Author: Okamoto Ippei.
Title: [Shufunotomo - Manga Sugoroku].
Description: Tokyo, Shufunotomosha 1929 (Showa 4). Broadside 64x94cm; colour printed. Not the best copy, over creased with several repairs to separated folds, but all there. ¶ A splendid large and lively sugoroku - racing game - by the illustrator/cartoonist whose place in modern manga history is still being argued. Issued as a New Year gift by the magazine The Housewife's Friend, the game is an intriguing melange, to me, of the modern and traditional; whether in conflict or harmony or all round mocked I don't know. The winning post - the joyful family of plump plutocrats with both husband and wife looking remarkably like lucky gods - is the dream of the modern young woman being hatched from an egg in the upper right but she is not the starting point of the game. There seems to be several starting points. Did any young western woman ever dream of being rich and fat? If you look up Okamoto Ippei in non-Japanese places now you will find so many entries telling us how unjustly neglected and forgotten he is in the history of comics and manga that we know his place is assured. Ippei was the king of newspaper cartooning as Rakuten ruled the magazines in Taisho and early Showa Japan. It was Ippei that brought the American comic strip to Japan and heads, with Rakuten, the lists of idols and inspiration of many modern manga artists; hardly forgotten.

Keywords: paper games pastimes illustration cartoons manga sugoroku c20th Japan modernism graphic art progress Asia feminism women reform