If you would like to get in touch, please feel free to contact: email hidden; JavaScript is required
Browse collection
- Full collection
- 18th Century & earlier
- Ackermann
- Africa
- Alken
- Animals
- Arabasia
- Architecture/Mansions
- Art
- Australasia
- Botany
- British Isles
- Caricatures
- Children
- China
- Chromo added colour
- Chromolithographs
- Conchology
- Costume
- Cruikshank
- Culture/Lifestyle
- Dutch
- East European
- Far East
- France
- Furniture/Antiques
- General
- Germany
- Grandville
- Heraldry
- History
- History - England
- History - Europe
- Holy Land
- India
- India - sepia
- Islam
- Italy
- Japan
- Literature
- London
- Manuscript
- Map
- Military
- Monnier
- Natural history
- Pastimes
- Pochoir
- Polar regions
- Portraits
- Religious/Christian
- Religious/other
- Rowlandson
- Russia
- Science
- Scrapbook
- Sepia
- South America
- Sports/Hunting
- Stamps
- Swiss
- The Americas
- Theatre
- Travel/Scenery
- Watercolours
- World
KOBAYASHI, Eitaku.
Children's Games [via Japanese Paintings]
The laid-in English description includes (in part): "Hane-tsuki: 'Battledore and Shuttlecock,' a game played principally during the first ten days of the New Year"; "Koma Asobi: 'Playing with Tops,' and Tamaya: 'Blowing Soap-bubbles"; "Sugoroku, a sort of backgammon"; "Hotaru-gari: 'Hunting Fireflies"; and more, including descriptions of holidays like Obon and making "snowmen" of Daruma, the iconographic image of the monk who brought Zen to Japan. The skill of late-era ukiyo-e and nihonga artist Kobayashi Eitaku is evident in this collection, which showcases traditional subjects and aesthetics - very much in response to the Western styles enjoying a growing vogue in the Meiji era. Publisher Nagao explains in the preface that he wanted to create a work of virtuosity within the form, both for love of the art and as a patriotic homage to Japan's homegrown arts in the face of Western ones: to this end, he issued the publication with Japanese, French, and English text.
- Published
- Tokyo: Hakubunkwan, 1894.
- Plates
- 13
- Binding/Size
- S=8vo
- Value
- 0-5000
- Published
- Tokyo: Hakubunkwan, 1894.
- Ref
- 1368
Second edition. (11.5" x 9") oblong 4to, or (29 x 23 cm.) Original gold silk over boards with paper label. Moderate edgewear. Accordion or Leporello format. Japanese/English text, 13 mounted colour woodblocks, gilt, and black spotted decorations in margins. Clean and bright. Depicting Japanese children at play, highlighting the building of a snowman, or perhaps playing with a top? A nice, unusual item. There is a scene for every month of that year, alternating boy's games with that of the girls. Coloured plates in order: 1. Children are building a snowman. 2. Children playing in a park by a lake. 3. While catching butterflies and insects, children run after a startled hare. 4. Children (indoors) playing 'silhouettes' and watching revolving shadow scenes with a coloured lantern. 5. Girls and some amateur singing. 6. Children playing musical instruments and mimicking and festival. 7. Catching and studying goldfish from a tank by a river. 8. Catching fireflies. 9. Boys mimicking heroic samurai swordsmanship! 10. Children playing board games. (Sugoroku & Juroku-Musashi) 11. Children blow 'bubbles' & spinning a wooden top with string. 12. Children playing a form of Badminton or 'Battledore &. Shuttlecock.' 13. Japanese Festive Gifts.
