4to, (272 x 195 mm). Two woodblock-printed albums in the original yellow wrappers with original title slips. Vol. I: 1 double-page preface, 13 double-page illustrations. Vol. II: 7½ double-page illustrations, one double-page postscript, one double-page colophon. Preserved in the original blue floral brocade chitsu with calligraphic title slip. Strong impressions with minor toning, minor repaired worming and occasional marks, but generally very good. Housed in the original chitsu with calligraphic title slip.

Copied after paintings by Ogata Korin, the album translates the great decorative inventions of the Rinpa school into woodblock form with extraordinary authority, suppressing descriptive detail in favour of silhouette, pattern, and the fluid tarashikomi effects that made the school one of the most original pictorial idioms of early modern Japan. Hochu's years in Edo culminated in this publication, which is more individual in expression than his later Korin hyaku-zu and became the seminal vehicle through which the early Rinpa manner was revived for a new audience. Composed at the threshold of the 19th century, it stands at the crucial point where Korin’s painted language entered the printed book and acquired a new afterlife.

This copy is bibliographically significant not merely because it is a true first edition, with the publisher Omiya Yohei of Edo Nihonbashi and the printer Matsuda Shinsuke named in the colophon, but because it preserves precisely the kind of unstable first-issue makeup on which the history of this book depends. The few extant examples of the 1802 issue differ materially in sequence and completeness; every copy of the first issue is therefore a primary witness rather than a mechanically repeatable state. We could trace only a very few institutional examples of the 1802 edition, including copies at the Smithsonian, the British Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library, while no auction or trade record appears traceable for the original Omiya Yohei edition in the present first-issue form.

The present copy retains the colophon signed by Hochu himself with kakihan, "Hochu drew these, at the fireside at an Inn in the Eastern Capital".

Provenance

1) Shigeo Sorimachi (seal in chitsu and on colophon).

2) Eugene Biedermann, Switzerland (seal inside chitsu).

3) Richard Krumi, London ukiyo-e dealer.

4) Robert G. Sawyers, British ukiyo-e specialist.

5) Colin Franklin, Culham.

6) European private collection.

Description

As the very few recorded copies of the 1802 first issue vary in plate order, sequence, and the presence or absence of certain leaves, no wholly fixed collation can be imposed on the edition: each surviving first-issue copy is, in a strict bibliographical sense, a unique witness.

Vol. I: 1 double-page preface by Tachibana Chikagei, followed by the following 13 double-page illustrations: three cranes; three turtles; plum branch; six immortal poets; peonies; two Taoist immortals, Tekkai and Gama; dandelions and blue flowers; three puppies; poets in a boat; hollyhocks; three rats; seven sages of the bamboo grove; Mt. Fuji.

Vol. II: the following 7 full double-page illustrations and 1 half double-page illustration: musicians and Noh dancer; nobleman and attendant on bridge (half-page); chrysanthemums; morning glory and red hageito flowers; Jo and Uba by a pine; four deer; children playing blindman’s buff; Daikoku, Ebisu and shrine dancer; followed by 1 double-page postscript signed Renge-an and 1 double-page colophon dated Kyowa 2 (1802), signed by Hochu with kakihan, printer Matsuda Shinsuke, and publisher Omiya Yohei. Not present in this copy are the four plates from the end of vol. II: two doves and three sparrows; descending geese and wave; three women of Ohara; plovers and waves.

C. H. Mitchell, The Illustrated Books of the Nanga, Maruyama, Shijo and Other Related Schools of Japan: A Biobibliography (Los Angeles, 1972), 376. S. Sorimachi, Catalogue of Japanese Illustrated Books and Manuscripts in the Spencer Collection of the New York Public Library (Tokyo, 1978), 121f. J. Hillier and L. Smith, Japanese Prints, 300 Years of Albums and Books (London, 1980), no. 130. Japanese Woodblock Prints and Books in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (London, 1985) II, 450f. J. Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book (London, 1987), 655-659. Wakizaka Jun, "Nakamura Hochu no Jimbutsu Zo", in Rimpa (Tokyo, 1991) IV, 255-263.