A fascinating look at 60 years since the opening of Japan by over two dozen members of the Central Art Association, a collective that included some of the most outstanding cartoonists of the first half of the 20th century. Includes work by Kitazawa Rakuten (aka. the father of Modern Manga), Okamoto Ippei, Mizushima Niou, Sakamoto Gajo, Maekawa Senpan, Hattori Ryoei, Nagasaki Batten, Ikeda Eiji, Kawamori Hisao, and others.
The paintings are arranged chronologically to show the contrasts between old and new customs, but also features a number of important events (incl. the Satsuma Rebellion, the Formation of the first Cabinet, Promulgation of the Constitution, the Sanriku earthquake with the resulting tsunami, the first Sino-Japanese War, the Administration of Taiwan, the first flight from Tokyo to Paris etc.) and characters (incl. Saigo Takamori & Ito Hirobumi, Fukuzawa Yukichi, Masaoka Shiki, Natsume Soseki and many others) during the Meiji and Taisho period. The first scene by Kitazawa Rakuten of the Emperor’s arrival in Edo on October 13th 1868. This is followed with a horse-drawn public bus careering down the road in front of some telegraph lines. The volume closes with a wonderful rendition by Okamoto Ippei of a mobo and a moga seated in a cafe. A tour-de-force!
The loose sheet provides information on how order the prints in various configurations: The most expensive (Yen150!) was to have them mounted on a screen (byobu) with gold-flecked tori-no-ko paper, the 2vol. album version in silk brocade cost 22Yen. This was still a considerable amount at the time. We have not seen the version on a screen, but were have seen both 1 and 2-volume versions of this series, while it would appear that the current version of loose plates may have been distributed amongst book-dealers or agents in order to obtain orders.
Very rare. Only one copy in OCLC. (National Library of Australia).
