ニコニコポンチ [Nikonikoponchi]. Osaka, Enomoto shoten 1919 (Taisho 8). 21x14cm publisher's colour litho wrapper; 10pp including wrapper; colour lithograph illustrations throughout. Natural browning of the cheap paper, an excellent copy. Au$80
Short comic strip gags printed in that style that makes you reach for your 3D glasses. Maybe not the finest printing but these akahons (red books) - cheap and gaudy - do manage to catch the thrill of being alive in a time when everything is fun. This may be a reprint; published a couple of years after the first.
Noshigami. のし紙 A sample book of Noshigami - special paper for gifts - from the Kadoya Dyeing Workshop: Tokyo. Tokyo [1920s?]. 24x18cm, home made printed stiff wrappers; 105 leaves of colour printed samples on different kinds of paper, various sizes. Au$400
Noshi-gami is specially printed paper to be folded and attached to gifts as I understand it. The ineluctable beauty of some patterns is enhancedher, I say, by being in a quite smart cover decorated with locomotives.
GARNIER, Tony. Les Grands Travaux de la Ville de Lyon. Etudes: projets et travaux executes. Paris, Massin [1920]. folio, loose as issued in publisher's portfolio of cloth backed printed boards; 12pp and 56 plates - drawings, plans, elevations and photos. Au$1200
In Garnier's work in Lyon, instigated by the mayor Edouard Herriott from 1906 on, he realised many of the ideas set forth in his Cite Industrielle and some of the ideas in Cite Industrielle came from his work in Lyon. Une Cite Industrielle was largely finished by 1904 but not published until 1918 so he had the chance to plug a few of the gaps in his imagined city from his real city. Some projects here were completed in later years and some never realised.
Fire Safety Poster. 火防 - 秩父消防組 [Hifuse - Chichibu Shobogume]. Chichibu Fire Prevention Publicity Department [192-?]. Colour litho poster 39x27cm. Au$225
A good straightforward illustration of what a carefully applied match can do.
Takarazuka. A collection of 112 bromide photo postcards of Takarazuka actors n.p. c1920 to 30. These were obviously in an album with corners which have somehow interacted with the photo surface and caused bleaching and marks to corners and edges. There are three or four plain photos, the rest are postcards. Four have writing on the back and three are stamped. These are dated 1920. Au$500
The Takarazuka, the all women theatre company, was founded in 1913, presented their first show in 1914, introduced the revue to Japan in 1927, and is now, as much of the world knows, huge. There is a mountain of stuff out there but there is a paucity of images and information from their first years. A collection like this - the number of postcard photos - makes it evident that there was a well established fandom and a fair industry in satisfying them by the twenties, but not so much seems to have survived.
Sketchy and gap-toothed lists of actors are extant but most have no accompanying portraits; similarly sketchy lists of productions survive but even fewer are accompanied by photographs. I went through a decade of actors grouped by their first year assiduously collected on Takawiki expecting to find several examples of the same cards; I found one.
In later years actors became specialists, the otokoyaku play men, the musumeyaku play women, but our actors played men and women, Japanese and westerner, traditional and modern, gangster and empress. Nara Miyako, Kadota Ashiko and Ashihara Kuniko are identified; the rest are up to you. All are in costume and most are in action on stage.
Advertising - Lotus Margarine. Lotus Margarine. Fine de Table. Recettes de Cuisine. Lotus [192-?]. 21x11cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; 32pp, b/w illustrations and decorations throughout. Cover (and inside?) by Duzolle. Au$85
A nifty little booklet, packed with style and cordon bleu recipes.
Hikifuda. Specimen hikifuda. n.p. [192-?]. Colour lithograph 26x38cm. A bit creased, stab holes on the right indicating it was once in an album. A printed code number on the back. Au$135
A glamorous pair of Taisho women doing what urban Japanese did best: throng the busy exciting streets and shop. These hikifuda - handbills or small advertising posters - were often produced with blank frames for customers to have their own wares and business details printed over. I'd guess this was aimed at the fashion industry.
Hikifuda. Specimen hikifuda. n.p. [192-?]. Colour lithograph 26x38cm. A bit rumpled, stab holes on the right indicating it was once in an album. A printed code number on the back. Au$150
The vivid and exciting world of groceries beautifully depicted. These hikifuda - handbills or small advertising posters - were often produced with blank frames for customers to have their own wares and business details printed over.
百万弗の懸賞 $1000000 Reward [Hyakumandoru no Kensho]. Tokyo, Shunkodo 1920 (Taisho 9). Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper printed in red and black and colour illustrated dustwrapper (the spine of this insect nibbled); two photo plates and illustrated title. Stab holes indicating this had been in some outer binding; natural browning of the paper; an outstanding copy. An owner's seal and brushed inscription inside the front cover and on the back cover suggests this is some kind of file copy. Au$475
A pulpish film edition in Japanese translation of the 1920 serial thriller $1,000,000 Reward starring Lillian Walker. The film itself is lost and from what I can figure out not much more than production credits and a partial list of chapter headings survives in English. This book is near as lost, I can find only one record of another copy - not in a library.
戸締栓金具 文化クロロ [Tojimari Sen Kanagu : Bunka Kuroro]. [192-?]. Colour lithograph poster 76x35cm. Short tears around the edges; pretty good. Au$200
This shop poster is both an advertisement and a warning: these handsome door or window locks will not keep out mournful children.
LEGRAND, Edy. Voyages Glorieuses Decouvertes des Grands Navigateurs & Explorateurs Francais. Paris, Tolmer 1921. folio publisher's illustrated boards & cloth spine; 2 folding maps & illustrations throughout coloured by pochoir. A rather good copy in a cloth chemise and slipcase. Au$750
One of the triumphs of modern French book making which, fittingly enough looks back to the triumphs (or glory at least) of Cartier, de la Salle and La Perouse.
見えざる手 [Miezaru Te] The Invisible Hand. Tokyo, Shunkodo 1921 (Taisho 10). Octavo publisher's colour colour illustrated wrapper; four photo illustrations on two plates. Stab holes indicating this had been in some outer binding; natural browning of the paper; an outstanding copy. Au$400
A pulpish film edition in Japanese translation of the 1920 Vitagraph serial thriller The Invisible Hand starring the then Latin idol Antonio Moreno. The serial was not, despite what some authorities will tell you, a western. The film itself is lost and from what I can figure out not much more than production credits and a list of chapter headings survives in English. This book is near as lost, I can't find any record of another copy.
By the mid fifties Moreno was a support in Creature from the Black Lagoon and an Indian chief in Saskatchewan.
Tobari Kogan. 創作版画と版画の作り方 [Sosaku Hanga to Hanga no Tsukurikata] How to Make Prints by Kogan Tohari : Drawn: blok-cut & printed by author [sic]. Tokyo, Hangasha 1922 (Taisho 11). 21x14cm publisher's printed card wrapper with mounted illustration (wear to spine with an old tape mark, stain on the back, other signs of use); 10 mounted b/w photo illustrations, one b/w illustration and six mounted woodcuts, being three blocks with five colours, the key block in black, the complete print all in black, and the finished colour print. A somewhat dishevelled cover but not bad; mild browning, all rather good and fresh inside. The wrappers look like they have been cut back from the page edges but they are folded and that's how the book was issued. Au$2500
An idiosyncratic book printed on tan stiff card which, while browned, is not as browned as it might appear in photos. The prints themselves are crisp and bright. The half-tone illustrations do Tobari's work no favours but I guess they gave some vague indication of his work. He produced so few prints that more than half of them are here.
Tobari has made for this lesson a smaller version of his mysterious print of acrobats: is it political commentary? religious? all just show biz? He was a founding member of the sosaku hanga - creative prints - movement which cut all and any middle men between the artist and final print. I'm embarrassed to admit that I knew nothing of him until recently when I watched three of his prints that I admired and coveted - one of them the acrobats - sell for a few tens of thousands of dollars. So I have learnt that he is hardly a well kept secret but I haven't learnt much about him except that he studied and caught TB in America and was established as a Rodinesque sculptor before turning to print making and that he died youngish, in 1927. He didn't have time to become a grand old man of art like his colleagues Koshiro Onchi, Maekawa Senpan and Kawakami Sumio. Onchi was dismissive of, almost venomous about, Tobari in his 1953 book on modern prints. Tobari was too technically skilled and too emotional and Onchi, for all his achievement, could not produce the exquisite and moving portrait represented by the grey blur on the cover of this book.
This is pretty rare; Worldcat finds only the V&A and BL entries outside Japan.
Takanashi Yoshitaro [ed]. 文化村の簡易住宅 [Bunkamura no Kan'i Jutaku]. Tokyo, Koyosha 1922 (Taisho 11). 19x15cm, publisher's stiff wrapper with mounted illustration; title, 19pp of text and 54 plates printed on one side: photo illustrations, floor plans and renderings, one double page. Some marks and minor signs of use. Au$300
Fourth printing, two months after the first, of this architectural guide to Japan's model Culture Village (Bunkamura) of 'simple' housing built for the 1922 Peace Exposition; the purposeful introduction of idealistic westernised homes, rather than mansions and commercial buildings. Western mostly on the outside, not so much inside. Fourteen houses were built by different builders that had to meet 15 guidelines which did not stipulate that the outside had to be western but did demand windows rather than shutters and paper screens and that decoration should be avoided. Living spaces had to be chair style and kitchens and bathrooms thoroughly up to date. After that it was up to the designers and builders and the results are what's usually called ecleticism, hybrid, or borrowing, but isn't so simple in intent. And, as usual, what was borrowed from the west was often a reclamation of what the west had borrowed from Japan: arts & crafts in England, craftsman in America, nouveau, seccesion, werkstatte, and whatever else in Europe.
At much the same time as this, across town another Bunkamura - the Mejiro Bunkamura development by Tsutsumi Yasujiro - was being launched, reportedly inspired by the streetscape of Beverly Hills. The houses in both villages were for the new middle classes but Tsutsumi's village was for the upper middle class. Much of what was built during the twenties was destroyed during the war but the remaining fragments show shared characteristics which I'd say, from the bit I've read about him, had nothing to with any idealism in Tsutsumi.
Catalogue - Fashion. Ribby. Paris. Ribby 1923 - 1924. Paris 1923. Largish octavo printed wrapper (dusty and a bit marked); 16pp, illustrated throughout, the first page colour. A bit used but very decent. Au$80
Smart autumn and winter outfits for men and women, casual and formal.
墓標と記念碑 [Bohyo to Kinenhi]. Tokyo, Koyosha 1923 (Taisho 12). 19x13cm, loose as issued in publisher's printed boards; 50 leaves, mostly plates printed on one side. An excellent copy. Au$100
One of the apparently endless series of small architecture monographs, Kenchiku Shashin Riuju. I wonder if anyone knows how many there were. Some are intriguing and some are pretty drab. Many require a dogged love of gateways and tea rooms. This one is pretty good.
Gravestones and memorials, a good mix of old school kitsch and moderne, a few to the edge of extreme. They can be examples of pure design, being free and limitless, as the foreword says, and here are offered as a lesson to Japanese to reform their gloomy and sad approach to marking their dead in the landscape.
Metrication. 統一されたメートル法 [Toitsu Sa Reta Metoru-ho]. Tokyo, Asahi Graphic 1923 (Taisho 12). Colour poster 53x38cm. Au$90
Handy educational tool for the imminent establishment of the metric system as Japan's official system of measurement. Up until then metric, imperial and traditional measures were legal. It was proposed to make a gradual change over ten years but by the thirties the nationalistic backlash meant that it was all postponed again. And again. The American occupation forces cared nothing for metrics and it was the mid sixties before everybody was up to scratch.
汽車と乗物 [Kisha to Norimono]. Osaka, Okamoto Zoshindo 1923 (Taisho 12). 17x18cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; [12]pp including wrapper, eight full page illustrations inside. The back wrapper - which is flimsier paper - is browned and creased; a pretty good copy. Au$150
Machines and people on the move - what better subject for a book? Better quality than the really cheap akahon (red books) for kids that came out of Osaka but not a lot.
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. Secessionist Takizawa was not so polite about it.
HOPKINS, Henry Powell. Sources of Memorial Ornamentation. Vermont Marble Company 1924. Quarto, very good in publisher's gilt decorated boards, cloth spine; 44pp, 14 plates. Au$75
Something of a trade catalogue:- a primer of the basic styles - Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Celtic, Gothic and Colonial - with suggestions for their application to modern gravestones.
Catalogue - hats. Watanabe, Tokyo. The Watanabe's Catalogue : Full fashioned and hand finished. Y. Watanabe & Co.: Nihonbashi: Tokyo: Japan. Tokyo, [1924]. 23x15cm colour illustrated publisher's wrapper; 6pp, profusely illustrated with photo illustrations. An old fold, small stains. Au$150
72 models of hats for men and women; not just women, mogas - modern girls - jazz age women. So, flappers and cool, sinister men; the stuff of dreams. Mention is made of the first anniversary of the 1923 earthquake but the "New Fashion 1924" on the front cover is an even better guide to its date.
Exhibition - Tokyo 1922. 平和記念東京博覧会事務報告 [Heiwa Kinen Tokyo Hakurankai Jimu Hokoku]. Tokyo Fucho 1924 (Taisho 13). Two volumes 26x19cm, publisher's embossed wrappers (browned); 681pp, heaps of illustrations: folding colour plans, architectural elevations and plans, photo plates, etc. Browning and foxing expected from the paper but still a rather good fresh copy. Au$1350
The official report on the 1922 Tokyo Memorial Peace Exposition is the very model of what an official report on an exhibition should be. You could just about rebuild the whole thing from this. The detail extends to measured drawings of light fittings, plans of the garden beds and coloured reproductions of the tickets and advertising.
The 1922 Peace Memorial Exhibition, celebrating the League of Nations and a bright future, was the most lavish national Expo ever held. The pavilions were a mix of stately, ultra modern and funfair fairy tale.
Architecture competition. 国際謝恩塔 [Kokusai Shaonto]. Tokyo, Koyosha 1924 (Taisho 13). 19x13cm, loose as issued in publisher's printed boards; 50 leaves, mostly plates printed on one side (actually 48 as two are double page carrying two numbers); renderings, elevations and plans. Wear to spine, dust marks or darkening to the very top edge of several plates, a decent secondhand copy. Au$150
Here are the winners and honourable mentions from a competition for a tower of gratitude for international aid after the 1923 earthquake. First and second prizes are graced with overwrought dramatics but are hardly radical. Things get more interesting after that.
One of the apparently endless series of small architecture monographs, Kenchiku Shashin Riuju. I wonder if anyone knows how many there were. Some are intriguing and some are pretty drab. Many require a dogged love of gateways and tea rooms. This one is up top.
Outside Japan, Worldcat finds one entry, at Queensland University dated 1929 for some reason, but the university's four entries for the title, including a microform, don't actually locate a copy.
[Werkbund]. PFLEIDERER, Wolfgang [ed]. Die Form Ohne Ornament. Werkbundausstellung 1924. Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags 1925. Quarto, excellent in publisher's cloth and dustwrapper; viii,22pp, photo illustrations on 89 plates and adverts. Au$200
Third and fourth thousand. The Werkbund displayed for 1924: from soap to gravestones, cutlery to satchels.
Shochikuza. Shochikuza News. Osaka, Shochikuza 1925-1929. 38 issues 22x15cm publisher's colour illustrated wrappers; mostly four pages and covers. Minor signs of use. Au$2900
A well chosen group. Shochiku, now part of the megafauna of the entertainment industry, spread into film from Kabuki in 1920, built Japan's first western theatre in Osaka in 1923, and soon had a chain of cinemas showing foreign movies. This was their weekly news letter. I think the cover was shared but the contents were printed for each theatre. Inspired and aspiring young designers presumably worked on the usual terms: no credit and less money. There is quite a bit of remarkable anonymous graphic art of the twenties and early thirties with the Shochikuza banner. Not all of it is good but what is can be fabulous. As the thirties progressed the adventurousness evaporated and by the mid-late thirties they looked like film magazines from anywhere.
Here we can identify the artist of some. Those signed Shin or 伸吉 are by Yamada Shinkichi who started in Shochikuza's publicity department in 1922 and worked his way up to set and costume designer. There are ten here.
  1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7   |
