Some favourite subjects:
Some favourite subjects:
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.
Shipping. More Than Twenty Knots - MS Canberra Maru - MS Tokyo Maru - New freighters on the Japan Australian service of O.S.K. Line. Osaka, OSK 1936. 23x19cm publisher's colour printed wrapper; 8pp including cover, map, plan and a couple of photo illustrations. Au$75
"Functional superiority" is evident in the speed and capacity of these two new launched ships.
Sugoroku. [Yumei Shoten Annai u Kure-Roku]. Tokyo, Hirohidesha 1936 (Showa 11). Colour broadsheet 54x79cm. Chewed in the left margin and along a couple of folds, marring a bright copy. Au$210
A rare, cheerful shopping game advertising the businesses of Horinouchi-cho. As there are any number of Horinouchi-chos spotted around Japan I'm not sure which one but as this seems to have come from the newspaper Tokyo Shimbun I'm guessing it's around Tokyo. I came across one other copy of the game but it has a different title and advertises different businesses in a different area.
Advertising sugoroku. [Katata Shobai Hanjo Sugoroku]. Katata Shimbun 1936 (Showa 11) Colour broadside 54x79cm. A somewhat rumpled but decent copy. Au$200
A rare, cheerful advertising game featuring local businesses, issued as the new year gift by the newspaper Katata Shimbun. I'm not sure where the Katata Shimbun originated. I can't find a record of it. Katata is an area now in Otsu, near Kyoto, but that it comes from there is a guess.
Poster. [Osaka Yuryo Senshoku Mihonichi]. [Osaka 1936?]. Colour poster 77x53cm. Folded, some browning and offsetting; pretty good. Au$400
This sinister warning of looming evil advertises the Osaka textile trade fair. Signed in print by the artist but I can't read it.
Shop windows. : [Tenpo Chinretsu Shomei Kyogikai : Nyushu Shashin Shu]. Sendai City Electricity 1937 (Showa 12). 18x26cm publisher's stiff wrapper with cord ties; 14 leaves, being a title, a page of portraits and 12 plates of shop windows, most two a page. These are original photographic prints on glossy or textured card. Scuff on the front cover. Au$165
This appears to be the fifth Sendai city shop window competition sponsored by the power and water authority. That's pretty much all I can tell you. I can't find a mention of anything about the competition anywhere.
Smoca advertising. Kataoka Toshiro etc. [Smoca Kokoku Sakuhinshu Daigoshu]. Osaka, Sumokasha 1937 (Showa 12). 22x15cm publisher's printed red wrapper; [8],176pp, illustrated throughout including two mounted colour plates. Minor signs of use and some browning; quite good. Au$400
The fifth of Smoca's compilations of their advertising, seven appeared between 1928 and 1941. 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.
The colour illustrations are two of Smoca's series of face and teeth posters - about the last and probably the two dullest after the weird and sometimes disturbing series issued over the previous decade.
Smoca, in case you wondered, was then a tooth powder for smokers.
Kinoshita Circus. [Kinoshita Dai Sakasu Dan]. n.p. [194-?]. Colour lithograph poster 76x52cm. Au$300
The advertising tax stamp - lower right - dates this between 1942 and 1946; so I'm told. As does the replacement of lions and elephants with a goat. The Kinoshita circus started with the 20th century and is now one of the world's biggest.
Facsist Anti-Communism. Le Communisme c'est la Vie Triste, Morne, Grise. n.p. [France 194-?]. Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper; 8pp including wrapper. Illustrated throughout. Au$175
A fine graphic warning about the perils of believing the patriotic bilge of French communists during the occupation.
Poster. Sasao (?). ... [... Daitoasenso Kansui Yokusan Senkyo]. n.p. [printed by Biseido Insatsu?1942]. Colour poster 77x54cm. Folded and rumpled, a couple of small nicks; with a neat, mysterious diagram drawn in ink on the back. Signed in print Sasao. Au$600
Election poster for the 1942 general election reminding everyone to get out on April 30, vote for their endorsed candidate and ensure victory in the great Asian war. Though the whole business was meant to ensure that only endorsed Yokusan candidates could run I was surprised to find that more unendorsed than endorsed candidates ran for parliament and quite a few of them were elected. Of course that made no real difference to the running of the government and the war but it must have irked the military.
Pesticide posters. Nihon Nohyaku. Set of five posters advertising pesticides from the company, Nihon Nohyaku. Nihon Nohyaku [1952?]. Five colour posters 52x37cm. All in excellent shape. Au$500
Vivid, charming and, in a couple of cases, dramatic representations of the evil threatening your crops. These herald the introduction of new chemicals developed in the forties and introduced into Japan before the moribund chemical industry - like the rest of Japanese industry - revived after the occupation years in the late fifities and early sixties. And long before human safety and the environment appeared in legislation.
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.
Kanban. LEVY, Dana. Kanban. Shop Signs of Japan. NY, Weatherhill 1983. Quarto, still new in publisher's cloth and dustwrapper; 169pp, 106 photo illustrations (many colour). Au$100
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