Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Young Japanese 100

1940 [Military-tinged] fairytale released by or
with the approval of the Ministry of Education

1922 A book about play theory or therapy

1899 A series for boys with foreign biographies
- in this case, [the Indian] Buddha


1926 Cover and page illustration
from the first girl club book series


1914 First boy's anthology book
- in this case poems about water

1913 Aiko series

1914 Aiko series

1891 A boy's book, marking the beginning of modern
childrens' literature, influenced by german works.

1921

1928

About three images from each of 100 japanese books issued between 1869 and 1944 are on display at the International Institute for Childrens Literature in Osaka. They are accompanied by descritpions (in japanese; hence the captions here are rough paraphrasings). I think the above examples give a fair indication of the great diversity, graphic design and printing quality in japanese book production in the early/modern era. I was pleasantly surprised with the standards and there is obviously a styling influence from abroad, particularly France. [via lotusgreen]

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Some other places, in addition to the sidebar links, that I either admire, am jealous of, subscribe to, am inspired and/or entertained by and/or wish I had the time to visit more often:

It's Olivia, Popaula, The Wit of the Staircase, Sorrow at Sills Bend, Scarlet Letters, JuJu Loves Polkadots, BLDGBLOG, swissmiss, Oink!, Inky Circus, The 7 Deadly Sinners, Graphic Design Bar, Gatochy, Tinselman, MODE, Blogging the Renaissance, Barista, Archaeoastronomy, La Boîte à Images, Drink Me, Hooting Yard, Foreword, Ample Sanity, Pink Tentacle, Shao Kelake, Newsgrist, Generator.x, ShiftBlog, Corsinet, The Cartoonist, Blue Tea, dataisnature, What is Going On?, Dirty, Mefi/Mofi/MeCha, Ober Dicta, Transfer, Punio, Vvork, Danny Yee, monochrom, Livre Ancien, Erebos, Paperholic, Sepia Mutiny, RecordBrother, Girl Wonder, Panopticist, Make Ready, Bezembinder, Rabbits, Toyen and so forth, Monsterbrains, loreto martin, MadMeg, Catatau, O'Connors O'Pinions, Eye Level.

Not in any order and certainly not a complete list of everywhere I go (well in fact, I spend more than 1/2 my web life crawling upside down through musty caves in digital repositories, but those links I post each day). All the major food groups are represented. Bon appétit!

8 comments:

  1. I´m the owner of Catatau. Thank´s for your reference, and apreciation!

    I found Bibliodyssey by Giornale Nuovo. You have a wonderfull blog. I have great interest for weblog´s that apreciate the 'thinking', and you show precious issues using the blog language.

    Well, for now, that´s all

    best regards,

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  2. Awww, thanks for the linkage, pk, I'm flattered! And great post (as usual.) I'm very much into Asian right now, so I enjoyed it a lot! I just started this blog to collect pretty Asian or Japonism images: http://kimonovintage.blogspot.com/

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  3. holy cow--what a rush. thank you. it's funny, because i was reading this, and thinking, what a coincidence that everyone's suddenly interested in early 20th century japanese children's books!

    i've been following every lead i can find, so thanks for adding to my adventures.

    lily

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  4. I just started this blog..

    Ha! Mariana, you must have about 27 blogs by now ;- )

    ReplyDelete
  5. thanks for the mention, pk! biblodyssey remains one of my absolute faves. cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  6. On the last count six... But Gatochy is the only "real" blog. The others are just for collecting images.

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  7. Thanks for the shout out, always a pleasure to visit the bizarre worlds you discover in your archive website digs. "Dreams Of Pantagruel" is still the most interesting gallery I've seen all year, I'm really glad you shared it on here.

    best,

    Monster Brains

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  8. And I too am thrilled to be mentioned. (Especially when this summer my blog has been more about computer woes and rabbit adoption than anything art-related.) My only reason for not visiting here more often is that I get too wrapped up in the wonders of the site!

    ReplyDelete

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