Kuriki Kojiro. [Oshogatsu Asobi Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Shogaku 1930 (Showa 5). Colour broadside 54x78cm. A bit of browning and short tears in the folds; pretty good. Au$550
The new years gift from the girl's kindergarten magazine of the Shogaku stable. A cheerful sugoroku in which a girl gets to have fun - remarkable enough in itself. And yes, there is a zeppelin down in that corner. The small adverts for the various magazines down the left margin are maybe playing pieces.
Sugoroku. [Kodomo Norimono Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Seugaku Ninensei 1930 (Showa 5). Colour lithograph broadside, 54x78cm. A rather good copy. Au$500
An exciting and vivid jaunt around the world and all forms of transport is the theme here. This was the New Year treat that came with the magazine Seugaku Sophomore (for the second year of primary school).
I don't know who those two kids are but they never aged and, with updates in fashion and style, seem to have been on a ceaseless whirl of travel and adventure ever after. For decades new but the same sugorokus appeared. The zeppelin vanished of course, square automobiles became sleek cars, trains went diesel and electric, aeroplanes became jets, and on they went. Perhaps they learnt early what many idle wealthy globe trotters know: that a diet of fine demi-sec and pure cocaine keeps you young forever.
Shibuya Shigeo & Suzuki Gyosui. [Tsuepperin Sekai Isshu Sugoroku]. Tokyo, Nihon Shonen 1930 (Showa 5). Colour broadsheet 54x79cm. Minor signs of use, a little rumpled; a rather good copy with playing pieces - propellors - in the bottom margin. On the back is a duller game about athletics in red, white and blue. Au$500
The new year gift from the boys' magazine Nihon Shonen, this is an heroic, an epic, zeppelin journey around a world that existed somewhere in the minds of writers and illustrators for boys. Every step, every part of nature, every being, is a peril, a hazard to be fought and beaten. Girls win by accepting, boys win by taking a cudgel, or even better a machine gun, to everything in their path.
Fire Safety Poster. - [Hifuse - Chichibu Shobogume]. Chichibu Fire Prevention Publicity Department [c1930?]. Colour litho poster 39x27cm. Horizontal fold and creased in a top corner. Au$150
The Chichibu Fire Prevention department produced a series of these fire safety poster. I think they were the result of a school competition. So far I've seen three. One makes the fire department more threatening than a fire, one seems a lesson in how to burn down the city and this one takes a more theological approach: fire is neither an accidental nor deliberate act of people, it is a demonic being.
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.
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.
Advertising sugoroku. Metabolin. [Manguwa Shin Heiki Hatsumei Sugoroku]. Osaka, Metabolin [193-?]. Colour game on card 26x39cm with original folds; advertising on the back in red and blue. This came as a sort of envelope, folded twice with a paper seal holding it together, unfolding to show the game on the inside. Several tape repairs. Au$300
Somewhere, sometime, I don't know when, someone decided that books, pictures, games and toys for tiny children should be simple to the point of idiocy, drably educative as socially prescribed, and starved of imagination. Our artist here has followed the simple line for a way but knew that the thing all toddlers are thrilled by is daring new inventions in weaponry.
This was some sort of gift or premium from the makers of Metabolin, a vitamin B1 supplement, nothing to do with the steroid Metabolin. Maybe you got it after swallowing a hundred tablets.
Naturally I can't find mention of another copy anywhere, not even in the Kitatama Pharmaceutical Association Mueum which has several games and paper toys.
Catalogue - watches. Yoshida Watch Company. ... Fancy Smart ... Yoshida Watch Company [from the cover]. [Tokyo? 193-?]. 15x22cm publisher's illustrated wrapper; 18pp, illustrated throughout. Pencil inscription on the front, staples disintegrated but rather good with a couple of special offer inserts and a four page illustrated clock leaflet dated 1929 inserted. Au$150
There were two Yoshida watch companies in Tokyo at this time. One, founded in 1920, still exists as a high class salon in Shibuya, and the other, which began as a wholesaler in 1901 started manufacturing watches in the 1930s. They morphed over the decades into Orient watches, a subsidiary of Seiko. This seems the more likely if we have to choose between the two. One inserted slip offers a 50% wholesale discount.
Quite smart, a lot of deco, mostly for men with a few women's watches at the end. A couple of these seem very expensive: 370 yen against a man's watch for less than 20 yen.
Moga illustrations. [Iede Musume no Nu-chan]. n.p. c1930? Four ink and wash drawings on light card from about 10x22cm to 22x18cm. The first titled in pencil (Iede Musume no Nu-chan dai 5 kai translates as Runaway Daughter Nu-chan part 5). One to three are numbered in pencil; number three includes some embossing. Au$200
Four engaging and stylish small drawings which I take to be magazine illustrations for chapter five of a jazz age story all too familiar - the corruption and downfall of an innocent young woman. All very much ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) fashion of the late Taisho and early Showa period. The story of Nu-chan and where it might have appeared remains a mystery to me but I really want to see it all. Could it be there was a happy ending?
Moga = modern girl.
Itagaki Takao. [Atarashiki Geijutsu no Kakutoku]. Tokyo, Tenjinsha 1930. 20x15cm publisher's illustrated wrapper and printed card case; 10,246pp including photo illustrations on 16 plates.Covers mottled as usual with copies that have stayed safe in their box, some browning and minor signs of use; quite good. Au$500
First edition of this essay by the champion of modernism in Japan on the machine and new architecture and design, propounding his concept of "machine realism". This was a theme Itagaki pursued through a few books between 1929 and 1933.
I think the cover shows a locomotive bursting out of some old world construction but it all reminds me of a crashing zeppelin. I can't find a designer's name.
Japanese textiles. A gathering of 15 original designs for textile designs. n.p. [1930s]. 15 sheets in gouche and inks; all about 40cm in one direction and ranging from 20 to 32cm in the other. One with a short clean tear. Short notes on the back of three, numbers on two. Au$650
Pretty lurid, huh? As the thirties pressed on and the avant garde was in disgrace - communist and anarchist scum that they were - textile design became less adventurous in form but brighter, so much brighter, and woodcut pattern books from Kyoto with designs like this proliferated. Something of a Kano school revival.
These flower designs are so highly finished I'm convinced they were made for a pattern book - probably spring or summer; autumn and winter were more restrained. Working drawing are usually much more ... well, working.
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.
Kon Wajiro & Yoshida Kenkichi. - [Moderunorojio - Kogengaku]. (Modernologio on the cover). Tokyo, Shun'yudo 1930 (Showa 5). 26x20cm, publisher's decorated cloth blocked in white, red and black; 361pp, profusely illustrated throughout, a few photo or colour plates. Light browning, much less than usual; a remarkably good copy of a book that invites continual thumbing. Au$1150
First printing. This is an extraordinary book; the gospel of Modernology. Kon and Yoshida have compiled an encyclopaedia, surely unsurpassed, of the apparently ordinary, of the people of Tokyo, fit to provoke unseemly enthusiasm in theoreticians and urban planners ever since. I gather that their thesis - born out of watching the people of Tokyo begin to rebuild after the 1923 earthquake and fire - is that those who do the planning, designing and official building know nothing of what people actually do, what they own and how they use those things - how they live and who they are.
The cover, signed Ken, and most of the illustrations are by Yoshida who has re-spelled his name on the cover for the sake of the design.
Kitazawa Rakuten. [Rakuten Zenshu]. 1-3, 5-7, 9 [all published]. Tokyo, Atoriesha (Atelier) 1930-31 (Showa 5 - 6). Seven volumes 27x20cm publisher's colour illustrated cloth, illustrated card cases; each 144pp, hundreds of colour, tri- and duo-tone illustrations. An excellent set. Au$1100
The complete works, such as it is, of the king of magazine cartoons and/or manga - Rakuten. It took me a while to figure out why I could never find a complete set of all nine volumes - such a thing doesn't exist - and even longer to find a good set of what does exist. I put a fair bit of that down to decades of Japanese booksellers, also unaware, deciding they have incomplete sets and selling them piecemeal. Add to that these are books that are usually thumbed into grimy exhaustion and you can see why I'm smug about this set.
I'm yet to find an explanation for the two gaps but these weren't published in order; some later volumes appeared before the first. The Mayan(?) on the covers is reading a manga. On the back he is laughing so hard he has dropped his book.
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.
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.
Izumi Keiji [ed]. [Neo Dekameron] Neo Decameron on the cover. Tokyo, Bunshodo 1931 (Showa 6). 18x11cm publisher's decorated cloth blocked in white, printed card slipcase; 49 plates (one colour) from various sources. A nice copy. Au$200
First edition. A pleasing example of the ero-guro-nansu (erotic-grotesque-nonsense) craze of the early showa period. This is a stylish gathering of salacious pieces that would normally appear in pulp magazines. What caught my eye is the piece which sort of translates as 'The Electric Artificial Maiden's Secret Room' which sums up the whole notion of ero-garu-nansu. This jostles with sex murder in the Shanghai British Concession and plenty more. The illustrations are pinched from louche sources, mostly European I'd say.
Neo Decameron it may be but there are 21 stories, not ten. Worldcat finds no copy.
Hiroshi Hara [?]. [Minatominato no Ryokigai]. Tokyo, Fuzoko Shiryo 1931 [Showa 6]. Octavo publisher's illustrated wrapper (a bit used); photo illustrations on ten pages, 167pp and three page publisher's list. Part of the series Dekameron Sosho. Au$200
A modest but characteristic contribution to the ero-guro-nansensu (erotic - grotesque - nonsense) fashion of late Taisho and early Showa Japan: jaunts among the strange denizens of ports. The small grainy photos are a gathering of the expected seamy misfits, outcasts and dock lowlife in the ports of the world mixed with a couple of baffling innocuous views and bar scenes from films. It will probably make sense to those who can read the book: the chapter headings - there are ten chapters of course - do seem to connect to the photos.
Tanoe [or Tanoue or Tanouye] Yoshiya. [Tanoe Yoshiya Kenchiku Gashu]. Tokyo, Kensetsusha 1931. 27x19cm publisher's printed wrapper, illustrated card slipcase (this marked and a bit worn but solid); 110pp, photo illustrations, renderings and plans. Rather good. Inscribed and signed by Tanoe to artist, later folklorist, and dogged communist Hashiura Yasuo who gets a passing mention in the book. Au$1850
Tanoe began his career working for Wright on the Imperial Hotel - from 1919 to 1923. He then headed off to Hokkaido and is now an architectural hero of the island. The prairie style is evident in some of these early houses but no more than Japan is evident in the prairie style. I read somewhere that for one of the buildings in this book he kept his original plan rather than the compacted plan that was actually built. This was so that his sense of space was preserved.
I think the rest of this Artistes Nouveaux series - maybe seven titles in all - are all painters including three Europeans: Matisse, Vlaminck and Chagall.
Worldcat finds no copies outside Japan and it's not common in Japan.
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