Architecture. Kenchiku Kenkyukai. [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.
Bridges. Portland Cement Association. Architectural Design of Concrete Bridges. Concrete for permanence. Chicago, Portland Cement [1937]. Oblong quarto publisher's printed wrapper; 36pp, photo and other illustrations throughout. Au$60
'Fundamental principles', that is the rules of design - appearance as separate from structure - are succinctly set out and illustrated by recent modern and moderne bridges. Mistakes are shown and corrected in diagrams.
Exhibition - Toyama 1936. [Toyamashi Shusai Nichiman Sangyo Daihakurankai Kyosankai Shi]. Toyama 1938 (Showa 13). 23x16cm publisher's cloth and card box; numerous photo illustrations, colour plates, folding plans and elevations. A nice copy. Au$650
The official report on the 1936 Japan-Manchuria Great Industrial Exhibition. Though blemished by too many portraits of personages, this is still an excellent record of thirties Japanese expo architecture and design with coloured pictures of posters, advertising, tickets and so on, plans and elevations of buildings, lighting, and photo views. There is also the obligatory Hatsusaburo colour folding birds-eye panorama.
Worldcat finds two copies outside Japan, both in California.
Sugiura Hisui, Takeo Takei, Takeshi Kimata &c. [Wagako no Rekishi]. Osaka, Mitsokushi [1939] (Showa 14). 27x19cm publisher's cloth backed boards decorated in gilt and black in mildy worn decorated box; 84pp illustrated in colour throughout by Takei and others; cover design by Sigiura. Partly filled in with pencil, two chubby hands have been traced in ink; occasional browning or offsetting; a remarkably good copy. Au$300
This book was child of the Mitsokushi department store, first published in 1928, reprinted fairly often and presumably updated. One of Takei's illustrations is dated 1934. Who was the titan that came up this genius innovation - the predigested baby album? Does he or she have a shrine in the marketing hall of fame? They - books like this - seem to have popped up round the world in the twenties - were they earlier? This has one foot planted in revoltingly cute of course but, thanks to Takei and a couple of fellow artists, enough pages keep the other foot in stylish and exciting.
Worldcat finds one copy - a 1938 edition at Princeton - and NDL finds two - 1928 and 1936 editions - in Japanese libraries. While doing homework on this I came across a poor - so to speak - descendant: the Blot. For a mere 20,000 yen you get something that looks suspiciously like a leather filofax - if you're old enough to remember the filofax - no cute pictures, no revolting sentiment. Poor kids.
WORCESTER, G.R.G. [George Raleigh Gray]. The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze. A study in Chinese nautical research. Shanghai, Dept of Customs 1947-48. Two volumes quarto publisher's green cloth (different grained cloth on each volume); numerous photo illustrations, measured drawings & plans, several folding. A nice, bright pair. Au$1600
Worcester was by no means the only civil servant in China, or any exotic foreign spot, to devote large slabs of their life to collecting, collating and preserving disappearing arts, crafts, languages and customs, but his books on junks and sampans are remarkable for being exhaustive and well timed. They are references that can never be obsolete, recording as they do dozens of now vanished vessel types - their design, construction, peculiar use and all manner of social and personal history of their owners and crews.
Superhero tulip comic. Bulb Magic! NY, Custom Comics for the Associated Bulb Growers of Holland [1956]. 19x13cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; 16pp; comic strip in colour. Au$30
Forget Captain America and Superman. What did they ever do for the American suburb? We lose little time in exposition: on page one Tom and Bob meet on the homeward bound 5.04 and Bob is flummoxed to find Tom has sold his house at asking price while he, Bob, hasn't had a nibble for his, the same model. Not entirely the same, Tom explains, his bulb plantings "sure did increase the value!" So we learn how bulbs produced a colorful miracle for Tom and can do the same for us. Did Batman ever increase your property value? Worldcat finds two copies but one of those can't be verified.
: Medical Card for Sexual Design [Igaku Kado : Sei no Dezain hen]. Tokyo, Sansheisha Shobo 1965. 19x13cm, glossy card wallet case with 64 glossy cards. Fifty two cards printed both sides with photo illustrations of a young woman in black bodysuit on the front, one with sketches of hairstyles and the rest with diagrams and tables of reproductive organs and menstruation cycles; text and/or illustrations on the back of all. The last card is a diy rhythm calculator. All in excellent shape. Au$150
Even after deciphering the rules I'm still be baffled by this triumph of sixties sexual revolution kitsch. The first sixteen cards are blue, the rest pink; the 52 playing cards have a king's or queen's crown and one or two suit symbols - clubs, hearts &c - most have two but one has an A. The rules tell us there is only one ace but not what it's good for. Is the odd card out, the hairstyles, the joker? So the loser at Old Maid would, instead of having sex, get a new hairstyle? The gender symbols are graphic hints and must have been fun for the designer; the text on both sides is poetry; and hygiene is important. The point of the game and the rhythm calculator seems to be to give women some control in the new era of liberation; not something often evident, east or west.
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