05.12.08
Japanese vintage books
This week I stumbled upon some interesting old prints from Japan.
The first is Baika Women’s University Library collection that consists of 167 crêpe-paper books (including those printed on thick Japanese paper) published by Hasegawa Kobunsha as well as other publishers.
The site is somewhat hard to navigate if you don’t know Japanese. Start with the Introduction – and click on the menu items on the left (they are in Japanese) and then click on the English version link at the top right corner. You will have to do this separately on every page. The flash interface is nice, but images aren’t bigger than the one above. The stories are complete scans, thouhg 
To straight away choose a story to view, go to the index and click on any item.
The second interesting print is an Edo period anatomy scroll (Kaibou Zonshinzu) at the Tohoku University Library in Japan.
The scrolls are painted in 1819 by Kyoto-area physician Yasukazu Minagaki. According to the Keio University Library (where these documents are currently stored), the two scrolls contain 83 illustrations based on Minagaki’s observations of over 40 bodies. The illustrations differ from their Western counterparts as they depict – in this case, probably convicted criminals – in a “realistic” way. Western anatomy books usually remove all gore, fluids, facial expressions etc. from the illustrations.
The third book is a free downloadable book “Japanese Costume” at the Internet Archive, published in 1923 by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
And finally, there are some interesting rare books in the collection of the Library of the Diet 国立国会図書館. Here, for example, is a painted scroll depicting a dance (the Japanese title says iat is a dance “map”, maybe instructions? Not many Japanese can read the italics of the scroll, and certainly not me. There are also wood block prints:
Utagawa Hiroshige (æŒå·åºƒé‡) : 江戸近郊八景之内 (Edo kinkou hakkei no uchi)
