Baido Kunimasa [Utagawa Kunimasa IV]. 明治貴顕鑑 [Meiji Kiken Kagami]. Tokyo, Hoeidi 1888 (Meiji 21). 12x9cm publisher's wrapper with title label (ink inscription on the back cover); 15 double folded leaves giving one single page, one gatefold quadruple page, and 15 double page engravings. Actually all but a couple of leaves are quadruple folded - the printed leaves around double folded leaves of heavier paper making the book tougher, made to be handled often. Au$300

A nifty little book, a portrait gallery of eminent figures of the Meiji. But captured in action, not the studio poses of so many Eminent Men galleries. Worldcat finds only the NDL entry.

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BEDIN, Alphonse. La Photographie au Laboratoire de Medecine Legale de l'Universite de Nancy. Nancy, Imprimeries Reunies 1908. 25x17cm publisher's printed wrapper (front edge of the front wrapper a bit stained with a small chip); 132pp, errata leaf and 77 photo plates. Rather good. Inscribed and signed by Bedin to l'Abbe Pompey. Au$750

First edition of this gruesome pioneering work on forensic photography. I, a delicate soul, tried to check the plates without seeing at them. I cleverly decided to do it without my glasses but arriving at an impossible count I had to do it again with glasses. This thesis by Pierre Parisot's assistant at the University of Nancy is in two parts: the first a history and bibliography of the subject; the second their work from 1905 on at Nancy.
Jeremy Norman, cataloguing this same copy a few years ago, pointed out how lavishly it was produced for a thesis - usually a self funded thing. He wrote that it "is about the most expensively produced one I have ever seen".

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アメリカ博覧會 The America Fair [Amerika Hakurankai]. Asahi Press 1950. 37x26cm publisher's cloth with mounted colour illustration (cloth silverfished); [6],125pp, profusely illustrated with photos. An occasional smudge or blot; still a very acceptable copy of a vulnerable book. Text in Japanese with all pictures captioned in English. The colour illustration on the cover is a woodcut cut and printed by by Kobe's best sosaku artist Kawanishi Hide. Au$400

Now this is one exercise in American marketing that we don't hear much of. This was an elaborate and pretty massive display of all the advantages of the American way to occupied Japan, held in Nishinomiya from March to June 1950. Replicas, in reduced but still impressive scale, were constructed of New York (with the Statue of Liberty), the White House, Mount Rushmore, the Golden Gate Bridge, Yosemite, Chicago, Independence Hall, Niagara Falls, The Capitol, Carlsbad Cavern, the Grand Canyon. Considering how much papier-mache and plaster of Paris that must have gone into this, this was one mighty pile of self destroying kitsch.
Japan did have its own hall of industry; there was model housing; the newest planes, trains and automobiles; appliances and gadgets galore; all aspects of the life and times of America.

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Dokufu. 奥州笠松峠女盗賊 [Oshu Kasamatsu Toge On'na Tozoku]. Bakurocho (Edo, ie Tokyo), Yoshidaya Shokichi [second quarter of the 19th century?]. 17x13cm, two parts together; each eight pages; illustrated titles for each. Au$200

This particular version of the story of Omatsu, the woman thief and killer of Kasamatsu Pass, exists in at least four different versions. The illustrations were redrawn and with the text was recut for each. Since all the copies I've traced were published by Yoshidaya Shokichi it suggests a lot of blocks were worn out printing a lot of copies. This one seems early and is labelled a reprint (再板) on the titles; it matches Waseda's copy.
The story of our dokufu (poisonous woman) is a tangle of contradictions depending on whether it came from song - like this one - kabuki, or rakugo (story telling). However she became a thief, the important bit is that she avenged her father's murder and in turn was killed by her victim's son. The two illustrations make that plain enough. I did come across mention of a version in which her daughter avenged her killing without realising her mother had killed his father. That one has the makings of a long running soap opera.

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Dokufu. 奥州笠松峠女盗賊 :くどき [Oshu Kasamatsu Toge On'na Tozoku : Kudoki]. n.p. n.d (later 19th century). 17x13cm, two parts together; each eight pages; illustrated titles for each. Cheap paper browned; apparently disbound with old stab holes, recently restitched. Au$100

I think this a lithographic printing of the last version but it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a poor lithograph and a poor woodcut. Certainly the paper looks like wood pulp. That blank panel, bottom right, has Yoshidaya's name in it on other printings.

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Palm Letter Co. Illustrated Sample Book of Palm's Patent Transfer Letters for Glass, Wood, Paint, Metal &c. Palm Letter Co, Cincinnati (1893?). 26x29cm publisher's decorated wrapper; three colour plates with metallic inks``, 56 pages of monochrome illustrations. Used, with a bit of wear to to the corners and some smudging; nothing debilitating. Hanging string loop through the top left corner. Au$850

Palm's German made letters are "manufactured in Pure Aluminium Gold and Silver Leaf and finest Oil colours, and are equal, if not superior, to the best hand-painted work." The first two plates are letters for applying on wood &c, the third for applying to the back of glass. The rest shows all their different styles and sizes.
The book is copyright 1893 and has a stamp of the American Trading Co. of Yokohama dated February 1898. I'm told Palm exhibited at the 1893 Chicago exposition which explains why this is more luxurious than the other catalogues I've traced.

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Papua the Marvellous. The country of chances. [Melbourne, Govt Printer [1910?]. Octavo publisher's flush cut cloth; 52pp and 10 photo plates. A read but decent enough copy. Au$175

A superbly concise lesson in how to pillage a country and exploit a people, with little capital and a healthy profit. No more exterminating the natives "as a simple matter of ordinary routine," nor even are tribes now "spared, but enslaved". The modern ruler civilizes, reforms and uses them for "honestly developing the country." It won't be long before the "cannibals of the west will be almost worth their weight in gold."
Australia was still the new owner of its very own colony. A few more years brought German New Guinea as a war prize and proper large scale corruption but in the meantime, with a few hundred quid and a bit of nous, a bloke could do pretty well.

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DAVIS, Robert H. Breathing in Irrespirable Atmospheres, and, in some cases, also Under Water. Including a short history of gas and incendiary warfare from early times to the present day, the physiology of respiration, breathing at high altitudes, resuscitation, the evolution of breathing apparatus, modern gas masks and other respiratory apparatus, with accounts of some mine rescue and recovery operations etc. London, Saint Catherine Press [1947]. Large octavo publisher's cloth; profusely illustrated, four in colour. Au$200

First, seemingly only edition. Davis lived and breathed, so to speak, artificial respiration. He joined Siebe Gorman in 1882, age 11, and retired in 1964 as life president of the company. He stopped breathing in 1965. Along the way he invented the odd submarine escape device and gas mask and wrote the bible on deep sea diving.
Publication of this was delayed by the war and while he notes with horror the appearance of the V2 rocket he hasn't ventured out into space yet. What is described in this book was used for warfare but he is "chiefly concerned with their employment for the humanitarian purposes for which they were originally designed."

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Her cataloguer's copy

NORTH, Marianne Recollections of a Happy Life Being the Autobiography ... [with] Some Further Recollections of a Happy Life ... edited by her sister Mrs. John Addington Symonds. London, MacMillan 1892 & 93. Three volumes octavo publisher's gilt decorated cloth. Frontispieces in each, three other plates including the saintly Cameron portrait. Some browning or spotting at each end. Au$900

First editions of still the only substantial record of the globe trotting botanical painter. Not so easy to find all three together; rather good, and a good association: each with the ownership signature, W. Botting Hemsley. Hemsley was a botanist at Kew, worked with North on cataloguing, and was author of the descriptive catalogue of the Marianne North gallery at Kew, commissioned by North. He is also credited with proof reading the diaries. There is a scattering of marginal pencilling but I found only one question mark next to a botanical name.
The Recollections are a posthumous publication - she died in 1890 - they hadn't appeared earlier because she was too ill to take on the "retrenchments" required by MacMillan. I read somewhere that they were much tamed. I happily note that the academics have been stamping out their ground in the North industry accusing each other of deconstruction of her journals and other such improper behavior.

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SLEE, Richard & Cornelia Atwood PRATT. Dr. Berkeley's Discovery. NY, Putnams 1899. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth blocked in gilt, black and white. Minor signs of use; rather good. Au$385

Only edition, I believe, of this sci-fi murder mystery thriller. The single minded American scientist somehow wins a gorgeous young French wife and still can't stay away from the lab. He is begged to put his earth shattering new discovery to work in solving a brutal murder and discovers that the piece of brain he has grafted into an ape, cultured, sliced up and is recovering images from the memory cells is his wife's.

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THORNTON, Henry. Recherches sur la Nature et les Effets du Credit du Papier dans La Grande-Bretagne. Geneva, Bibliotheque Britannique 1803. Octavo modern boards with leather label. Front and bottom edges untrimmed; a pleasing copy with half title. Au$500

First edition in French, from the English original of 1802, indicative of the international attention this received with French and German translations in 1803 and an American edition in 1807. McCulloch revived it mid century in his collection of the most valuable tracts on currency and banking after which it languished until Hayek embraced and celebrated it a century later. Now the economic metaverse swarms with researchers pointing out how important it is and how every other researcher has neglected to understand this properly.
The translation was sometimes attributed to Charles Pictet-de-Rochemont, founder of the Bibliotheque Britannique, but Etienne Dumont - the French (and comprehensible) voice of Bentham, who urged Dumont to translate Thornton - is the translator.

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Лапти-лаптищи [Lapti - Laptishchi[. Moscow, Knebel [1909?]. 30x22cm colour illustrated stiff wrapper; 12pp including covers, each opening with a full page colour illustration and a smaller colour illustration with the facing text. Au$225

An attractive, very Russian - colourful, charming and cruel - version of the tale of the wily fox and her victims. The artist is probably D. Shokhin.

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Kawaraban. Perry and the black ships. 三都** : *乃色はなし [Santo** ; * no Iro wa Nashi]. np nd (mid 19th century). 18x24cm woodcut. A bit nibbled in the right margin, very good. Au$100

A mysterious little kawaraban that has so far defied interpretation thanks to that damn cursive script. It all seems to relate to one event and since there are cannons, clan banners, a steam ship, and a person very much like the usual portraits of American marines I claim it's Perry's visit. How that includes what look like chopsticks, a tatami and a bonsai ... ? I guess they make characteristic Japanese gifts but that doesn't explain some other things here.

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Hikifuda. Bookshop. 書林 [Shorin]. n.p. n.d. [c1880 to 1900?]. Colour woodcut 24x30cm. Rumpled with an old vertical fold. Au$150

From what I can figure out - which is not much with my complete illiteracy when it comes to handwritten text - this advertises a Fukuoka bookshop that stocks Japanese, Chinese and Western books. The westerner is the fat bastard sitting down. That red labelled tube holds Japanese school charts.
Hikifuda are large handbills or small posters, often handed out as gifts for special occasions. Later they were mass produced with the details left blank for the merchant to fill in and the same image could advertise any number of disparate things. Not so in this case.

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Risho. 花火秘伝集 [Hanabi Hiden-shu]. Naniwa (Osaka), Kawachiya Genshichiro [c1817 to 1825]. 15.5x10cm publisher's cloth with remnants of the printed label; 39 double leaves and colophon page inside the back cover, double page frontispiece, woodcut illustrations, some full page. A wormed copy, carefully repaired with washi placed within each folded leaf and the stitching renewed. Most of the worming is towards each end, particularly the back, but there is not so much in the way of serious loss and the whole is legible and remarkably clean and fresh for a book like this. Specially when compared to the only other copy I've ever had in my hands. Au$4500

The first Japanese book on fireworks. One issue of this is dated 1817 but CiNii, the NDL and Waseda are not certain enough to assign a date to the others. Philip's Bibliography of Firework Books does list it but only from a translation of the Kokusho Somokuroku (the national bibliography of books before 1867) entry provided to him by the British Library. There it is dated c1825 and Philips states that no more than six copies are extant in Japanese libraries. This can be revised a touch, not a lot:
This copy is identical to the NDL copy online.
Identical but for wrapper colours to Waseda's copy - including no hint that there was ever a title inside the front cover - until we get to the colophon leaf which is very different. They both bear the name of Kawachiya Genshichiro, both in Shinsaibashi but Osaka rather than Naniwa. Their copy was co-published by Suharaya Mohei of Nihonbashi in Edo (Tokyo) who must be part of the Suharaya/Kinkado tangle.
Cinii finds five entries, three at Tenri University.
Tokyo University's copy is dated Bunka 14 (1817) in the colophon. The colophon, still Kawachiya in Shinsaibashi but Osaka rather than Naniwa, is very different. That copy has an illustrated title page inside the front cover, unlike any other I've found.
Kyushu University doesn't mention colophon or publisher.
Tenri University has a colophon in line with Waseda; they may also have another incomplete copy.
Worldcat comes up empty.

The title translates as firework secrets and, like many trades, the secrets were kept in the trade. Until this book and for at least another fifty years the secrets of fireworks were held in manuscripts. The attrition rate for a book like this with an audience of black-thumbed, fire-prone pyrotechnists must have guaranteed not too many secrets leaked out.

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GOWER, Richard Hall. A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Seamanship, together with a system of naval signals ... a useful compendium to the officer, to instruct him when young, and to remind him when old. The third edition, corrected and enlarged.
[bound with]
A Supplement to the Practical Seamanship ... London, for Wilkie & Robinson &c 1808; London for Mawman 1807. Together in octavo contemporary calf (rebacked, original lettering piece retained); xxviii,242,[2]pp; volvelle and ills and diagrams through the text; [4],208pp; seven plates - numbered to six with two fours - and illustrations through the text. Au$1300

Probably the last edition of the Treatise. The volvelle is particularly marvellous: a revolving ship in plan, on it a moveable jib (stayed with cotton), fore yard, main yard, C.J. yard and tiller/rudder; in a printed circle 120mm in diameter. The author's preface to this third edition reminds us why these books are so scarce: "the author having seen impressions of the former editions of this work, in the possession of young men on shipboard, many of which impressions had been deprived of their plates altogether, by rough sea-usage, and too intimate an aquaintance with the lee-scuppers - has, in part, prevented the evil in the present edition, by introducing the explanatory figures with the letter-press."
His preface to the second edition is a list of complaints about Steel's Rigging and Seamanship, not so much for his piracy from Gower as for the misrepresentation and obfuscation introduced in his attempt to disguise that piracy.
The Supplement is Gower's continuing research, experiments, designs and inventions: his quite radical ship 'Transit', his new patent log, an eyeshade ... many of which were not much noticed but bore remarkable resemblances to improvements made later by others. Gower seems to have been an admirable man; clever, learned, always inspired by notions of progress, improvement and humanitarianism, and indefatigable in pursuit of acknowledgment and adoption of his work. I get the impression that the halls of power emptied at news that Gower was in the building.
Burnley said, in his DNB entry for Gower, that a second edition of the Supplement appeared in 1810 but I am yet to find a copy. The Treatise is hard to find, the Supplement is rare.

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Building photograph. A large photograph of a large timber framed building and its builders during construction. n.p.n.d. [190-?]. Albumen print 21x27cm on embossed studio card mount 32x40cm, by Sugiura Photographic Studio in Matsumoto. Au$150

I'm told this came from Azumino City in Nagano Prefecture, not far from Matsumoto. The references to Sugiura photos from Azumino I've come across date from about 1890 to around 1914.
This is no quaint cottage or farmhouse, it looks like a modern school to me and I think it must be Unmei Gakko; it was at one stage with some later photos, also taken by Sugiura, of various special occasions - people but not the school building.
There were 35 people gathered on this wet day, not all of them workers by the look of it. There are a few distinguished older gentlemen at the front who might include school officials as well as the bosses. Doubtless they would soon put up their umbrellas and leave and the workers would get back to work.

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Kon Wajiro 民俗と建築 : 平民工芸論 [Minzoku to Kenchiku : Heimin Kogeiron]. Tokyo, Isobe Koyodo 1927 (Showa 2). 19x13cm publisher's cloth and printed card slipcase (spine dulled); 115 illustrations, six folding. Name on the box. Au$150

First edition of Wajiro's collection of writings before and after the Kanto earthquake, charting his development from chronicler of folk architecture and crafts to modernologist. He warns in his preface that anyone expecting concrete architectural solutions to current needs will be disappointed. Part four (of four parts) dates from the earthquake and is devoted to the makeshift shelters and barracks. Kon and an odd collection of designers, architects and designers formed the Barracks Decoration Company aiming to bring some vestiges of beauty, humanity and surprise to grim emergency sheds and shacks. From there it was a natural progression to modernology, the science of the present.

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WALRAS, Leon. Correspondence of Leon Walras and Related Papers. Edited by William Jaffe. Amsterdam, North-Holland 1965. Three volumes stout octavo, very good in publisher's cloth and mildly torn duswrappers. Au$175

Warmly inscribed and signed by Jaffe to economist and historian Joseph J. Spengler.

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