. The Decorative Art of British New Guinea: a study in Papuan ethnography. Dublin, Royal Irish Academy 1894. Largish quarto modern cloth; [2],279pp and 12 litho plates each with a leaf of explanatory text (two plates printed in two colours), map and 92 illustrations through the text. Stamp of a Royal Society on the half title; first couple of pages a bit rumpled; uncut and mostly unopened. Cunningham Memoirs X. Au$2150
Rare.
The emoji murders
SELBORNE, John. The Thousand Secrets. London, Everett 1911. Octavo publisher's cloth with mounted colour illustration. A touch of spotting around the edges; a pleasing copy. Au$600
First edition of this thriller which surely must be the first emoji mystery. At the scenes of the crimes the villain leaves a cryptic typed smiling face. Did he or she kill only owners of typewriters or carry spares? You might be sure the killer is a he from the cover but I'd say our cover artist never tried to make such a face with a typewriter. Truth in advertising or book covers has never been desirable.
"As is often the case in such tales, the criminals show far more intelligence than their pursuers," (The Adelaide Register).
Architecture. GOISSAUD, Antony [introductions]. Garages et Salles d'Exposition. Paris, Librairie de la Construction [1928-30?]. Two volumes 25x33cm publisher's cloth backed colour illustrated boards (wear and rubbing); 16pp introductory text in each volume, 102 plates: photo illustrations, plans and elevations; loose as issued. A used copy, I'm sorry to say, with some browning, smudges, and occasional frayed edges; a thoroughly acceptable, complete, I repeat complete, set. With the embossed bookshop labels of Meiji-Shobo, Kanda, Tokyo; an stylish bit of deco design in itself. Au$1000
Royalty among books on garages, parking stations and automobile show rooms - a small kingdom - and hard to find complete.
Writing. 真字行書草書 : いろはにほへとちりぬる: 真行草之事 [Shin Gyosho Sosho : Irohanihoheto Chirinuru : Shingyoso no Koto]? n.p. [c1870?] 17.5x8cm publisher's wrapper (faint signs of a label); folding out to 143cm with lots of small colour illustrations on a yellow background. Some worming, nothing serious. Ink inscription on the back cover. Au$400
This most charming guide to hirigana, katakana and western letters and numbers is a mystery to me. I'm not even sure which small panel has the title and a fair bit of searching has got me nowhere.
Iroha can be translated as ABC - from the maybe C11th poem which is used to order kana.
Fujimoto Katao. 実用お料理献立漫画双六 [Jitsuyo Oryori Kondate Manga Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Fujin Sekai 1926 (Taisho 15). Colour broadside 55x79cm. Mildly used, quite a good copy. Au$400
This delightful manga sugoroku celebrates cooking and was the new year gift from the magazine Woman's World.
Sunakawa Hoshiji. 少女ラヂオ放送双六 [Shojo Radjio Hoso Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shojo Sekai 1926 (Taisho 15). Colour broadside 54x78cm. A couple of small holes in folds, quite a good copy. Au$600
The new year gift from the girl's magazine, Shojo Sekai, this is a celebration of radio: Japan's first radio station, JOAK in Tokyo, illustrated here, began broadcasting in March 1925. By the time readers got this game JOBK in Osaka and JOCK in Nagoya had made test broadcasts.
Timber yards. 北海道 : 三井製材實况 [Hokkaido : Mitsui Seizai Shikyo] Mitsui & Co's Timber Industry in Hokkaido. Mitsui & Co [190-?]. 9x16cm publisher's colour printed card, cord tied. Contents leaf and 10 b/w photo postcards. The first four are joined to form a panorama of the Umaya Yard and another three form a panorama of the Sunagawa Mill. All have perforated edges for easy removal and the usual postcard stuff printed on the back. Cover a bit smudged, rather good. Au$100
It has always been a firm rule here to avoid postcards but as Sterne wrote somewhere, "Is a man to follow rules or rules to follow him?" The next question here is, who thought this was a good idea? Naturally we all want to see endless vistas of logs but do we want to send photos of them to our family and friends? But then, postcards were, in Japan, for collecting rather than sending.
Mitsui was and still is a gargantuan trading company though these days, according to their website, they are in the business of preserving forests. They still own 45,000 hectares of forest around Japan; my guess is that a lot more than that is stacked up here.
A long time ago I collected disaster souvenirs and remembering the souvenir views of the Hamburg cholera outbreak of 1892 this little book makes sense. It is, after all, progress and industry on a massive scale and the production is exemplary.
Ogata Korin & Nakamura Hochu. 光琳画譜 [Korin Gafu]. Toto (ie Edo ie Tokyo), Kinkado n.d.. Two volumes 26x19cm publisher's yellow wrapper with title labels, accordion folding; 25 double page color woodcut plates. Wrappers marked and dusty; rather good. Owner's seal at the beginning and end of Yoshizawa Juminato (? - not sure of the reading of this given name); a name that occurs in some good books. Au$4000
Hochu's re-invention of 17th century Ogata Korin is the beginning of a world invasion of form and style that is now familiar to all of us. It took most of the century to be re-invented again in Japan and reach the west but we are now well and truly conquered.
This beautiful book is not the 1802 printing, despite the evidence of Union Catalogue Database of Japanese Texts, confident assertions of many prestigious libraries and optimistic booksellers. Neither is it the 1826 second edition; it is better. When not dated 1802 this Kinkado edition is often referred to as 'after 1868'. Is this because Kinkado's colophon comes from Toto (eastern capital) rather than Edo, the old name before the name change from Edo to Tokyo in September 1868? If so then the cataoguers never saw the probable 1802 printing because the colophon of Omiya Yohei also comes from 東都 - Toto - Eastern Capital. Kinkado's name appears on prints and books from the late 18th right through the 19th centuries, so that's not much help.
Now, Kinkado and Omiya Yohei are the same company. Kinkado was founded by Omiya in the last decade of the 18th century. Suharaya Sasuke bought into Kinkado Omiya Yohei in 1806 and took over in 1823. He adopted the name Kinkado - I can't discover when - and passed it on to his heir.
I have only found three or four books with the Omiya colophon, none of them after 1804. Neither does Kinkado appear as prolific publishers. The main business was wholesale and paper.
Kinkado also published an edition of Oson Gafu (1817), a neo-Korin cousin to our book, apparently using the original blocks in maybe the 1840s. A later edition has Tokyo on the title page and the colours are brasher. Their colour grammar, Usuyo Irome (1826), comes with a Kinkado colophon or a Kinkado and Suharaya Sasuke colophon. Both place Kinkado at Nihonbashi, Edo, where they had been since Omiya Yohei's time. The address was used or not used according to no discernible rule. What seems to be a printing of the Korin Gafu from these same blocks appeared with no colophon. And Suharaya Sasuke could be any one of at least three generations, no-one seems sure who was who. In short, it's a jungle. Kinkado's great bird books, the Taka Tagami and the Shucho Gafu, are Meiji productions and are identified as such.
When I say this is better than the 1826 edition it's an unreliable judgment. I've compared this copy with every image of every edition I can find online and all I've really learnt is that no two copies are the same. Not even of this edition. The 1826 printing uses recut blocks, as does this printing, so the original blocks vanished pretty fast. They should have passed from Omiya Yohei to Suharaya Sasuke if Omiya ever had them. Hillier confused me by talking of a second impression and a second edition without making it clear whether they are or aren't the same thing. Recut blocks can't, or shouldn't, be called another impression. Was that careless proof reading or is there another early printing without the hand colouring?
But it's clear that Kinkado used a copy of the 1802 original, ignoring the edition in between. Most of Hochu's techniques and tricks are here: bokashi, tarashikomi and karazuri. In order: colour graduation; applying ink to still wet ink; embossing. What's not here is the extra hand colouring Hochu added but it's often hard to tell.
I've never held a copy of the 1802 edition. Not being friends with many billionaires I'm not likely to. In the meantime, unless there is some other evidence kept secret by those cataloguers who designate it as Meiji there is no reason to accept that. It doesn't sit with other Kinkado books; it doesn't make sense.
Fireworks. 煙火競技大会 : 大正14年 : 栃木町消防組主宰 [Enka Kyogi Taikai : Taisho 14 : Tochigi-cho Shobo-gumi Shusai]. n.p. (1925, Taisho 14). 17x25 pattern cloth album, cord tied; 22 photos (11x15cm) on 11 heavy card leaves with captions, the last photo larger. Au$600
This album of the 1925 fireworks competition in Tochigi, then a town now a city, was put together by the town's fire chief. Note that there were day and night fireworks. Those large balls - shown with their maker and his apprentice during the festival and with the family in that last delightful photo - are called two shaku balls. A shaku is so close to a foot (12 inches) that it doesn't matter.
A child of his generosity
HORNE, R.H. (Richard Henry, later Hengist). Orion. An epic poem ... fifth edition. London, J. Miller 1843. Octavo contemporary half calf (quite rubbed and scuffed).
Inscribed by Horne to Robert Bell and a note about extra lines added to this edition on the next leaf; with Anthony Trollope's bookplate initialled R.B. in the corner. Au$500
I don't know why Horne waited until the fifth edition to give Bell a copy of his best selling book. It wasn't a long wait, even for a man who did not like like giving away his books - he wrote so to G.H. Lewes when he thought Lewes was angling for a copy of his Gregory VII. Lewes suggested that giving away unsold copies was better than seeing them line pie trays. Which might have had something to do with Horne first publishing this at a farthing a copy. So, a much smaller loss as a gift than the half crown this fifth edition cost. Which might be why Horne waited: it seemed a more generous gift. Perhaps I misjudge him.
Horne and Bell were friends of everyone and both ended up poor. Bell seems the better friend, procuring money for Horne from the Literary Fund Society when he was thoroughly down and out in Melbourne. Trollope enters this story when Bell, too sick to accept the job Trollope offered him, died in 1867 and unable, with others, to get a pension for his widow Trollope bought Bell's library at a higher price than its appraisal.
Orion is among the books mentioned in Anthony Trollope's Libraries (Grossman and Wright; 1976) which indicates Trollope's rapid integration of Bell's books where Bell's Orion duplicated his own in his 1867 catalogue. A lot of books were culled by his 1874 catalogue but Grossman & Wright don't mention Orion again and Trollope had added Horne's Death of Marlowe.
So this is one of what Sadleir called "doubly precious. They are not only books that once were Trollope's; they are the little children of his generosity".
"if there are people enough to make it pay, then Sydney is in a parlous state indeed"
HENSOLDT, Dr. H. and F. Allman [ed]. [Henry, originally Heinrich; & Frederick; respectively]. Orient and Occident : a monthly magazine devoted to original studies of the race problem ... By No.3 it had changed to: A monthly magazine devoted to the investigation of supernormal phenomena, popular delusions, organised superstitions, conventional shams ...
and
Breaking the Fetters ; an appeal to enlightened humanity [subtitled: The Truth About the "Church" on the front cover.
Sydney, March to October 1907; Eight numbers, 24x17cm, together in modern cloth, the first number with front and back wrappers preserved, the rest with one or the other. An occasional bit of marginalia, rather good.
and
Sydney, the author 1907: octavo publisher's printed wrapper; 36pp. Signs of use but pretty decent. Inscribed "with the compliments of the author". Au$1400
The complete run of this product of the Australian chapter in the life of this liar, fraud, bigamist, thief, and quack. The lies begin in the masthead with the 'Dr.' and really take off on page three with his interview with the Dalai Lama during his first visit to Lhasa.
The most complete life of Hensoldt seems to be that of Stevenson and Gill on microscopist.net. He did make use of whatever education he received from the family business of his father, microscopic slide maker Moritz Hensoldt. During his stay in Sydney - he was apparently here by 1905* - he married wife four or maybe more, Hillend heiress Ada Wythes in January 1908, liquidated her property and they set off for a honeymoon trip that would end on a Texas ranch. It ended in Chicago in February where he and her money vanished. The portrait of him in the Chicago Tribune is the same as that in the first number here. Ada must have been carrying one.
The lies don't stop there. In San Francisco, in May 1908, one Edward P. Bailey gave an interview to the Chronicle saying that he had sold up properties and come from Sydney to meet Hensoldt who would give him half shares in a mother lode in Texas. He claimed to have organised Hensoldt's lecture tours in Australia, helped set up Orient and Occident and introduced Hensoldt to the best of society. Now an Edward P. Bailey was, in October 1907, a certified masseur offering various electrical treatments, in the Royal Chambers which was also the address of Hensoldt. And some twenty years later Australian born Adventurer (capital A) Col. Edward P. Bailey was offering tours of 'The Great Australian Bush' out of San Marino, California.
The vanished Hensoldt supposedly died in 1914 but Stevenson & Gill have convincing evidence that Paul Börnsen, Hensoldt wife two, Augusta, and daughter Johanna arrived in America in October 1908 and settled in Maryland, later moving to Washington DC. Börnsen there went into the radium as a cure-all industry. In 1917 the FBI began investigating him as a possible German spy and Börnsen vanished. Augusta Hensoldt Börnsen reported herself as a widow in the 1920 census but no death record of a Hensoldt or Börnsen could be found.
Frederick Allman is an ephemeral figure; he vanished from the masthead with number four, presumably without anyone's money. I had been wondering, until I noticed that, whether he was reason this magazine is so well printed on good paper. But the quality doesn't drop and the glimpses of Frederick Allman over the next few years: letters to the newspapers, a Theosophical article, letters to Josiah Cocking; sketch a well meaning, socialist, pacifist, mystical health crank. The sort of person who usually inhabits a boarding house rather than a harbourside mansion. The Sydney Mail review of the first issue tells us he is from Yass and is a long time civil servant. The Burrangong Argus tells us he had been a road engineer at Young. Definitely boarding house material.
In any case Hensoldt had been writing most of the magazine anyway and I doubt it was much of an effort to churn out the rest under the pen names that take over in the last numbers.
Trove finds four locations and Worldcat adds most of a complete run at Stanford. I'm not sure, from their catalogue, whether the SLNSW has a complete run; the other three locations are complete. For Breaking the Fetters Trove finds only the NL and Mitchell.
"Taking it all round, Sydney has reason to be proud of this well-printed, wonderful magazine, and if there are people enough to make it pay, then Sydney is in a parlous state indeed. I wonder what is behind the magazine?" Review of the first number in the Sydney Stock and Station Journal.
* This is based on the statement of Edward P. Bailey who said he had known him for three years; ie most unreliable. Advertisements for Hensoldt's Asutralian lectures begin appearing in August 1906.
Breaking the Fetters completes, I believe, the works of Hensoldt in Australia. The adverts for Orient and Occident on the back cover date it to about the middle of the year. The Sydney Stock and Station Journal reviewer doesn't disappoint: " It is the most awful pamphlet I've seen issued in Australia, and if the author does not get hanged, or burned, or sent to Darlinghurst, it only shows that this world is a safer place than it used to be ... What a man Henry is ! He pays us a great compliment in thinking that we are liberal enough and free enough, and intelligent enough not to resent his remarks."
Ishimoto Kikuji. 建築譜 [Kenchikufu]. Bunriha Kenchikukai 1924 (Taisho 13) 27x20cm publisher's cloth backed boards blocked in black and gilt (cover browned); 14pp and 50 plates being a colour frontispiece and the rest b/w photos. A little browning or spotting at the very ends, quite a good copy.
I am convinced that the inscription on the front fly begins with 日五 - day 5, the day this was published - and ends with 著者 - author. What comes in between ...? Au$1000
First edition; the architectural souvenirs of a trip to Europe and America by a founder of the Secessionist Architecture Group - Bunriha Kenchikukai. Germany is front and centre, if you haven't already spotted that from the cover. At the end of the preface he wonders whether to die for his principles like Gropius, indulge his hobbies like Poelzig, or dream like Taut. What he did in the end was found a firm that now builds massive projects that look like a thousand other buildings.
The radical architectural groups at this time were the Secessionists - formed in 1920 by six graduates of Tokyo Imperial University, growing to nine members - and the Barrack Decoration Company - formed by Kon Wajiro, Yoshida Kenkichi and a disparate group of designers and artists after the earthquake - who rushed around decorating the temporary buildings thrown up in the ruins. Parallel but further off was Mavo which also ran around improving barracks and makeshifts for a while. Naturally the purist Bunriha despised the Barrackists. Architecture could be art but artists could never be architects. Successionist Takizawa was not so polite about it.
Architecture. 工作文化 : 近代工作文化特輯 [Kosaku Bunka : Kindai Kosaku Bunka Tokushu]. Tokyo, Sagamishobo 1941 (Showa 16). 26x18cm publisher's printed wrapper, card slipcase (spine ends knocked); 76pp and numerous illustrations on 32 plates. Some browning. sold
Nihon Kosaku Bunka might be translated as Japanese Craft Culture but Japanese Werkbund is a better translation; that was the model. This is no bunch of carvers and potters; elite modernist architects formed the Kosaku Bunka in 1936 out of the endless schisms that began with the first such group: Bunriha Kenchikukai formed in 1920. The founding 25 members include just about every hallowed name in Japanese modernsim, with Bunriha veteran Horiguchi Sutemi at the helm. The 'Japanese' part is important, the aim was "to impart a Japanese guiding spirit to Japanese architectural styles, arts and crafts, industrial products, and other areas by the time of the Olympics four years from now." (a rough translation from the Asahi Shimbun). Of course the proletarians immediately accused them, not unfairly, of fascist tendencies.
This is a collection of six essays published the year after the end of its short lived journal, Gendai Kenchiku (Contemporary Architecture). It is billed as a special issue. No more appeared. The six articles cover prospects for new Japanese architecture; interwar architecture in France; in Germany; German urban planning; ending with some art and design.
Architecture. Kenchiku Kenkyukai. 和洋建築設計実例編 [Wayo Kenchiku Sekkei Jitsurei-hen]. Osaka, Kenchiku Kenkyukai 1936. 27x20cm publisher's printed boards; 51 folding plans, elevations, measured drawings; a few photo illustrations. A little browning. Au$225
A reprint, first published in 1934, this is a thoroughly useful book from the Architectural Research Association. Enlarge the plans and you could build straight out of the book. Japanese and western are still differentiated and you can choose from ten houses, small school houses, or small apartments.
Worldcat finds no copies outside Japan and it's not so common in Japan.
WILLIAMSON, W.C. [William Cotter]. Lectures on the Care and Treatment of the Insane for the instruction of attendants and nurses. Sydney, Govt Printer 1885. Octavo publisher's semi limp roan titled in gilt on the front (wear to edges and tips). Inner front hinge rudely repaired with brown paper; a used but most acceptable copy. Ownership stamp of the Hospital for the Insane, Newcastle at the beginning of the text. Au$450
"The tiny and very insufficient "handbook" for attendants, published by Dr. L.S. Forbes Winslow, was, until a few weeks ago, the only volume containing practical instructions," says F. Norton Manning in his preface. An English handbook from the Medico-Psychological Association arrived while this going to press and still, "neither ... cover the whole ground, but ... are steps in the right direction".
We might grit our teeth reading this book but Williamson was a proper reformer and his reign at the Parramatta lunatic bin - as assistant from 1883, then superindent from 1900 - was marked by rebuilding and the introduction of gardens; he was keen on gardens. And, of course, the education of attendants and nurses.
This was issued to every attendant and nurse but is now an uncommon book; Trove only finds three entries and Worldcat adds copies at John Hopkins and Cambridge.
MOORE-BENTLEY, M. [Mary Ann]. Sketched from Life. Published by M. Moore-Bentley, Sydney 1903. Octavo modern cloth; b/w illustrations scattered throughout, most but not all signed C.H.H. Signs of use but most acceptable. Au$325
A political romance and novel of wish fulfillment with a heroine pursued by all the powers of the press, the police, the establishment, variously called "The Lyndhurst Mystery," the "Australian Joan of Arc", the "working man's daughter", physically a "tall, commanding, Minerva-like figure," (Moore-Bentley was described as tall and slender) and finally an "Australian Dreyfus."
At the end is an advertisement inviting subscriptions for A Woman of Mars, or Australia's Enfranchised Woman (1901) with a page of subscribers' names. If that is the complete list then I count 25 copies sold. A lot less that the 18,000 odd votes she got when she ran for the New South Wales senate this same year. A Woman of Mars starred a feminist visitor from Mars in Sydney.
Trove finds two copies of this: at the Mitchell and the National Library; Worldcat adds no more. I noticed that the ADB still lists her under her married name, Mary Ling, a name she had discarded by 1901.
Koishi Kiyoshi. 撮影・作画の新技法 [Satsuei, Sakuga no Shingiho]. Tokyo, Genkosha 1936 (Showa 11). 20x16cm publisher's decorated cloth and printed card case; b/w photo illustrations and diagrams throughout. Box browned, light spots on the cream front cover; rather good. Au$1600
First edition of Koishi's new techniques of photography - double exposures, under exposures, over exposures, montage, photograms, asymmetry ... all the tricks of a determined avantist.
Onchi Koshiro designed this book. He designed several of Genkosha's photography books including, I presume, his own, and usually made them open right to left.
Thoroughly censored perversions
Soma Jiro. 変態処方箋 [Hentai Shohosen] Selection of Abnormal Documents. Tokyo, Kaichosha 1930 (Showa 5). 19x14cm publisher's illustrated fawn cloth printed in red, yellow and black (some browning and smudging), printed card slipcase. Quite poxed inside but I'm sure no-one wants to read this filth so it won't be noticed. I have seen this singular spotting in another copy, I suspect some unwanted particles in a batch of paper. Au$125
A censored copy. While the colophon seems to claim this is the first printing it isn't. It is dated July and August for printing and publication dates while what might be the first printing is dated the 24th and 29th of June. That has coarser cloth and thicker paper.
According to Hakkin Hon (banned books): Bessatsu Taiyo, the book was banned four days before publication and 295 of the 1000 copies produced were seized.
And I found another note on this book that tells us that 38 printings appeared within four months - with 25% of the text blanked out and at least one all blank page. Indeed page 508 is, not blank but columns of dots. Many other pages have columns of dots.
But this is all a muddle because the copy dated 29th June is also censored and page 508 is also columns of dots while the other pages I compared are untouched. I haven't done a page by page comparison.
I have traced a claimed 38th edition but nothing between one and 38. It makes sense now; they are all, however many there are, first editions.
This substantial classic of the ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense). Hentai Shohosen might translate as 'A Prescription for Perverts'. Drugs, sex toys, punishment, cannibalism and a list of everyday items used by foreign women for masturbation appear among the chapters. So I'm told. Thank goodness I can't read it.
What I really want to know is who did the cheerful cover - one that could double for a book on Japanese motherhood - and box/title page. Designer's names are often tucked away in dim corners but I can't find it.
Russian ship kawaraban. 亞魯西亞舩 [Aroshiafune]. n.p. earlyish 19th cntury. 33x44cm woodcut with hand colouring. A small hole up towards the top left corner; a nice copy. Au$800
I continue to be impressed by the ability of Japanese artists to deliver a true picture of something they've never seen, nor met anyone who has. But the captions puzzle me. Things like sea miles, directions, and so on are often provided on pictures of foreign ships but here not only have the details been left out but whatever ship was on the picture that provided the captions has obviously been ignored. When news broke of the sighting of an alien ship a canny printmaker often dug out an antiquated Dutch ship, changed the flags and added whatever gossip and rumours reported. Not so here. I do wonder what that fluffy pendant (fox tail?) is meant to be.
Exhibition. 博覧會圖式 [Hakurantaizushiki?]. n.p. Horaido [1872]. 26x36 lithograph? An excellent copy. Au$300
This clutter of bric-a-brac looks much like the oriental antique shop of my childhood dreams. This guide to the exhibition of antique artworks was the starting point for Tokyo National Museum's 150th Anniversary exhibition but their publicity gives us no details beyond the date 1872. I guess you had to be there.
Note that there are some western items included: a few paintings, those busts, what looks like a group of figurines ... The only other record I can find is the title in a gathering of prints called Meiji Restoration Surimono in a Kyoto museum.
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 (a touch frayed) with wrap around (obi) and original cellophane; photo illustrations throughout. Usual browning; a rather good copy. Au$850
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.
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.
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 a 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.
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.
Dokufu and a protest from the cataloguer
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.
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 (spine fairly rubbed); 361pp, profusely illustrated throughout, a few photo or colour plates. Edges browned, a second hand copy showing signs of being well read but certainly acceptable. Au$350
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.
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. sold
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.
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%.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fashion. モード Mode : Coats. Tokyo, Modosha 1934 (Showa 9). 31x11cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; 32pp including wrappers; illustrated throughout, six pages colour on heavier paper, each with the pattern on the back. Titled in Japanese if you start at the right end and in English if you start at the wrong end but paginated from the western end. Signs of use. Au$175
Mode looks to be taken direct from a Paris journal but I haven't found an exact match. There were a lot of them. Since these models' legs look to be about shoulder height for an average Japanese woman it's hard to see these coats translated into Japanese. But the days of Meiji women looking uncomfortable and frumpish in western frocks were long gone. Come to that, the average height of a French woman wasn't much more and, come to that, high fashion is not meant for the average person.
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.
