We are putting this group of prints into the online collection as a 'Print set', but it is far from clear just what a 'complete set' would entail.

These prints were issued during the early years of the Taisho era (certainly in 1913~1914, and perhaps for some years after). Two publishers at least were involved:

• 古吾妻錦繪保存会出版 - Ko azuma nishiki-e hozon kai ('Old Tokyo Nishiki-e Preservation Society')
• 美術木版画会出版 - Bijutsu Mokuhanga-kai ('Artistic Woodblock Print Association Publishing')

We have packaging preserved that indicates a two-week publishing schedule. People subscribed to the prints and received a package (sometimes a single print, sometimes two) on that timetable, on a pay-as-you-go basis.

The prints are not 'reproductions' in the same sense as the ones published by the major houses such as Takamizawa and Adachi (which attempted to reproduce the Edo originals closely). These are 'adaptations', all arranged into a standard size (the 'chuban' format), and very much re-drawn; they are 'in the style of', rather than exact copies.

It seems that intention of the publishers was to issue a set of prints that would encapsulate the overall history of the ukiyo-e genre, but the prints that survive today show a very much 'skewed' selection. Images from the early days of ukiyo-e dominate, and very few from the later days (landscapes, etc.) are included. Whether this is due to the publishers' preferences, or because the overall project was not sustainable and ended before a more complete survey of the genre could be created, is not clear.

Because the prints are reproductions, and - worse than that - not 'real' reproductions, they have been completely ignored by collectors and researchers. It is not yet clearly understood just how many titles were issued, which workshops were involved in the production, and who the target market was. (This is a wonderful research opportunity for a PhD candidate! Although you would need to be based in Japan for library research, and would of course need excellent Japanese reading skills ... digging through old magazines looking for advertisements, etc.)

We currently have just shy of 200 of these prints in our collection (including a couple of dozen duplicates), and have no idea how many we have yet to come across.

• these prints are sometimes confused with the reproductions published as Yamato Nishiki-e, 'supervised' by Hashiguchi Goyo, also in the Taisho period, but those prints are far inferior in their technical qualities to the ones we show here
• It is going to be quite some time before we can get most of these photographed and uploaded; please enjoy this small selection in the meantime ...