It has been half a year since our previous Flea Market 'Matsuri', and the staff at Mokuhankan have accumulated enough interesting items to make it worthwhile for another go-round!

Some of the mid-20th century classical reproductions you will have seen here before - Adachi and Takamizawa items are fairly common in the markets here - but others are not so common. We hope you will find something here interesting and worth collecting!

Dave Bull, Mokuhankan

• The images on this page (which will change when you reload) are just a few highlights of each type; visit the Flea Market catalogue to see everything all at once ...
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• Click images for enlargements. The prints here are of a variety of different dimensions, from hagaki (similar to postcard) up to the large o-ban size. The print titles are linked to pages with information on dimensions, designer, etc. ...

The prints in this week's selection fall into a few basic categories:

 

Beauties

No matter what the era, producing prints of beautiful women was always high in the priorities of the publishers. In the days before magazines and movies, the prints served as 'fashion plates', letting women of all social classes learn about the latest trends and clothing styles.

 

Landscape

In a time before the invention of powered vehicles, travel around the country was of course difficult and not something available to most people. But there was huge interest in 'far-off places' and the publishers fed this with a steady stream of landscape designs, both imaginary, and realistic.

 

Nature

The genre known as kacho-ga ('flower-bird' pictures) was another mainstay of the woodblock print world. Frequently incorporating poetic references, and always seasonal ones, such designs closed matched Japanese aesthetic sensibilities.

 

20th century 'Sosaku' work ...

Postwar Japan also saw a period of resurgence and growth in the sosaku ('Creative prints') genre. In the early days of the movement, it was populated by artists who were proud of their ability to do all three of the printmaker's tasks: design, cut and print, but as the genre expanded in the postwar period, and some of them became hugely popular, many of them began to use the services of professional printers to pull their editions (although this is almost never credited), allowing a much greater number of prints to be created.

 

General interest

 

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Mokuhankan Flea Market :
(All items)  general (69)   kacho-e (35)   yakusha-e (31)   landscape (134)   bijin-ga (66)   nihonga (4)   sosaku (1)   kuchi-e (0)   contemporary (2)   set (45)   books (5)    [ List of Recently sold items ]