Sunday Chewing Gum. [Sande Chiuingamu]. Yamazaki Seika Kenkyujo [193-?]. Colour lithograph poster 56x19cm. Some minor creasing and natural browning of the paper, rather good with the original metal strips and loop. Au$85
A shop poster for Sunday Chewing Gam (sic) against an unexpected wintery background. I guess chewing gum really has no season.
Hirai Fusando. - [Nori no tomo - sen'i no horumon]. n.p. [193-?]. Colour poster 54x19cm. Au$100
A cheery shop poster advertising ... I'm not sure what. I can't figure out whether you swallow this stuff or use it with your laundry. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's laundry but the mention of hormones was confusing. I'm pretty definite this is by the cartoonist and illustrator Hirai Fuzando, it's definitely his character - the housewife who knows everything.
Sunday Chewing Gum. [Sande Chiuingamu]. Yamazaki Seika Kenkyujo [193-?]. Colour lithograph poster 56x19cm. Rather good with the original metal strips and loop. Au$125
A shop poster for Sunday Chewing Gam (sic) against an unexpected wintery background. I guess chewing gum really has no season.
Advertising. [Megamimaru?]. [193-?]. Three colour poster 47x28cm, horizontal fold in the middle. Au$125
This elegant modern woman graciously advertises a complete treatment for women's uterine problems.
Japanese Shell Tox poster. Shell Tox. n.p. 193-? 77x50cm colour lithograph with metal strips top and bottom and hanging loop at the top. A nice copy. Au$475
Heavy weaponry has been brought in for Japan's war with bugs: that spray pump is no longer a gun, it's a tank. The stalwart armed figure appears everywhere in Shell Tox advertising around the world but that rampant tank seems peculiar to Japan. This is a shop poster with hanging strips. It's on better paper than usual: many Japanese lithograph posters are on heavy paper like this but are liable to become brown and brittle.
Soap. [Bikatsu Sekken]. Osaka? c1930? Colour lithograph poster 108x35cm. A couple of short tears in the bottom margin repaired, still a nice bright copy with metal strip and hanging loop at the top. Au$250
I have the feeling that the dancer originally cast to dance the pas de deux with this bar of Bikatsu soap was unable to appear and a frightened understudy from the corps was stuffed into the prima ballerina's costume and pushed out on stage at the last minute.
Poster - dye. - [Watashitachi no Katei Senryo : Sumire Zome]. [Tokyo? 193-?]. Colour poster 52x36cm. In excellent shape. Au$150
Sumire dye was the home dye of choice for modern vamps.
Poster. [Kani Kansanki?] n.p. [193-?]. Colour lithograph poster 53x25cm. Folded but still quite good. Au$100
It's tempting to see this now as an ominous warning that Australia was under threat from a patent Japanese conversion ruler. Maybe that was the intent - only the Japanese empire glows bright under the shadow of that forbidding ruler.
Hikifuda. ... [Wayo Sake Kakushu ... Amari Eitaro Shoten]. n.p. [c1930?]. Colour lithograph 26x38cm. Quite good. Au$300
These blooming infants are scampering into battle for Japanese and foreign liquors. These hikifuda - small posters or handbills - were often produced with a blank text panel and the customer, usually a retailer, had their own details over printed. The patriotic youngsters may well advertise something more suitable on other examples.
Poster. [Riken Chakku]. n.p. [c1930?]. Colour lithograph poster 93x59cm. Small chomps from the top right edge and the very bottom; with metal hanging strips and loop at the top. Au$450
Have you seen any movie as dynamic and thrilling as a Riken chuck at work? Me neither.
Smoca Toothpowder Poster. [Tabako Nomi no Hamigaki Sumoka]. n.p. [c1930?]. Colour poster 42x31cm. A hint of browning, a nice copy with metal strips at top and bottom and hanging loop at the top. Au$600
One of the more sinister of Smoca's transfixing and sometimes disturbing series of face or head and white teeth posters. I know of ten - of varying impact; a couple I've never seen for sale in decent shape and while the rest are easier to find it's not so easy to find them in this sort of condition.
Smoca's success - they are still going - was through clever advertising. From the start, in 1925, the company's founder, advertising man Kataoka Toshiro, hired the best artists and cartoonists. Book compilations of Smoca's newspaper advertising made regular appearances from the late twenties on.
Smoca Toothpowder Poster. [Tabako Nomi no Hamigaki Sumoka]. n.p. [c1930?]. Colour poster 42x31cm. Some browning at the edges, a rather good copy with metal strips at top and bottom and hanging loop at the top. Au$450
A more cheerful and straightforward racist poster compared to a couple that are disturbing among the Smoca series of face or head and white teeth posters. Except that it's a woman with a cheroot clenched between smiling white teeth. I know of ten posters - of varying impact; a couple I've never seen for sale in decent shape and while the rest are easier to find it's not so easy to find them in this sort of condition
Smoca's success - they are still going - was through clever advertising. From the start, in 1925, the company's founder, advertising man Kataoka Toshiro, hired the best artists and cartoonists. Book compilations of Smoca's newspaper advertising made regular appearances from the late twenties on.
Borraginol poster. : [Borraginal : Dji Ji Ni]. Osaka? Takeda (c1930?). Colour printed poster on light cotton (muslin? calico?), 117x86cm. Rumpled and some marks but rather fresh and bright. Au$200
As made clear, piles need make no inroads on a man's life, habits and comforts. Borraginol, a still made hemorrhoid treatment, was Japan's first scientific/chemical treatment developed in 1921 at Kyoto University. Posters printed on fabric - rather than banners or flags - must be pretty uncommon, no? So what was the purpose?
Wakamoto sugoroku. - [Wakamoto - Manga Kenko Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Wakamoto [c1930]. Colour poster 63x46cm. Minor signs of use, a smallish hole in the bottle, upper left. Au$850
An early bit of advertising from the health supplement makers and I don't think they've ever done better. The company started in 1929 in Shiba and opened a new plant in 1932; here the address is Shiba. This is a sugoroku, a racing game, and it's a succinct lesson in economics and industrialisation. The body as a machine had been explored by more than one graphic artist but here is not so much an intermediate step as a rational alternative. A production line may be useful but when labour is cheap why would you spend money on machinery? A decent length of sewage pipe, some vats and a manned treatment pond will do the job.
Shikoku & Wakayama. Nakamura Kisen, Inoue Seiji & Yokoyama Kei. - [Manga Ryoko - Nihonzenzu ... ]. [Tokyo c1930?]. Colour printed broadside map 55x77cm. Right margin trimmed as often, a nice copy. Au$125
A fun tourist map of the coast from Shizuoka around to the Mie prefectures, ie around Nagoya. Nakamura, Inoue and Yokoyama collaborated on a series of these manga maps of Japan, thirteen altogether, which can sort of be put together if you have plenty of space to sort of make a complete map of Japan.
Advertising fan sample books. + [Yubi Uchiwa Mihon Jo] + [Yubi Uchiwa Shin Gacho] + six actual advertising uchiwa - fans. n.p. c1930. The first: 23x25cm publisher's colour illustrated wrappers, ribbon tied; title leaf, 81 leaves (four of these form two designs with one of each being a layer with cutouts over the other). Covers ragged, a few leaves with closed tears near the beginning; the album has been damp at some time and colours drifted to nearby leaves in places but all acceptable enough. The second: 25x25cm colour printed wrapper; ribbon tied; 42 leaves. Used and well thumbed but solid and decent enough. The fans each about 40cm top to tail. Au$2100
Two (but not a pair) of these rare sample books of elegant (yubi translates as elegant) uchiwa - non folding fans - used for advertising; messages were on the back. Now, pattern books of properly elegant fan designs have a long history and are a dime, well, a few thousand dollars, a dozen. It would be hard to get together a dozen of these crass commercial sample books, for much the same reasons as their sister hikifuda books: any that did survive are usually dismembered and sold page by page.
The accompanying fans do not actually appear in either book but that is a matter of variation on a theme. The family likeness is unmistakable. As is the likeness to hikifuda (large handbills or small posters) of the period: the artwork, printing and colours come from the same people. The designs range from revolting to most smart. Luckily few are truly revolting.
Fire safety poster. [Hinoyojin]. n.p. [193-?]. Colour poster, 66x51cm on original patterned mount, 88x61cm, with metal strips at top and bottom. Some rumpling. The mount and strips are original but the brown paper backing looks much more recent. Au$200
Spendidly dramatic and helpful with a line up of the likely suspects in the bottom corner: the matches, the cigarette and the neglected candle.
The caption below the poster is separately printed, identifying the local fire department: Yamaguchi Prefecture.
School posters. - [Shiseizu - Kyoshitsu Jobi-yo]. Osaka, Teikoku Kyoiku Shiryo Henzan Kyokai [1930s?]. Four colour litho posters 79x55cm. A little browning, a couple of small nibbles; an excellent complete set in the original cardboard tube with printed title label. Au$250
Now this is education from first principles. Girls and boys learn how to stand and how to sit and it's easy to see the difference. From here we can go on to reading, writing and arithmetic. These were produced by the imperial education body who certainly knew what's what.
Advertising and packaging. Ozo. Tonanso Kokoku-bu. Two albums with mounted examples of advertising, packaging, pamphlets, posters, stationery, etc, etc, etc, from the Tonanso Advertising Department. v.p. 1931 to 1934. Two card albums 30x23cm, lettered by hand and numbered 1 and 2; each bulging with mounted examples. 1: 35 leaves, removal from one page. 2: 89 leaves, removal from one opening and one leaf, a couple of other items with some damage, some of it purposeful, eg a piece clipped from each of the large posters. Binding pins of the first album separated by the strain of the heavy cardboard boxes. Au$3000
A wondrous collection; it even includes a full size rubbing of a carved kanban - shop sign - on drafting tissue (94x68cm). This is an education in just how much design, printing and paper engineering goes into getting your product into every home in the country. From the seals that go on packets to letterheads, to promotional postcards, through to a couple of large posters (94x62cm) and that kanban. And packets, packages, boxes ... With these albums you could have Stomachic Ozo back on the market in no time.
Tonanso was the parent company of Ozo - an ointment for every skin, every surface, malady ever suffered by humankind - and Stomachic Ozo which likewise cured every internal malady. Ozo for skin is still made, by another company. Though it now only cures a handful of skin problems, I read somewhere that it still has diehard fans despite the drawback of staining clothes. Almost needless to say: the packaging and advertising are dull dull dull.
From what I can find out, which isn't much, Ozo ointment went on the market in the mid twenties. The current makers have cut any connection with quackery in the past and give no history of their product.
Specimen hikifuda. Hikifuda of women and children shopping. n.p. [1931]. colour broadside 53x38cm. Folded, with stab holes indicating it was once in an album. Au$125
A vivid and heart warming portrait of the urban well-to-do and the rewards of being well-to-do: modernity and shopping. It can be seen as mother daughter life lessons. Many such images in Japan are moral lessons, showing girls and young women their compensation for being good.
These hikifuda - small posters or handbills - were usually produced with a blank text panel. The customer, usually a retailer, had their own details over printed. The handy calendar is for 1932.
Aviation paper game. Paris - Madagascar [Les Deux Raids Magnifique de l'Avion "Alsa" on the back]. n.p. Alsa [c1931]. Colour lithograph 36x27cm. text on the back in red and blue. Old folds, pretty good. Au$150
Two heroic record breaking flights - Paris-Tokyo and back and Paris-Madagascar and back, both in 1931 - were made to honour Alsa biscuits, cakes and baking powder.
Okamoto Ippei. [Katei wo Akarumi he]. Tokyo, Nisshin Seimei Hoken [c1932]. 13x19cm publisher's colour illustrated wrapper; 16pp with eight colour illustrations by Ippei, some small photo illustrations. A nice copy. Au$200
A fun booklet advertising the benefits of insurance from the company, Nisshin Seimei Hoken (Nissin Life Insurance), illustrated by master illustrator/manga artist, radical and scallywag Okamoto Ippei.
London - Melbourne Air Race. Nederlands Succes. Melbourne Race. n.p. [1934?]. Colour lithograph on card 47x31cm, with a mounted colour illustration. Edges a bit knocked with a short tear in one corner; hanging strip or card stand on the back pretty much gone. Au$450
A shop placard for a new brand of cigars that celebrates the Dutch success in the Melbourne Centenary or MacRobertson Air Race. The Dutch KLM plane Uiver arrived second and won on handicap. The onlaid colour illustration is, I suppose, the cigar box label. I found a couple of adverts in newspapers dating into 1936 for Melbourne Race cigars but nothing else.
Posters. [Shogyo Bijutsuten Posuta Shusei]. Osaka, Shogyo Bijutsu Renmai 1934 (Showa 9). 27x20cm publisher's patterned boards and slipcase printed in orange and black (this fairly rubbed but solid and presentable enough); [5]ll and 104 b/w plates printed on one side. Au$300
Short on colour maybe but still a good exhibition of modern Japanese poster designs mounted by the Commercial Art League (Shogyo Bijutsu Renmai). Designs - not printed or published posters - with artists all identified. Not such a rare book but hard to find in better than revolting condition.
Advertising Sugoroku. [Shobai Hanei Sugoroku]. Tokyo printed, Notagawa Ekimae Shoten 1935 (Showa 10). Colour broadside 79x55cm. Minor signs of use, a pretty good copy. Au$400
A proper aspirational sugoroku for girls and young women. Prosperity is the reward for the perfect modern girl: good husband, handsome family and shopping, shopping shopping. This shopping game advertises the glamorous range of businesses in Notagawa - now part of Higashiomi, more or less half way between Kyoto and Nagoya. The same game, relabelled, was used for businesses of Matsumoto City. A very similar - a few panels the same - but not so modern game - more kimonos, fewer cars, furs and bobbed or marcelled heads - with the same title was issued the year before by the newspaper Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun for readers in the Iwamurata-machi area. You don't waste a good idea and a decent bit of artwork.
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