Miki Kosai (and/or Utagawa Yoshimori?). Wayou ( on cover label). [Wayo Jikon Birui]. Tokyo, Hozando and others 1872 (Meiji 5). 18x12cm publisher's wrapper with title label (marked and a bit used); 30 leaves (60 pages) with small illustrations throughout. Inscription on the back cover; a voracious but neat bug has chewed a hole through the top margin of the first nine leaves and stayed outside the page borders; the first few illustrations with some neatish colouring. In all pretty good. Au$500
An endearing and uncommon little guide to placing stuff in the modern world: lots of common enough items and some that would soon become common, like clocks, binoculars, uncomfortable chairs, and cameras. Each is illustrated, named and described in Japanese and named in western capitals. But in phonetic Japanese, not English or any other European language, what would become romaji.
Miki Kosai signed the preface but Waseda attribute the book to Utagawa Yoshimori who presumably did the pictures. I'm inclined to believe Waseda. This is called part one but it seems no part two has ever been seen. Worldcat finds the NDL entry and a copy at the Huntington.
Yanagawa Shunsan. [Seiyo Tokei Benran]. Tokyo, Yamatoya Kihee 1872 [Meiji 5]. 185x80mm publisher's stiff wrapper with title label (marked), accordian folding to form 34pp with woodblock illustrations throughout. Rather good. Au$500
An introduction to the western watch and its workings and - more important - western time and how to tell it. Roman numerals and the hour, minute and seconds hands are explained and a series of watch faces guide us through the rest of the intricacies of measuring time in the western style. Obviously for the sleeve or pocket, this could be hauled out with the new gizmo when its fledgling owner was stumped. Or even by a non-watch owner faced with a public clock. At the end the thermometer is illustrated and explained too.
This is not to say that the Japanese hadn't already mastered the clock. Since the Jesuits introduced clocks in the 16th century Japanese clockmakers had developed complex weight and spring driven mechanisms to run timekeepers according to the unequal hours of day and night, varying according to season. But in 1872 the government switched from the lunar calendar to the solar calendar and abolished traditional timekeeping and a whole nation had to start again from scratch.
Makes sense to me that daylight hours are longer and night hours shorter in summer and the reverse in winter. We all know that despite what the clock says all hours are not created equal. Bring back traditional Japanese timekeeping I say.
Hashizume Kan'ichi. [Zokuhen Sekai Shobai Orai]. Tokyo, Gankinya Seikichi 1872 (Meiji 5). 180x120mm publisher's wrapper without title label (cover marked); 26 double folded leaves; one double page illustration and several small illustrations through the text, title page framed in blue Fairbanks standing scales. Mildly used. Au$350
First edition I think of this handy bilingual vocabulary of world trade giving the English, with Japanese explanations, of a wide range of terms, quantities, goods, professions, and so on. I used to think the bibliography of Hashizume's handbooks on foreign trade was straightforward - three, the first in 1871 following it up with two more in 1873. Since then I've discovered variants and variants of variants.
This book isn't 'Zokuzoku Sekai Shobai Orai' as I first thought. The contents are completely different. Zokuzoku begins with foreign measures of quantity, this begins with foreign currencies. Like that the English text has been cut in wood, it isn't type. There are some endearing spelling mistakes, mishapen or reversed letters and odd truncations - fewer than in the later book - but more puzzling than these are some of the chosen terms for Japanese traders to learn. The tools of trade for printers and binders are included, which makes sense - as do fruit and vegetables - but how many merchants dealt in camels and leopards?
English, Japanesh, Small Dictionary; [Eiwa haya-gaku jibiki Binran]. Tokyo, Osaka? 1872 (Meiji 5). 16x6cm publisher's wrapper with title label; illustrated title in English on red paper, 30pp accordian folding, first page printed in blue. Owner's inscriptions on the covers. A pleasing copy, a most pleasing book. Au$300
Perfect for the narrowest pocket, or sleeve maybe. The explanatory Japanese with each of the 509 entries is tiny and clear. Osaka Women's University has a copy and that's all I could find anywhere. The NDL database lists it only on microfilm as part of a collection of English studies titles issued in the seventies.
Mill, John Stuart and Nakamura Masanao. [Jiyu no Ri or Jiyuno Kotowari depending on the transcriber]. On Liberty. Shizuoka, Kihira Ken'ichiro [1872]. Five volumes in six books 23x16cm, publisher's yellow wrappers with title labels. Preface in English signed EWC, this was Edward Warren Clark who taught science in Shizuoka and, later, Tokyo. A square red stamp in the top corner of the first page of each volume with faint signs of characters, no other signs of ownership. A rather good set. Au$1500
The first Japanese edition of Mill's On Liberty - a book that Douglas Howland (in Personal Liberty and Public Good) tells us was "reportedly read by the entire generation of educated Japanese who came of age during the restoration".
I hoped to be able to nail down any issue points and clear up any confusion between the two forms this book takes: the five volumes bound as six books, as here, with volume two divided into two; or bound as five books. The confusion is heightened because many libraries and cataloguers use the 1871 date on the title, ignoring the preface dated January 1872.
I thought that a sort of colophon for Dojinsha - Nakamura's school - pasted inside the last back cover might help, but that leaf appears in both versions. Only the cover labels seem to be different. I've found nothing in any language that examines the printing history and while the rule of thumb - everywhere in the world - is that the more costly version - in materials and time - usually came first, I've had to conclude that there isn't any discernible priority and the difference may well be where, rather than when, the books were bound.
Nakamura's translation of Smile's 'Self Help' was also published by Kihira in Shizuoka and it seems that Kihira Ken'ichiro existed as a publisher only for Nakamura's translations of these two books which he made in Shizuoka - home of the deposed Tokugawa shogun - where he taught after his return from England in 1868 until 1872. In other words, Nakamura was really the publisher of both books.
Worldcat finds five, maybe six, locations outside of Japan - one in Britain, the rest in the US - all but one are catalogued as 1871.
It's by the way but I found this while reading up on something else: "Nakamura Masanao ... contributed a vitriolic piece on the sins of the novel to the first issue of Tokyj shinpo in 1876. He insisted that novels caused epidemics and violated the sanctity of marriage". (P.F. Kornicki; Disraeli and the Meiji Novel).
Hashizume Kan'ichi. [Sekai Shobai Orai - literally World Trade Traffic]. Tokyo 1873 [Meiji 6]. 180x120mm publisher's wrapper (title label gone, titled in manuscript on the front cover); 26 double folded leaves; one full page and numerous small illustrations throughout. Au$225
Second edition? - first published in 1871 - of this handy bilingual vocabulary of world trade giving the English, with Japanese explanations, of a wide range of terms, place names, goods, and so on. Hashizume, who specialised in handbooks on trade and on foreign languages, produced, I think, three of these guides for merchants with similar titles. This is the first and the next two supplement this.
Hashizume Kan'ichi. [Sekai Shobai Orai Hoi]. Tokyo 1873 [Meiji 6]. 180x120mm publisher's wrapper, missing the title label; 23 double folded leaves; one double page and numerous small illustrations throughout. A rather good copy. Au$275
Hashizume made a specialty of handbooks and vocabularies introducing the Japanese to the notion of international trade trade and western languages in the early Meiji period.� In 1871 he published a handy Japanese-English vocabulary of world trade for Japanese merchants dealing with westerners and in 1873 followed up with two companion works. This one, as I understand it, concentrates on sales.
CROSLAND, Newton. Apparitions; An Essay, Explanatory of Old Facts and a New Theory. To which are added, sketches and adventures. London, Trubner 1873. Octavo publisher's cloth (a little rubbed and flecked); [8],166,[2]pp. Au$165
Uncommon; a crusade in the cause of Spiritualism, bellicose but not unfair according to the author: "If I have punished my adversaries, ... [I fight] with the spirit of the pugilist or fencer, and not with the feelings of an enemy". Crosland published a version of his essay in 1856 and has reworked it here, given the developments in Spiritualism - and opposition to Spiritualism - in the intervening years. Appended are three short pieces of fiction, the first, 'Hartsore Hall' is a ghost story.
Crosland's career, in literary terms, is overshadowed by that of his wife - Mrs Newton Crosland oddly enough - but his works were not unambitious; they include his 'New Principia' (1884) in which he overturns Newtonian theories of the universe. He did publish an autobiography late in life (1898) but that has so far eluded me as effectively as his 'Principia'.
Hashizume Kan'ichi. [Zokuzoku Sekai Shobai Orai]. Tokyo 1873? 180x120mm publisher's wrapper with title label (a bit used); 26 double folded leaves; one double page illustration and several small illustrations through the text, title page framed in a blue barrel. A nice copy. Au$250
First edition? of this handy bilingual vocabulary of world trade giving the English, with Japanese explanations, of a wide range of terms, quantities, goods, professions, and so on. Hashizume, who specialised in handbooks on trade and on foreign languages, produced, I think, maybe four of these guides for merchants with similar titles; the first in 1871 following it up with at least two more in 1873. There are more than three but the variants in copies ostensibly of the same book make it all a bit confusing. Curious about this one is that the English text has been cut in wood, it isn't type. There are several endearing spelling mistakes, mishapen or reversed letters and odd truncations but more puzzling than these are some of the chosen terms for Japanese traders to learn. Sublemate of mercary [sic] makes some sense, as do gloziers, hornessmakers and portruit-painters - but how often did anyone have to discuss velocipedes and grave-diggers?
DAVIES, Charles Maurice. Heterodox London: or, Phases of Free Thought in the Metropolis. London, Tinsley 1874. Two volumes octavo publisher's brown cloth blocked in black and gilt. A quite good pair. Au$250
First edition. I must admit I took no notice of Davies' more successful books 'Orthodox London' and 'Unorthodox London' in the past, dismissing them as church stuff. Thanks to an article by Arnold Hunt in the Book Collector, in their handy occasional series 'Uncollected Authors', I learnt that both Davies and his books are more interesting than that.
Davies was an Anglican cleric who turned to scribbling and ended up a disgrace. His 'London' books are frontline, occasionally undercover, reportage of the wild and woolly boomtime spiritual life of London. In 'Heterodox London', apparently the least successful of the series (it never made it into a second edition - the Freethought crowd bought and remaindered a fair number of copies), he has turned to the secularists, the free-thinkers, working-men's associations, radicals, atheists, vegetarians, socialists, spiritualists ... rabble rousers of all creeds. He attends a debate of the Dialectical Society on cremation, listens to Bradlaugh argue away the existence of God, attends a Positivist school. Davies is chatty, amiable, tolerant and thorough and the reader gets the impression that the further he travels from the acceptable the more he likes it. And it seems to have been true.
His final disgrace in the church was not due to any forgiveable heresy - he was accused of the attempted rape of a teenage girl - but he continued to regard himself as a churchman; the minister of an increasingly bizarre personal church. Hunt's article obliges with excerpts from reviews of his books, appreciative to the first but increasingly scathing or indignant as each book appeared. This one was "vulgar, often offensive" and evil in "the undue prominence it gives to nobodies and their very unimportant opinions" (Pall Mall Gazette and Tinsley's Magazine respectively).
Nishimura Kanebumi. : [Kaika no Moto : Shohen]. Kyoto, Sugimoto Jinsuke 1874 (Meiji 1874). 23x16cm publisher's wrapper with printed title label; double page colour frontispiece and three double page b/w illustrations. Au$600
Nishimura was an imperialist and an anti-foreigner: they were all to be expelled. Kaika no Moto translates as the Book of Civilisation; it's part one but there was never a part two. A quick glance at the first picture might tell you where he stands but there's much going on in those illustrations I don't understand. A literal translation is of little help when you don't understand what it means. Why is that castle of books being blown up? I have no idea.
Nishimura was a much respected appraiser of treasures but it seems he was given to the odd bit of forgery of documents and single sheet editions. A couple of his scholarly books come with a warning about false publications but it has been said that, unlike thief and forger Thomas Wise, he wasn't in it for the money.
[HOBSON, Benjamin]. [Hakubutsu Shinpen]. Tokyo, 1874 (Meiji 7). Three volumes, 255x173mm, publisher's yellow wrappers with title labels (a bit smudged); wood cut illustrations in all three volumes. Rather good with the original printed outer wrapper loosely inserted and untorn. Au$300
Third edition, it seems, of this adaptation of Hobson's Bo Wu Xin Bian first published in Shanghai in 1855 and in Japan in 1864. Hobson wrote a few primers on science and medicine for the Chinese which were then adapted by the Japanese. This covers physics in the first volume - including such things as optics, electricity and hydraulics; astronomy in the second; and zoology in the third.
School screen + [Tangozu + Rengozu]. Tokyo, Monbusho1874 (Meiji 7). Folding screen, a byobu, of six panels; paper over a timber frame. Each panel is 176x64cm, ie it's close enough to four metres opened right out. Each panel has a Tangozu wall chart mounted above a Rengozu chart, with colour woodcuts, numbered one to six. Each chart is about 77x54cm, some a bit larger or smaller. The back is patterned green paper printed by stencil or block. Bugs have been busy in places but only in the mounting paper, not the charts. Some holes or bashes in the back of the first panel - what would be the front cover if you imagine this as a book - have been repaired with Japanese tissue. Browning. The holes are mostly down low, where small children or errant bits of furniture operate. This was made as a six panel screen, it is complete with the black timber border strips at each end. And it was made by professionals. It's possible that whoever ordered it decided that more plants and animals were a waste of time but it's more likely another panel would make it too large and cumbersome for the space they had. Au$3200
When I bought this I thought the photos showed it sitting on a table and the dimensions were of the whole screen opened out. I realised I was wrong when I got the bill for shipping. What I thought was a table mat was a floor rug.
These are the elementary school wall word charts (Tangozu) and collocation or phrase charts (Rengozu) issued by the Ministry of Education. There were eight of each produced but six is what made it on to this extraordinary piece of furniture. I can only guess it was made to divide a classroom. Charts seven and eight of the Tangozu series were plants and animals.
The various editions and versions of the Shogaku Nyumon and similar elementary primers show that these wall charts were used, revised and adapted for some years. The miniature versions in the books are changed and reorganised but these originals can still be recognised; who could mistake that hairpiece and nose? Included with the screen is an 1875 edition of the teachers' Shogaku Nyumon with a date stamp showing that it was still being used fifteen or twenty years later. Commercial colour woodcuts of the charts in use were also produced by canny publishers: teacher pointing and attentive kids on the floor. The charts were exaggerated so that they could still teach even in such reduced form. Kiyochika did at least three in 1874.
"The lower elementary school curriculum established by the Normal School stipulated that students should first study vocabulary using wall charts such as word charts and collocation charts, as a prelude to learning materials like the Elementary School Reader ...
The eight word charts published in 1873 were created by the Normal School editorial office, a liberal faction that actively sought to absorb Western civilization. They incorporated Pestalozzi's educational philosophy and focused on illustrations to allow children to understand intuitively through their own eyes. The first and second word charts were designed to teach historical kana spelling, while the third through eighth word charts were written in kanji or katakana, allowing children to learn the properties and uses of familiar objects through a question-and-answer format.
However, the following year, 1874, a revised edition was published by the Ministry of Education, and the Normal School version was discontinued after just one year. Looking specifically at the revised sections, out of the 210 words, there are four changes to the word itself and 29 changes to spelling." (A rough translation from 'Dictionaries and Beyond' published online by Sanseido. They illustrate it with images from one of the elementary books, not the charts).
Pretty much every reference I can find works from the books and prints rather than original charts. The Library of Congress has both sets of eight Department of Education charts. The Miyaki Library at Tsukuba University has six very similar but not identical Tangozu charts mounted on a scroll. Maybe the Normal School version?
HANDS, Joseph. Will-Ability; or, Mind and its Varied Conditions and Capacities. A dissertation and explanation of the mystery of Will-Ability, Mind-Energy, or Mental Volition, as exercised in controlling ourselves, or the thoughts, feelings, and acts of others; exemplified, especially as to the latter capabilities, by the faculty of Electro-Biology, or Animal Magnetism, and the Influence of Fascination. Illustrated by facts. Also observations on the consequences effected in us through the quality or dominion of Faith and Belief, or Self-Will Operation, as influenced by the phrenological organ of hope, and called into active being, through the agency of education and persuasion, and other means, as Charms, Spells and Amulets, to which are added essays on Free-Will and Fate, Destiny and Inevitable Necessity. London, J. Burns [1875]. Octavo publisher's green cloth blocked in black & titled in gilt; viii,158pp. With a grateful inscription from the author to Miss M. Wait, who transcribed the book; Hands has also made a few additions to the text. Au$400
Can you think of any mid-Victorian fad, hobby-horse or loony fringe preoccupation not covered in the title? Clairvoyance? Perhaps so but that appears on page two as part of Hands' work treating patients by animal magnetism. Anything missed here probably appears in two of his other books, one on beauty and the laws of its attainment, the other seems to cover the rest of the laws of the universe. He also wrote on homeopathy, isopathy (?), dietetics and promised to write on vaccination (for the affirmative).
Hands was a London homeopath but, knowing nothing more whatsoever about him, all we can add is that this is humanitarian reform; Hands is convinced that practical application of his principles would sweep away "nearly every species of crime". Punishment having proved worse than useless, leniency, benevolence and education are necessary.
SHAW, Eyre M. Fire Protection. A complete manual of the organization, machinery, discipline, and general working, of the fire brigade of London. London, Charles and Edwin Layton 1876. Octavo publisher's cloth; xiii,332pp and an illustrated 64 page "Appendix of Manufacturers' and other Advertisements, having reference to Fire Protection", numerous illustrations and diagrams, a plate and a double page map. Some foxing at the ends but a rather good copy. Au$800
First edition. Essential in fire fighting history. As far as Shaw was concerned, this was the first attempt in any language "approaching to a complete or comprehensive scheme" to embody the essential principles and practice of fire fighting. In other countries printed manuals "of some kind or another have been in use for many years .. but they are meagre in the extreme and .. altogether useless for the instruction of fire brigades charged with the protection of great commercial cities". Shaw was of course responsible for the modern London fire department, in turn the model for fire departments around the world.
Inaba Eiko. [Chohei Men'eki Kokoroe]. Osaki Naosaburo 1879 (Meiji 12). 17x11cm later wrapper with manuscript title; illustrated title/self wrapper and eight leaves. An excellent copy. Au$500
The draft dodger's handbook: a guide to exemptions from conscription into the new Imperial Army. Conscription rolled out slowly across Japan from 1873 and one of the most useful exemptions was being a first son; which meant a rash of adoptions preferably into a family where conscription hadn't yet arrived. Fukuzawa wrote about "sons who do not know where their fathers live" and I read somewhere that one of Japan's great literary heroes - Soseki maybe? - registered himself in Hokkaido to escape the draft.
Of course money solved everything: an exemption or proxy fee meant that someone else took your place and I would guess that no true aristocrat would dream of having a son drafted; they were already in military school and officer training. So, naturally, peasants filled the draftee ranks and not all peasants were happy about this. There were 'blood tax' riots, the most furious in Okayama where authorities adroitly charged 20,000 rioters, executed a dozen or so and gaoled a few dozen more.
Without money, a good solid disease, disability or an affable sonless family this little pamphlet was your best friend. Worldcat finds no copies and CiNii finds one, at Tokyo University. It's often cited by academics but as they mostly repeat each other's mistakes I doubt many have seen it.
TEALE, T. Pridgin, Dangers to Health: a pictorial guide to domestic sanitary defects. London, Churchill &c 1879. Octavo publisher's gilt decorated illustrated cloth (a touch mottled); 55 plates, all but a couple in black and blue, one in three colours. Minor signs of use, quite good. Au$475
First edition of this charming and terrifying pictorial guide to the perils of Victorian home life. Three more editions and French, German and Spanish translations (at least) followed over the next few years. I recommend this to anyone wanting to restore old houses with absolute authenticity. And it's essential for time travellers.
"Having further traced illness amongst my own patients to scandalous carelessness and gross dishonesty ... I became indignantly alive to the fact that very few houses are safe to live in." A still useful warning. Teale, third generation Leeds surgeon, like so many eminent Victorians, can only have achieved so much by working hundred and sixty hour weeks. There was a deluge of obituaries at his death in 1923, all eulogistic, but the note in the British Medical Journal caught my eye: he had an "almost feminine sweetness of disposition."
Shinoda Senka & Utagawa Yoshiharu, [Meiji Eimei Hyakueisen]. Tokyo, Murakami 1879. 18x12cm publisher's wrapper with title label; one double page, one full page colour woodcut, 120 half page woodcuts - all but a couple coloured - on 60 double folded leaves. Inscription on the back cover; a nice copy. The illustrations are by Utagawa Yoshiharu. Au$400
First edition and a deluxe coloured copy of this popular, poetic, gallery of famous folk of the Meiji period - the first bit of it anyway. There are the expected statesmen and lords but there are also scholars, a handful of women and what look to to be unsavoury reprobates. Perhaps they are great statesmen. I'm equally ignorant about the verse with each portrait. I presume these aren't cheeky limericks or Clerihews. I don't know how rare coloured copies are but I haven't found another amongst the recorded copies.
Shinoda Senka & Utagawa Yoshiharu, [Meiji Eimei Hyakueisen]. Tokyo, Murakami 1879? 18x12cm publisher's wrapper with title label; one double page and one full page colour woodcut, 120 half page woodcuts on 60 double folded leaves. Two clean tears across the paste down title page without loss, a well read copy but solid and decent enough. The illustrations, not so well printed, are by Utagawa Yoshiharu. Au$100
A popular, poetic, gallery of famous folk of the Meiji period - the first bit of it anyway. There are the expected statesmen and lords but there are also scholars, a handful of women and what look to to be unsavoury reprobates. Perhaps they are great statesmen. I'm equally ignorant about the verse with each portrait. I presume these aren't cheeky limericks or Clerihews.
Photography & lithography. Japan. Portraits from photographs scrupulously hand painted to impersonate lithographs. n.p. [c1880-1890?]. Two sheets, 54x41cm and 60x48cm, with nine portraits all but one oval; each about 25cm - ten inches - high. Au$450
Are these the ultimate modern one-up-manship in family portraiture? Painted over photos are common enough and paintings from photos equally so but these are large scale, done from scratch purposely to mimic the grain of lithography. The stippling is so painstaking and exact that it would have been easier to make and print lithographs.
By the 1880's reaction to modernity and the west, by nationalists watching their tradition vanish, was strident and often powerful. Don't forget the western design of the residence of the new Imperial Palace was abandoned after earthquake damage to brickwork and the official carpenter took over. No small victory for superior Japanese traditions. The arguments over portraiture and photography are often unexpected, confusing and contradictory to me. Schools that I would think traditionalist welcomed the camera and realism - though some disliked photo portraits for moral or ethical reasons - but whatever the argument the photograph and its wedded industry - portraits painted in oils over or from photos - became ubiquitous essentials for the family shrine.
Our well to do family is not only on the side of western modernity, they go one step further by embracing the foreign technology of the lithographic print. So why hand painted on such a scale? Maybe partly because that's what a prominent family can afford but likely because portraits like this were still private family affairs. According to Conant (Challenging Past and Present), the painter Takahashi - portraitist of the Emperor - was thwarted in his 1880s project to paint portraits of the heroes of the Meiji by families refusing him use of their photographs.
The smaller set of portraits here is signed and sealed Hokushu. The other, clearly of later photos, has an illegible, to me, seal.
Paper. Toyosha? [Shin Hatsumei Keibenshi]. n.p. [Osaka?] [188-?]. 75x28cm woodcut with added colours. Piece from the top margin well away from the printing, a repaired tear; Quite good for a cheap, vulnerable bit of production. Au$150
I believe this to be an announcement for a new invention of a lightweight paper. I hope not the paper this is printed on which seems heavy and coarse to me. Probably not considering the easy grasp of our newspaper addict. I suspect the cigarettes will stay on that side of his mouth until his left eye looks as sore as the right does now. Then he will switch back.
Magic. Kitensai Shoichi : [Kakkoku Hatsumei : Fushigi No Den]. n.p. n.d. [c1880?]. 17x11cm publisher's colour woodcut wrappers, thread tied; 7 folded leaves including wrappers, b/w illustrations on eleven pages. Well thumbed but most acceptable. Au$900
Deservedly thumbed, an appealing little book of mostly western magic tricks that does not teach you, I'm sorry, how to drive a spike through your tongue. Kitensai supposedly learnt western magic in Paris in the early 1870s and brought it back to Japan in the mid to late 1870s; I can't find two writers that agree on dates.
The NDL has copies of another work on western conjuring tricks that appeared in the 1880's with Kitensai listed as first contributor to the earliest, 1882, printing but I can't find a record of our book anywhere. I suspect it was produced for sale at his shows.
The back wrapper might be purposeful or might have been pinched from a popular kabuki thriller about the battle between good and evil being printed across the workshop.
Sada Kaiseki. [Fukoku Ayumi Hajime]. Tokyo, Sada 1880 (Meiji 13). Woodcut broadside 36x52cm, stencil coloured? Expert repairs to the folds at each side and in the centre, some stains. Folded as issued with the outer wrapper woodcut mounted on old paper. Au$950
This captivating woodcut which looks like an advertisement for imported treasures is instead a strident protest and attack on these gewgaws. Sada was a troublesome priest but no reactionary flat-earther, not quite. He wasn't simple. He developed complex theories of science, culture and economics and saw the opening of Japan to this slew of imports as the cause of inflation and hardship for the lower classes. This woodcut was produced to promote the boycott of foreign goods and lists specific targets. Sada spent the last years of his life organising boycott societies and died - in 1882 - on a lecture tour.
The presence of a wrapper with this print suggests to me this was not given away, it was sold. Waseda University illustrates two copies, one in better shape but carelessly coloured compared to this. The other is fairly worm eaten. They do have a wrapper, which, according to the provenance, belongs to their better copy but it is separately catalogued without any mention of Sada. Worldcat finds the NLA copy.
Sada Kaiseki. [Fukoku Ayumi Hajime]. Tokyo, Sada 1880 (Meiji 13). Woodcut broadside 36x52cm, stencil coloured? Some small holes and separation along folds; pretty good, the colour bright. Au$950
This captivating woodcut which looks like an advertisement for imported treasures is instead a strident protest and attack on these gewgaws. Sada was a troublesome priest but no reactionary flat-earther, not quite. He wasn't simple. He developed complex theories of science, culture and economics and saw the opening of Japan to this slew of imports as the cause of inflation and hardship for the lower classes. This woodcut was produced to promote the boycott of foreign goods and lists specific targets. Sada spent the last years of his life organising boycott societies and died - in 1882 - on a lecture tour.
This was issued with an outer wrapper which suggests to me this was not given away, it was sold. Waseda University illustrates two copies, one in better shape but carelessly coloured compared to this. The other is fairly worm eaten. They do have a wrapper, which, according to the provenance, belongs to their better copy but it is separately catalogued without any mention of Sada. Worldcat finds the NLA copy.
ALDRICH, T.B. The Stillwater Tragedy. Boston, Houghton Mifflin 1880. Octavo, excellent in publisher's brown cloth blocked in gilt, red and black. Au$175
First edition; classic detective fiction and an anti-labour novel, with a murdered corpse at the end of the first chapter and an unjustly suspected hero standing up to thuggish strike leaders. While barely inflammatory - the author and printer did not, after all, have to go into hiding - this novel did stir up more conversation than usual amongst his readers. His readers can't have been expected to take much exception to it: Twain wrote to Aldrich that he had enjoyed reading it in the notorious periodical of Howells and that Mrs Clemens was looking forward to it between baby feeds. The connections between Aldrich and the extreme anti-labor literature of the late 19th century are not hard to trace.
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