[Tojimari Sen Kanagu : Bunka Kuroro].

[192-?]. Colour lithograph poster 76x35cm. Short tears around the edges; pretty good.
¶ This shop poster is both an advertisement and a warning: these handsome door or window locks will not keep out mournful children.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 10755

Keywords: graphic commercial art advertising posters architecture manufactures c20th Japan modernism

Exhibition - Tokyo 1914.

[Tokyo Taisho Hakurankai Kaku Kan no Kokei]

Tokyo, Shobundo March 1914 (Taisho 3). Colour lithograph 39x55cm. A bit rumpled along the bottom edge with a couple of short tears in the margins. Rather good.
¶ Fine views of the psychedelic Taisho exposition - to celebrate the enthronement of the emperor - held in Ueno Park, which introduced any number of technical advances to the Japanese, including an escalator and a cable car. Once the eyes stop watering these acid trip views of late Meiji and Taisho Japan start to make sense. They may have started as a cynical grab at attention for cheap, often nasty, prints but after a while they become a celebration of being in a place and time so exciting that no portrait can be too brightly, too impossibly, coloured. Photographs may be in some way a more reliable record but no photographer could so capture the thrill of being out and about in Tokyo on a Taisho afternoon.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 10666

Keywords: graphic art international exhibitions Japan Asia c20th modernism progress colour printing

Exhibition - Tokyo 1907

[Tokyo Kangyo Hakurankai Zue - Fuzoku Gaho].

Tokyo, Fuzoku Gaho 1907. Five volumes 26x19cm, publisher's colour illustrated wrappers; a large folding colour view in the first issue, at least two double page colour illustrations in each of the others, monochrome plates and photo illustrations.
¶ A set of the five special issues of the Fuzoku Gaho devoted to the 1907 Tokyo Industrial Exhibition. The Fuzoku Gaho (1889 - 1916) was Japan's first graphic magazine. I'd like to know who the artist was of some of these plates*. They masterfully capture the eagerness for the new, the wonder, the distractions, the shared delights, and the weary resignation of some parents. The 1907 exhibition was conceived as an international exhibition but this ambition fizzled due to lack of enthusiasm, if not nerve, on the part of officialdom. Nonetheless this was big stuff, expansive in its inclusion of technology, culture, the arts and popular entertainment - introducing not one but two ferris wheels to Tokyo. It did pretty good business, atttracting some six or seven million visitors.*A generous customer has told me that the coloured frontispieces and some other illustrations, where the signature can be read, are by Yamamoto Shoun, also known as Matsutani - which appears to me to be the signature on the admirable illustrations.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 10706

Keywords: technology international exhibitions material culture c20th Japan Asia modernism fad

Exhibition - Tokyo 1907.

The Tokyo Industrial Exhibition, an extra number of the 'Teikoku Gaho', an illustrated monthly magazine.

Tokyo, Fuzanbo [1907]. Quarto publisher's colour illustrated wrapper (a bit used); profusely illustrated throughout, mostly photo illustrations, a few folding, two folding maps, some colour lithographs, including a folding plate of caricatures and an odd depiction of the 'patron goddis of industry'; interspersed sections of advertising on red paper.
¶ A substantial and very useful round-up of the exhibition; there is a summary in English and the illustrations have English captions. The 1907 exhibition was conceived as an international exhibition but this ambition fizzled due to lack of enthusiasm, if not nerve, on the part of officialdom. Nonetheless this was big stuff, expansive in its inclusion of technology, culture, the arts and popular entertainment - introducing not one but two ferris wheels to Tokyo. And it did pretty good business, apparently atttracting some six or seven million visitors.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 8157

Keywords: technology international exhibitions material culture c20th Japan Asia modernism

Exhibition - Toyama 1936.

[Toyamashi Shusai Nichiman Sangyo Daihakurankai Kyosankai Shi].

Toyama 1938 (Showa 13). 23x16cm publisher's cloth and card box; numerous photo illustrations, colour plates, folding plans and elevations. A nice copy.
¶ The official report on the 1936 Japan-Manchuria Great Industrial Exhibition. Though blemished by too many portraits of personages, this is still an excellent record of thirties Japanese expo architecture and design with coloured pictures of posters, advertising, tickets and so on, plans and elevations of buildings, lighting, and photo views. There is also the obligatory Hatsusaburo colour folding birds-eye panorama.Worldcat finds two copies outside Japan, both in California.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 10660

Keywords: exhibitions architecture design international expositions Japan Asia c20th modernism progress Manchuria Manchukuo

[Guiton, N. (aine)].

Traite Complet du Jeu de Trictrac ... contenant les principes et regles de ce jeu, avec des tables de calculs qui ne se trouvent dans aucun des traites connus.

Paris, Michaud 1816. Octavo, untrimmed and unpressed in publisher's mottled wrapper with printed spine label (piece torn from the front edge of the back wrapper); [4],311pp, woodcut figures through the text. Some spotting but an impressive survival in absolutely original form.
¶ First edition and quite scarce; the second, which appeared in 1822, seems a bit easier to find. Despite appearances trictrac is not backgammon. I'm told that it is not a racing game but a game of probabilities. In vogue with the French aristocracy during the 17th and 18th centuries, there seems to have been a lull in books between the revolution and this work (coincident with the Bourbon restoration). Guiton's introduction has no political references though, merely stating that the most modern work (possibly Falavel's book of 1776?) is often erroneous and otherwise superficial. It is an appealing notion that until quite recently the most extensive writing in English on trictrac was in Willard Fiske's 'Chess in Iceland' (1905).

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 7939

Keywords: games social history sport pastimes c19th France backgammon

[HEINE, Johann August].

Traite des Batiments Propres a Loger les Animaux, qui sont necessaires a l'economie rurale;...

Lepizig, Voss 1802. Folio (38x27cm) contemporary quarter calf and mottled boards (rebacked with the original spine preserved); xii,72pp and 50 engraved plates including the frontispiece - plans, elevations etc. Foxing, still a crisp copy.
¶ First edition - a German translation appeared a couple of years later - of this handsome, thorough, expert treatise on the architecture of animal husbandry. Heine wrote with an even hand on architecture and rural economy or, as here, both. The book begins with a plan and elevation for a house and estate and continues in sections: stables and all the other varied structures for horses; cows; pigs; sheep; birds, ducks and geese; bees; silkworms; and dogs. The bee and silkworm sections go well beyond architecture and could be self contained monographs on apiculture and sericulture. These are no rustic sheds. These are substantial and considered - quite severe - neo-classical buildings, any one of which would be desirable real estate now. I don't remember another farm building pattern book which insists on applying rules of proportion.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 9844

Keywords: architecture design c18th Germany rural farms stables bees apiaries agriculture neo-classicism

[WARD, Robert Plumer].

Tremaine, or the Man of Refinement.

London, Henry Colburn 1825. Three volumes octavo modern half calf. Frontispiece in volume one, half titles in two and three as seems right. Frontispiece browned which isn't helped by the baronial owner - his bookplate is preserved - practicing his bold signature on the back. Apart from this, a nice fresh copy.
¶ It is possible that Sir Richard Sutton, Bart, got further into the book than the frontispiece but given the evidence of the book and his history, which seems to consist largely of horse and hound, it's likely that he couldn't get through all the chat of and by Tremaine - the jaded, betrayed, fastidious man of fashion and consequence - to his redemption by the simplicity of nature and the natural simplicity of Georgina. Tremaine, the first of many things: Colburn's first novel of fashion, foundation of the Dandy and Silver Fork schools; was the first of Ward's three novels, written only after Ward had retired from a life of politics and the law and it may be that Tremaine's redemption was wish fulfillment. In 'The Dandy' Ellen Moers notes that "the major consequence of Tremaine's refinement is his inability to love, a failing which Ward (who took three wives ...) treats satirically, yet with certain sympathy. Like the occupations, the ladies are one after another rejected as insufficiently fine: one for a want of sentiment, one for an excess, one for reading Tom Jones, one for eating peas with a knife." Moers goes on to enumerate Ward's glee in eavesdropping on and adding to society gossip about his anonymous novel.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 9316

Keywords: literature fiction c19th England three decker Dandy Silver fork novels

[Uenokoen Shimizu Do Saigo Nanshu Dozo no Zu]

Tokyo, Tsunashima Kamekichi 1908 (Meiji 41). Colour woodcut 27x39cm. Rather good.
¶ An almost sombre day in Ueno Park in comparison with the psychedelic colouring of cheap lithograph views of the time. Still, you can be sure that the photographer at work turned out less exciting views than this. The statue is of Saigo Takamori. Least said about him by me the better.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 10388

Keywords: graphic art Japan c20th modernism photography colour woodcut Tokyo meisho meiji

[Sydney University].

Up and Atom! University Students' Festival Song Book 1946.

[Sydney 1946]. Quarto illustrated wrapper; 32pp, illustrations throughout. A bit used.
¶ A title for the times; and the first University songbook since 1940. The atomic age is reflected inside in one humorous piece on pre-atomic culture, otherwise it's the tradional pre-occupations of university students: sex and ridiculing the faculty. Catalogue searches, including Sydney University, find only the NL and Monash copies - can this be right?

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 7099

Keywords: literature humor Sydney University c20th Australia atom bomb

[STRETTON, Julia Cecilia].

The Valley of a Hundred Fires.

London, Hurst & Blackett 1860. Three volumes octavo contemporary half roan. Minor spotting and signs of use; a pretty good and neat set in what is undoubtedly a colonial binding.
¶ First edition. Mrs Stretton was one of the league of plucky women who took to writing to support their families after their husband dropped dead or deserted them in a welter of drunken cruelty, loose women and gambling debts. In her case she began as the widow de Winton (she was born Collinson) and carried on after she married Mr Stretton. This Wales set novel is apparently autobiographical, based on her own family, and the heroine is her mother. Sadleir apparently ignored Mrs Stretton; Wolff had a couple of her novels but not this one.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 9108

Keywords: literature fiction three decker c19th England

[TYSSOT DE PATOT, Simon.]

Voyages et Avantures de Jaques Masse.

A Bordeaux, Jaques l'Aveugle 1710 [ie The Hague c1715?]. 12mo modern calf. Title a touch rough around the edge, browning of the earlier sections, a pretty good copy.
¶ First edition it seems of this imaginary Australian voyage and troublemaking utopia. The bibliographical world has accepted Rosenberg's separation and stretch of the four '1710' editions over four decades, with the first appearing no earlier than 1714 and the last not before 1742. As I have the first, his 'A', I'm hardly going to argue with him. Early commentators dismissed Tyssot and his book with a snarl: atheistic and scandalous, socialist, meprisable (contemptible), inexpressibly confused; but modern scholars have gone industrial. A quick survey shows the wealth of academic ore mined from Tyssot: Judaism and Enlightenment; Language and the History of Thought; Astronomy, Prophecy and Imposture; Cartesianism and Female Equality; The Ideal Language; Masks, Blackness, Race; Early Deism in France; The Wandering Jew; and I'm sure there's plenty left. I do wonder how many of these scholars read the book: more than one describes a very different book from the one before me.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 9209

Keywords: literature fiction imaginary voyage fantasy c18th Australia utopia thrillers religion

[Wasei Jutai Iroha].

Tokyo, Yoshidaya Bunzaburo 1871 [Meiji 4]. 165x63mm, publisher's wrapper with title label (rumpled and forgivably grubby); 30pp accordian folding. Used but a more than decent copy.
¶ A nifty little pocket or sleeve book - that opens right to left like western books - teaching how to write English letters but not in English. This teaches how to write Japanese phonetically with the English or romanised alphabet - what was to become romaji. The Portugese missionaries had formulated a romanised system so that missionaries could instruct their Japanese victims without having to learn how to read Japanese but once they were tossed out of Japan such a system was quickly forgotten. It was only with the Meiji restoration and orders from the top that modernisation must follow that making Japanese intelligible to westerners became a desirable skill. At the end are numbers, the twelve animals of the zodiac - more or less, unfamiliar characters and spelling defeated the writer or block cutter on a few - and the seasons and points of the compass. This seems rare, both in and outside Japan. OCLC finds no copies and my searches of Japanese libraries finds only one copy - in the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 9883

Keywords: education manual handbook handwriting c19th Japan language linguistics writing books reform Asia progress meiji

[LANE, William].

The Workingman's Paradise: an Australian Labour Novel. By John Miller.

Sydney, printed by Edwards Dunlop for the Worker Board of Trustees 1892. Octavo publisher's red cloth blocked in blind. Title browned by the endpaper as usual; there was no half title or blank between them. A rather good copy.
¶ First edition of this influental if fairly impenetrable socialist anarchist novel by the Messiah of the working class. The 1948 edition was on the shelf of every thoughtful Australian in the second half of the 20th century but I've only ever met one person who insisted he read the whole thing. He made many improbable claims. I think an earlier generation were more thorough: copies of this in good shape have always been hard to find. Lane's preface admits that it's a bit of an unresolved mess but those who want a happy end - like his wife - and those who want Nellie dead of a broken heart - like an unnamed friend - will have to wait for the next book. I dozed off so I'm not sure when the action switched from Nellie to Ned alone and don't know where we left her.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 9726

Keywords: literature fiction c19th Australia utopia socialism reform progress New Australia South America trade unions

[Yokomoji Iroha - Haya Keiko].

Yokohama? Sanoya Tomigoro [c1870?]. Woodcut on four joined sheets that folds from 15x7cm out to 130cm. Decorated title panel printed in blue and black, last blank panel with several small red stamps reading Naga ( ) and one Nagata ( ). An outstanding copy of something pretty well guaranteed not to survive second or third uses.
¶ A captivating pocket or sleeve guide to horizontal writing with some numbers thrown in - Roman numerals for reading clocks - the latest of what must have seemed an endless array of challenges to life in Meiji Japan. Iroha might be translated into English as ABC.Sanoya Tomigiri was a print publisher who moved from Tokyo (Edo) to Yokohama when it opened to the west and where he also became a singer. He is known as the publisher of prints by Yoshitoshi and at least four of the Utagawas, maps, guides and handy educational things like this.I found a reference to something with almost this title printed by him at the beginning of the Meiji but it isn't the same thing, not even close. There may be another copy of this somewhere but I haven't found it.

Richard Neylon, BooksellerProfessional seller

Book number: 10918

Keywords: education alphabets language linguistics writing c19th Japan progress Asia reform meiji