Elephant advertisement. - [Tenjiku Watari : Nama Daizo].

Osaka, Tamaki Seishichi 1883 (Meiji 16) Woodcut broadside 37x55cm. Rather good. ¶ A kawaraban style advertisement for the great elephant show and a higher class - and grander - bit of art than the ones produced in Yokohama that I've seen, one dated 1875 and one 1883.1863 was the year of the elephant in Japan, the great Indian elephant drew squillions of spectators and artists and printmakers went crazy. It wasn't the first elephant to arrive in Japan but it had been near 150 years since the last one. Apparently Raffles sent one in 1808 as a deal sweetener but it was refused and expelled - with a hundred bales of wheat from the shogun for the return journey. Just as well, while elephants had been celebrated in art for centuries, elephants in person didn't have long happy lives in Japan.The 1863 elephant went on tour after a spell in Tokyo but is our elephant the same one? Is it the same elephant who starred in Yokohama which, according to the unreliable and incongruent ages given on different prints, was too young? Certainly our elephant has progressed from being a drawcard by merely existing to being the star of a theatrical show.

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