After the Konjaku Zoku hyakki, the Sequel to the Hundred Ghosts, had been published in I/1779, Sekien wasn’t given too much of a break. The continuing success made his publishers again ask him for more. And so he started working on the Konjaku - Hyakki shūi 今昔百鬼拾遺, something like ‘Gleanings of a Hundred Ghosts,’ that…
The second in Sekien’s parade of Ghost Books is the Konjaku zoku hyakki 今昔続百鬼 also found with the title Konjaku gazu – Zoku hyakki 今昔畫圖 続百鬼 of 1779. It is again in the hanshibon format and comprised of three volumes. I couldn’t find a complete set of images of a first edition copy on the…
Quite surprisingly, Joly & Inada in their translation of Sekien’s Gazu hyakki yagyō 畫圖百鬼夜行 start by quoting sort of a mystery preface. It is signed by some Setchuan Riota and dated Anyei 6, that is 1777—a little unlikely for a book that was published the year before, in 1776. Consequently, this preface couldn’t have been…
The Japan Demonium book of Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt arrived in the mail this week, and I must say that it is quite an impressive and serious work, nicely produced by Dover of Mineola, New York, the one thing I possibly would have preferred is the plates at some more distance from the spine.…
A dear friend is, like me, organizing her books - an exercise in realizing that we don’t live in eternity and must be realistic about what we can still accomplish, so get rid of most. She asked me if I would be interested in some titles and so she sent me four books for which…
Although I had seen the name of Utagawa Toyokiyo 歌川豊清, and even on various occasions, I never bothered to find out who he really was. But working occasionally on the collection of the Museum of East Asian Art at Cologne, I was intrigued by a quite impressive surimono print that he designed at the age…
We like mysteries, don’t we? Today we go for this fabulous Hokusai self-portrait as a drawing at the end of a letter to ... some unidentified publisher. It is signed Hachiemon 八右衛門 with the seal Manji 卍, adding his age as 83 years old 八十三歳, so we know this must date from 1842. Even when…
As the advert for the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji appeared in the 1st Month of 1831 in Part 12 of Ryūtei Tanehiko’s 柳亭種彦 (1783-1842) Shōhon jitate『正本製』, it was indicated that what we now usually read as Fugaku 富嶽 should be read as ‘Fuji.’ It is now difficult to know whether this was meant to…
Nobody will ever forget these lines once you have read them. That artist who was confident that he would ‘at ninety have got even closer to the essence of art, and at the age of one hundred I will reach a magnificent level, and at a hundred and ten, each dot and each line will…
Just forgetting about the printing revolution enabling full-colour printing for those who could benefit from this development, and just focusing on the now well-established benizurie prints, it is obvious that Torii Kiyomitsu, the number two in the 1750s, climbs to the first position in the 1760s. The number two is his pupil, the new talent…