It has been half a year since our previous Flea Market 'Matsuri', and staff member Aya Watanabe has again unearthed many interesting prints to add to the selection in this section of our online catalogue.

Although the competition for high-quality old prints has intensified greatly over the past year or so, we have been particularly active over the past few months in 'the market', and have accumulated quite a nice group of prints this time around!

We hope you will find something here interesting and worth collecting. We have prepared this special page so that you can easily select the one(s) you want, and we have taken a set of high-resolution photographs of these prints to help you choose.

Thank you for your interest!

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. ...
• Major shipping problems due to the pandemic now seem to be mostly behind us. But having said that, we need to mention that we are now deep in the year-end 'gift season' when post offices all over the world struggle with excess volume. Please check this page for an update on the situation with your country before ordering. Thank you for your patience ...

What kind of prints do we have this time around? They 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.

 

General interest

 

• Reload the page to see another random group of images ... or use the links below to see each group all at once ...

Mokuhankan Flea Market :
(All items)  general (73)   kacho-e (33)   yakusha-e (25)   landscape (119)   bijin-ga (107)   kuchi-e (0)   contemporary (4)   set (42)   books (3)    [ List of Recently sold items ]